The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

by Chris Whipple

Stuart Spencer, Ford’s reelection campaign manager, recalls that every time the president gave a speech his poll numbers plunged. “Ford would go out on the road and the tracking data would go like this,” he says, pointing his thumb to the floor. “We’d stay in the White House playing president, and his tracking data would go like this,” he says, pointing his thumb up. “So I go to Cheney and say, ‘We gotta change our strategy.’ ” “He was giving these very dull, terrible speeches,” recalls Cannon. “And one day they wrote a line in a speech and the sentence was, ‘And I say to you, this is nonsense.” And they made a note in the speech: with emphasis. And Ford read it aloud: ‘And I say to you this is nonsense—with emphasis.’ And Cheney says, ‘Well, that’s another thing we can’t do—write instructions in the speech text.’