Could you turn down the President of the United States?

Can you imagine being asked not once, but twice by the President of the United States to be the head of an agency whose mission you did not believe in? That was what happened in Don Rumsfield's case. First, he was asked by President Nixon to head the Office of Economic Opportunity, the funding of which agency Rumsfeld had voted against when he was a Congressman from Illinois. Then he was asked to head the Cost of Living Council, which Congress had give authority to set wage and price controls. He is proud that, unlike the shameful record of the Obama administration in blatantly using tax dollars to shore up union thugs, there was not one incident of corruption during his administration of the Cost of Living Council.

Rumsfeld writes in his memoir Known and Unknown that he was able to say no to two posts Nixon asked him to head: HUD, and the Committee to Reelect the President, known infamously later as CREEP. Fortunately for Rumsfeld, he was in Europe as Ambassador to NATO when the Watergate Hearings took place.

Speaking of Watergate, Rumsfeld was impressed with Bob Haldeman, but not John Erlichman. Although, he faults Haldeman for not blocking Nixon on his Watergate escapades. Rumsfeld was not a fan of Spiro Agnew, and the portrait he paints of Henry Kissinger, at least as far as I have read, is mixed, at best.