Now the Constituency Is the Nation

Alternately sipping black coffee and puffing on his pipe, White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld talked with TIME Washington Correspondent Dean Fischer about his perceptions of Gerald Ford as President:

He likes to keep things moving. [White House Press Secretary] Ron Nessen may have a question about a piece of legislation, and the President will say, "Well, let's get so-and-so in here and find out about it." I can sit down with him and run down 40 items in 30 minutes. The President doesn't like things hanging around a long time.

He's not selfconscious. He's comfortable with people and very much at ease even if he hasn't met an individual before. We can bring in an expert, and the President is not inhibited from exploring an issue he's interested in. Nor does his demeanor prevent anyone from frankly discussing a problem. He's not as reserved as many people in high office. He's relaxed and outgoing.

When we were meeting with the energy advisers the other day [in Vail, Colo.], the caretaker of the house where the President is staying walked in to get a pair of ski boots. The President paused and introduced him around the room. That put everybody at ease.

Twenty-four to 48 hours prior to those meetings, lengthy papers came in summarizing the work done in the interim--as I recall, a 58-page paper on energy, a somewhat shorter paper on the economy. I gave them to the President and he read them. I remember the President once said that he is a better listener than he is a reader. I have not found that to be the case. He'll take a thick stack of papers and read them after dinner. It is clear that he reads them because I'll get handwritten notes or questions he scrawled in the margins throughout his evening of work.

He's a do-it-now kind of person. The other day, on the spur of the moment, he picked up the telephone and called a Senator who opposed a veto of a particular bill. And conversely, when somebody is violently opposed to a bill he signs, the President may call him up to explain his reasoning. You don't get to be minority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives without being one hell of an able guy. The President is not smooth in the modern sense of the word, but the House is a pretty tough league.

I've seen him get a little angry on two or three occasions. In each case his irritation was well merited. If his schedule gets fouled up and people are kept waiting, he expresses his dissatisfaction. He also has a not unreasonable degree of impatience.

The President's gregarious nature does not interfere with the flow of White House business. On the contrary, I'd say his many friends are helpful to him. He has so many people calling him or writing him notes that it gives him what he wants, namely, multiple sources of information.

Fischer recalled that Rumsfeld worked for Jerry Ford the minority leader when Rumsfeld was an Illinois Congressman, and is now working for Jerry Ford the President. Has there been any basic change in his approach ?

Of course, the major difference is that the minority leader's constituency is the 140 or 180 Republican members of the House and, in a somewhat larger sense, the Republicans of the nation. The constituency of the President is the nation. If you looked at the President's calendar, you would find that the spectrum of people is considerably broader. I suppose that is the most dramatic difference.

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