Alexander Haig

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William Rogers was outmaneuvered by Kissinger, he said, "I won't have a repeat of the Kissinger-Rogers situation. I'll look to you, Al."

In one part of my nature I now wanted the job. I had been training for it, in a sense, for 31 years. I thought that I could perform it well, and that it was important it be well performed. To accept, I realized with a certain sense of loss, would be to go back to an old life that I knew was filled with difficulty and misunderstanding and implacable (and often unjust) judgment of character and performance. I had served six Presidents. I had seen one of them fall in dreadful disgrace, but I had seen Presidents, including Richard Nixon, rise in triumph also. I had seen war as it was made in high places and as it was fought on the battlefield. I did not want to see any more of it. It seemed a good thing to do what one could to prevent more wars. I accepted the post Reagan had offered me with a glad and hopeful spirit.

There is a tendency to argue that Ronald Reagan is an aberration who does not represent the true will of the voters or the political center of the nation. This is a fallacy. His election was the culmination of a trend in American politics that began with the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt and that has steadily moved the political center to the right in this country.

I was convinced that in a broad way, the President-elect and I shared a certain view of the world. Like the voters who elected him, I perceived in Ronald Reagan more significant qualities than mere expertise: decency, optimism, a gift for self-education, a sturdy, common-sense affection for the U.S. and for mankind, and a talent for communication that approached the artistic. Better than any President since John Kennedy, Ronald Reagan had the surface qualities and the skills to do the job. In the epoch of television, he, like Kennedy, was made for the camera. In a demagogue, this would have been a dangerous thing. But Reagan was no demagogue. He was, it is true, a man of strong beliefs, but they were traditionally American and, oddly enough, essentially liberal beliefs. The people were asking for realism, for an atmosphere of honest pride in the U.S., an acknowledgment by their leaders of the astonishing things that America had accomplished for its people and for the rest of the world.

Whether Ronald Reagan could be a great President was unknowable. Like most Americans, I profoundly hoped that he would be. I hoped that I could help him.

"Nobody Has a Monopoly on Virtue"

Rumors of Haig 's appointment had already touched off intense controversy about his White House years. As Kissinger's aide on the National Security Council, Haig had requested FBI wiretaps on a number of reporters and Government officials in 1969-71 to determine the source of embarrassing leaks to the press. Later, as Richard Nixon's chief of staff when the Watergate scandal was approaching its climax, Haig resisted efforts by Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski to obtain Oval Office tapes that ultimately discredited Nixon. Critics also faulted Haig for having helped Nixon and Kissinger conduct the war in Viet Nam, including the 1970 incursion into Cambodia. Yet another cloud over his nomination was the persistent though contested allegation that the Nixon Administration ordered the CIA to organize the 1973 military coup