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The months passed. After I retired from NATO and ended my 31 years of Army service, I undertook a series of speaking engagements as a means of expressing certain very strong views on defense and foreign policy. To some, this activity, which took me to about 40 states, had the appearance of a run at the nomination; a Haig-for-President committee was formed in Washington. Although I was not consulted by the people involved, I did nothing to interfere with their right to support anyone they chose. But I had no expectation that I would be President and had repeatedly said so in public and private. Of all the truths that a public man can speak in American life, that is the one least likely to be believed, so I was not especially surprised that Reagan, or at least the men around him, should withhold judgment on my real intentions.
In August I received another call from Allen. Could I come to the ranch? I agreed but asked if this time I could meet with Reagan alone. My request was granted, and I went to California.
At their ranch north of Santa Barbara, the Reagans gave me a tour. Then Mrs. Reagan said goodbye with her firm handshake. She explained, with pointed good humor, that she was about to go riding—"so that you two can talk alone." I guessed that my request for a private meeting with her husband had caused a misunderstanding, but there was no chance to repair the affront. Mrs. Reagan mounted her horse and cantered away.
Reagan, in close-fitting twill riding breeches, worn with oldfashioned, buckled cavalry boots, exuded good health and good fellowship. Reagan's affability, his habit of speaking plainly, without metaphor or jargon, and above all the impression he gives of liking the person he is talking to, create a good atmosphere. Simply put, Ronald Reagan is a nice guy, and one is aware of this every moment. This is no small gift for a man to be blessed with.
I always had warm feelings for him, reaching back to the Nixon Administration. He was, in the best sense of the word, a loyalist, a man who seemed instinctively to put country above party and party above self. When President Nixon asked for his support, he gave it, sometimes at considerable political cost to himself as Governor of California, but always ungrudgingly.
In our conversation that day at the ranch, Reagan and I agreed on most things. On the draft, however, we did not. Reagan, as a conservative, believes that compulsory military service is an invasion of the right of the individual to free choice. Urging him to moderate this doctrinaire view, I argued that our youth should grow up with a sense of obligation to the nation.
He asked me if I would support him—"join my team," as he put it. I told him I could not, at that time, become a part of his political household, but that with the exception of the draft issue, I would be supportive of his basic policy.
At the end of 1979, Haig became president and chief operating officer of United Technologies in Hartford, Conn., one of the largest U.S. corporations (1983 sales: $14.6 billion). A few months later, at 55, he underwent a successful double-bypass coronary operation. "I had become a private man," he writes, "and I thought that I had