George HW on Nixon resignation
I went back to the National Committee and addressed them. I tried to identify with the feelings I am sure they all felt – of betrayal and distrust and yet pride. I told them we had been through the toughest year and a half in history and yet I now felt we were coming on an optimistic period. I told them that the President asked me to stay on. All in all it was a pretty good meeting although I felt drained emotionally and physically tired.
Saturday the 10th I attended the first Ford Cabinet Meeting. Notes kept on that. Mood clam. TerHorst had already called the day before to ask me about the White House report – I told him what he could expect, he told me the Clawson job would be eliminated, that Clawson was going to be leaving, that the whole gut-fighting attack group would be eliminated. I told him this was a great decision and I was relieved. I had a long visit with Haig after the press had left following the swearing in during which Kissinger walked into the room. Bar and Pat Haig were talking and Haig and I were fielding various things. I told Haig my concerns about the NSC, how it had to be a more independent posture eventually. I recognized Kissinger's enormous ego problem but that the system needed to be somewhere between where the NSC used to be and when he was there and ambassadors were walking in the side door and where it is now, simply a subsidiary to the
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