“…I’m in control here…” – Alexander Haig, March 30, 1981
Alexander Haig, a four-star general, supreme commander of NATO, and a former chief of staff and secretary of defense, died this morning in Baltimore of complications from an infection at the age of 85.
The Washington Post’s compelling obituary of Haig tells the story of a fascinating American life. Fatherless at the age of ten, Haig aspired to a career in the military and he graduated from West Point just after the conclusion of World War II. Haig served in combat in Korea, earned a Purple Heart in Vietnam, and briskly rose up the military chain of command, becoming Army vice chief of staff for a short time before replacing the disgraced H.R. Haldeman as President Richard Nixon’s chief of staff. He remained loyal to Nixon throughout his career, which later included stints as President Ford’s chief of staff, President Reagan’s secretary of state, and as a Republican candidate for the presidency in 1988.
It was during his year and a half tenure as secretary of state that Haig is now most vividly remembered, mainly for his words during a press conference held just a few hours after the attempted assassination of President Reagan in 1981. There was great tension and uncertainty as Reagan prepared to undergo surgery that would save his life. It was still not clear whether the the attempt on the president was part of a broader conspiracy and vice president George Bush was traveling in an airplane above Texas. Haig had just witnessed press secretary Larry Speakes struggle with reporters’ questions about who was in charge, so in what those who knew him regarded as typical Al Haig take-charge fashion, he made his way to the White House Briefing Room.
Seeking to reassure Americans that the government was in steady hands and intent on reminding other nations–particularly America’s Cold War nemesis, the Soviet Union–that the United States was prepared for any situation, Haig stepped to the podium at the White House Briefing Room and said:
Constitutionally gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order, and should the president decide he wants to transfer the helm to the vice president, he will do so. As for now, I’m in control here, in the White House, pending the return of the vice president and in close touch with him. If something came up, I would check with him, of course.
Haig was factually incorrect, as the Constitution only mentions the secretary of state’s role as the fourth in the succession of power. He would later clarify that he was not referring to succession, but rather to the transition of power. But Haig had already stepped into the role that would profoundly–and largely unfairly–define him for the last three decades of his life: that of a somewhat deluded, overly eager, power grabber; an impression readily accepted because of his stern military sensibility and his well-earned reputation as a keenly ambitious bureaucratic infighter.
Of the incident and words that created this indelible impression,Haig said in 2001, “Only the Beltway gang gives a hoot about it. The rest of the world…was reassured. I’ve been through a number of national crises and a number of presidencies from Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis to war in the field and that Cabinet and that White House performed very, very well that day. There was no panic.”
