Word: haig
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...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...
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...
...Haig's unruly ego escape and turn on him? Probably, in some fashion...
Several months ago, when one of Alexander Haig's periodic eruptions appeared to signal his imminent departure from office, George Shultz ran into an old friend from Nixon Administration days on a Washington street. "I think he's going to go," said the friend, Washington Lobbyist Charls Walker. "Who do you think they'll get?" asked Shultz. "You," answered Walker, with a laugh...