Word: rusk
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...authors are Dean Rusk, then Secretary of State; Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense; George W. Ball, Under Secretary of State; Roswell L. Gilpatric, Deputy Secretary of Defense; Theodore Sorensen, special counsel to the President; and McGeorge Bundy, special assistant to the President for national security affairs. Their analysis...
...with other people of power, like Mao Tse-tung, Kissinger stocked up on personal information about world leaders. He also supplied stories about the Ivy League, both good and bad, which the boss relished. Muskie twitted Carter about his inept fly casting but praised him for superb fly tying. Rusk bent to Kennedy's appetite for humor. Ordered to track down and fire a leaker, Rusk traced the culprit to the Oval Office. "I can't fire him, Mr. President," phoned Rusk. "It's you." They both roared...
enough to act. At the end of every day, Rusk sent Kennedy, and later Johnson, one piece of paper with short items explaining minor actions taken that day and those that he planned to take in the next couple of days without presidential consultation...
Muskie had 24-hour access to Carter either by phone or in person, but often resisted the impulse to call the President. "I decided that if I ever overdid it, I would become less effective," Muskie remembers. Rusk calculated that two-thirds of the world was always awake creating mischief and a President had to be shielded from too many crises. Rusk also worked at "not bothering the President or abusing my access." Result: "When I saw them, both Presidents always took me seriously...
...Presidents at first tend to be impatient with diplomatic protocol, indifferent to these rituals that prevent nations from constantly bickering over trivialities. "Presidents have to learn that ambassadors to Washington from other nations actually have a right to see them," Rusk says. Nixon loved protocol that was glamorous, but often balked at routine receptions and meetings. Kissinger soon learned that if events were simply inserted into the President's schedule, the quiet authority of the printed word subdued his protests and Nixon performed the required rituals without complaint...