Young Rumsfeld
There is an article in the November 2003 Atlantic Monthly that I strongly recommend to politics junkies like me.
Only a summary is available online.
As so often happens with stories that involve Nixon and transcripts of the White House tapes, the most interesting character to emerge in the story, by far, is Nixon. Many of his comments are crude or claustrophic--disappointing, somehow, coming from a president--but you can always see a very bright individual at work: thinking, giving advice, trying to be funny. "Nobody cares about Latin America"; OK, one would probably wish he hadn't said it, but I don't think it's exactly false.
Young (basically pushing 40 around 1970) Rumsfeld emerges as kind of a dull little troll, toiling away underground, invisible to most. After 6 years in Congress, he worked in the Nixon campaign in 1968, and then kind of hung around the White House, hoping for a good job. He wasn't one of the insiders, and that's part of the reason he struggled to get a job he wanted. Nixon was more or less on his side, or he claimed to be, until there was increasing evidence, firmly reported by Haldeman and others, that Rumsfeld didn't like sticking out his neck for the President.
Rumsfeld was supposed to be effective at reaching out to college campuses and other places with young people in them that were or less like Mars to Nixon and his inner circle. Yet Rumsfeld was hesitant to give a speech to a difficult audience. Also, the one issue that Rumsfeld was outspoken about was Vietnam; the war (meaning U.S. military action there) should be ended as quickly as possible, and a special emissary (like Rumsfeld) should be sent to work on the post-war settlement. This was consistent with what Nixon said during the 1968 campaign (he had a "secret plan" to end the war) but it was no longer "on message." The war had to be fought, we had to be tough, etc., just like Kennedy and Johnson.
Still, Rumsfeld could get private time with the President, and Nixon would offer encouragement and advice.
For a while Rumsfeld headed a real do-gooding federal agency (Office of Economic Opportunity) that Nixon had inherited from Johnson, but which he supported and wanted to spend money on. (Remember the 60s and 70s? Leaders of "conservative" parties did a lot for the growth of the welfare state). Rumsfeld even got the job made into a Cabinet position. Then Rumsfeld lobbied for something else. Once again it took him quite a while to find something. Finally, in 1973, he became U.S. Ambassador to NATO, and thereby managed to be away when everything hit the fan.
In this whole period Rumsfeld was a moderate Republican. In Congress, he joined with other members to dump some of the Goldwater-type conservatives and choose as Republican leader: Gerald Ford. This obviously paid off when Ford became President, but this amounts to rejecting the ideological Reagan wing of the party for the most lacklustre kind of Republican imaginable. Rumfeld's most memorable hire was: Dick Cheney, who has never been known to have a significant disagreement with his former boss.
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