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My speech at the Convention, based on the foreign policy plank of the party platform, called for a policy much like the one I was later to advocate within the Reagan Administration. Afterward, Justin Dart [a Los Angeles businessman], a member of the kitchen cabinet and an old friend, shook my hand and said, "You're our next Secretary of State." I was not surprised to hear this—the air in a convention quivers with hyperbole—but I did not take it as gospel. I went back to Hartford and my work.
After Reagan's election, Allen telephoned me. He expected to be Reagan's adviser for national security affairs—a job he had also expected to have under President Nixon in 1969, only to be beaten out by a more solemn man, Henry Kissinger. Allen said I was a candidate for a Cabinet post. The first position mentioned was that of Secretary of Defense. I pointed out that military men are prohibited for a ten-year period after leaving active duty from becoming Secretary of Defense. General of the Army George Marshall's appointment in 1950 required a special act of Congress. In my view, General Marshall, as one of the greatest men in American history, was a fitting exception to the rule, and should be the only one.
Allen invited me, on behalf of the President-elect, to attend a dinner at the Madison Hotel in Washington, where I met Reagan's aides Edwin Meese and James Baker and the President-elect's friend and adviser Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada. They were there, it seemed, to look me over. They asked, first, if I had anything to hide in connection with Watergate. I assured them that I had nothing whatever to hide. Then Meese asked me a second question: Did I want to be President? I answered in the negative. It seemed a curious question. Meese's own man had just been elected by a landslide. Surely he was in no political danger from any other Republican. Later, at dinner, Meese leaned over to my wife and said, "Don't worry, he's going to make it." Passing along this mysterious tidbit, Pat commented, "My worry is that you will make it."
George Shultz, who was eminently qualified to be Secretary of State, was still regarded as the leading contender. His colleague at the Bechtel Group in California, Caspar ("Cap") Weinberger, who, like Shultz, had a personal relationship with Reagan, had also been mentioned. I began to take seriously the rumors with respect to myself when the familiar baritone of Richard Nixon came down the line one day to say that Reagan had decided to ask me to be his Secretary of State. In matters Republican, Nixon usually knows what he is talking about.
As I recall, it was a wintry afternoon, Dec. 11, when Reagan himself called and in his pleasant way said," Al, I'm calling to say that I'd like you to join my team and be my Secretary of State." He went on to say that Allen, as National Security Adviser, would act exclusively as a staff coordinator. "You know my feeling about the Secretary of State," Reagan said. "He would be the spokesman." Then, referring to the predicament that developed when Nixon's old friend and Secretary of State