The Genie That Got Away

By Hugh Sidey

The Presidency

On a cold 1980 December night, before Ronald Reagan's newly elected Government was in power, Richard Nixon stirred a pitcher of exquisitely dry martinis in the study of his Manhattan town house and addressed the topic of the moment. General Alexander Haig had just been rumored to be the top candidate for Secretary of State. Beneath the famous brows, Nixon's dark eyes shone. "I know Al Haig," he said. "He is one of the most ruthless, toughest, ambitious s.o.b.s I know. He'd make a great Secretary of State."

As the martinis took hold, and then the Chinese dinner softened some of the remaining reserve, the former President went one step further. "If Haig is running for President from the State Department," said Nixon, "it will never work."

In the alarming and perplexing void that followed Haig's resignation last week, the belief took root that his consuming appetite for power was at least partly responsible for his demise. He wanted to be President. He wanted the one position still denied him in his singular zeal to straighten out this nation and reorder the world.

Haig, a bundle of Jesuit rectitude and West Point ardor, rose to power through the smoldering remains of one political disaster after another. His intentions were not evil.

Above all, he served.

First, his country. Then himself. He collected the fragments of power from the dying Nixon presidency and actually ran the nation in the final gasp of Watergate. In the wimpish season of Jimmy Carter, Haig commanded NATO and flattered his way to leadership pre-eminence in Western Europe's convoluted court life.

As a civilian and fledgling industrialist, he tested the presidential waters in 1980 and wisely withdrew--but not before elevating his candidacy as a prospective Secretary of Defense or State in any new Republican regime.

Ensconced in Foggy Bottom, Haig grubbed for turf, sniped at rivals like Richard Allen of the National Security Council and, with his singular energy, charm and connivance, did indeed become the vicar of foreign policy for a President more than slightly bewildered by the routines and realities of geopolitics.

Haig was always moving up, elbowing closer to the Oval Office, the ultimate source of power that nourished him. He was near but never there. Always about Haig there was the sense that as he worked he heard another bugle call, that he was girding for one last grand charge.

In the early mornings, as mist rose off the Potomac River, Haig often had breakfast with a guest in his seventh-floor State Department aerie, where only his soldier's voice and the ticking of an antique clock broke the solemn silence. At such encounters, his misty ambition was freed. In this fantasy, he was on Capitol Hill putting together a practical budget, making sensible deals with Speaker Tip O'Neill and the Democrats, fashioning legislative maneuvers that made things work rather than standing prettily on ideology. His mind, in these unfettered and rare interludes, was into weapons and food and families and propaganda. His view was as wide as creation. He was playing President, yearning, believing in himself with a confidence that dwarfs normal mortals.

Any department head who does not entertain such fancies, does not at some time or another convince himself that he could do a better job than his President, is not worth having in any Cabinet. Yet, if a Cabinet officer is to endure, such genies must be stuffed back into their bottles and corked almost as soon as they emerge.

Did Haig's unruly ego escape and turn on him? Probably, in some fashion.

But that story awaits telling in the next months and years.

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