George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography - Get a Free Blog

and moderate Republican layers might constitute a fatal impediment to Ford's prospects
of getting himself elected to a term of his own.
Accordingly, when Kissinger visited Bush in Beijing in October, 1975, he pointedly
inquired as to whether Bush intended to enter any of the Republican presidential
primaries during the 1976 season. This was the principal question that Ford had directed
Kissinger to ask of Bush. Bush's exit from Beijing occurred within the context of Ford's
celebrated Halloween Massacre of early November, 1975. This "massacre," reminiscent
of Nixon's cabinet purge of 1973 ("the Saturday night massacre"), was a number of
firings and transfers of high officials at the top of the executive branch through which
Ford sought to figure forth the political profile which he intended to carry into the
primaries and, if he were successful in the winter and spring, into the Republican
convention and, beyond that, into the fall campaign. So each of these changes had a
purpose that was ultimately rooted in electioneering.
In the Halloween massacre, it was announced that Vice President Nelson Rockefeller
would under no circumstances be a candidate to continue in that office. Nelson's
negatives were simply too high. James "Rodney the Robot" Schlesinger was summarily
ousted as the Secretary of Defense; Schlesinger's "Dr. Strangelove" overtones were
judged not presentable during an election year. To replace Schlesinger, Ford's White
House chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld was given the Pentagon. Henry Kissinger, who up
to this moment had been running the administration from two posts, NSC director and
Secretary of State, had to give up his White House office and was obliged to direct the
business of the government from Foggy Bottom. In consolation to him, the NSC job was
assigned to his devoted clone and later business associate, retired Air Force Lieutenant
General Brent Scowcroft, a Mormon who would later play the role of exterminating
demon during Bush's Gulf war adventure. At the Department of Commerce, the
secretary's post that had been so highly touted to Bush was being vacated by Rogers
Morton. Finally, William Colby, his public reputation thoroughly delapidated as a result
of the revelations made during the Church Committee and Pike Committee investigations
of the abuses and crimes of the CIA, especially within the US domestic sphere, was
canned as Director of Central Intelligence.
Could this elaborate reshuffle be made to yield a job for Bush? It was anything but
guaranteed. The post of CIA director was offerred to Washington lawyer and influence
broker Edward Bennett Williams. But he turned it down.
Then there was the post at Commerce. This was one that Bush came very close to getting.
In the Jack Marsh files at the Gerald Ford Library there is a draft marked "Suggested
cable to George Bush," but which is undated. The telegram begins: "Congratulations on
your selection by the President as Secretary of Commerce." The job title is crossed out,
and "Director of the Central Intelligence Agency" is pencilled in.
So Bush almost went to Commerce, but then was proposed for Langley instead. Bush in
his campaign autobiography suggests that the CIA appointment was a tactical defeat, the
one new job that was more or less guaranteed to keep him off the GOP ticket in 1976. As