Word: hartmann
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Such is the frenetic working pace -and enormous influence over the President-of Robert Trowbridge Hartmann, 57, Ford's chief speechwriter, political adviser, troubleshooter and confidant. Other White House intimates regard the conservative Hartmann as Ford's most trusted Counsellor. "The President knows that Bob is smarter than hell and straight as an arrow with him," says Bryce Harlow, an ex-adviser to Richard Nixon who serves on Ford's kitchen cabinet. Adds another presidential aide: "Bob's the President's eyes and ears. It would be impossible to overemphasize his importance." Summoned...
...Hartmann who persuaded Ford to strive for independence as Vice President and avoid becoming overcommitted to Nixon's Watergate defense. Hartmann crafted Ford's well-received Inaugural Address, his first speech as President to Congress and his speech last week appealing for leniency for deserters and draft dodgers. Hartmann also was the only White House aide who participated in Ford's selection of a nominee for Vice President. He tabulated the names recommended by Republican Congressmen, Governors and others, and later discreetly checked out the three finalists, though Ford never confided in him that he had settled...
That seeming aloofness only augmented Hartmann's longstanding reputation for brusqueness and abrasiveness. After he became a Counsellor to the President, his father, Miner Hartmann, 85, sent him a vial of silicon carbide, which is used in grinding steel. "You grew up on it," explained an accompanying note from the elder Hartmann, a patent attorney in Beverly Hills, Calif., and former chemist who once directed research for the Carborundum Co. Even Wife Roberta concedes that Hartmann "does not have time to be as tactful as some people would wish." But he can also be garrulous and genial, particularly while...
Born in Rapid City, S. Dak., Hartmann was raised in Niagara Falls and California, where his family moved when he was nine in hopes that a warmer climate would end his repeated bouts with pneumonia. After he graduated from Stanford University in 1938, a globe-trotting student tour of Japan, China and Europe whetted his interest in journalism, and he joined the Los Angeles Times to cover the police and local courts. In 1954 he was made chief of the newspaper's first full-time Washington bureau and soon became one of then Vice President Nixon's favorite...
...President wrote his soothing, low-keyed speech?which he described as "just a little straight talk among friends . . . the first of many"?beginning late Wednesday night, with the help of his chief of staff, Robert Hartmann, and Speechwriter Milton Friedman. With genuine humility, Ford conceded that "you have not elected me as your President by your ballots," and asked that he be confirmed "with your prayers." He emphasized the need for truth and promised to follow his "instincts of openness and candor." Time and again Ford talked about his "friends," not once mentioning enemies, domestic or foreign. Implicitly...