Page 185 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

THE LESSONS

developed a new set of resolutions. “A year later at the convention when I
was president, the reforms passed overwhelmingly,” said McGinty. “And it
was a better product too, because it was more carefully designed and more
thoughtful. So the lesson I learned was that you’ve got to bring people along
and engage them if you want to persuade them. You can’t get too far ahead
of your troops.”
Another leader who learned this lesson as a White House Fellow and
used it years later to help bring the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion was
Robert “Bud” McFarlane (WHF 71–72). McFarlane was assigned to work
with Clark McGregor, counsel to President Nixon, but was transferred to
President Nixon’s congressional liaison Bill Timmons when McGregor left
to become head of Nixon’s reelection committee. The first U.S. Marine to
be selected as a White House Fellow, McFarlane had served two tours in
Vietnam. During his initial tour he commanded the first artillery battery
to land in Vietnam. On his second tour he served as a regimental fire
support coordinator for the Third Marine Division during the Tet offen-
sive, a particularly fierce and lengthy Vietcong military campaign aimed at
bringing down the Saigon government.
McFarlane spent much of his Fellowship year watching how President
Nixon and his advisors—unknown to the American public—laid the foun-
dation for establishing more open connections with the People’s Republic
of China. Sino-American relations had been tenuous for decades, and they
were damaged seriously after World War II when the American-backed
Republic of China government was driven off the mainland by communists
led by Mao Zedong. Mao created the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
on the mainland, and the Republic of China was relegated to Taiwan under
its leader, Chiang Kai-shek. The United States refused to recognize Mao’s
government and fought its attempts to gain a seat in the United Nations.
During the Korean War, American and PRC troops were on oppo-
site sides of the battle, and that strengthened U.S. resolve to support
Chiang’s Republic of China government on Taiwan. Years later, when the
Chinese Communist Party provided support and troops to its North
Vietnamese counterparts during the Vietnam War, the United States
became even more committed to crippling the PRC. The United States
established a trade embargo against that country and rallied its allies to
support it, and that began to chip away at the PRC’s foundation. Border
disputes in 1969 between the PRC and its longtime backer the Soviet

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