Former Defense Secretary Melvin Laird influenced the 20th century
Former Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird was one of the most influential figures in the mid-20th century.
He coined the phrase Vietnamization and was the architect for the withdrawl of a half-million troops from Southeast Asia. He helped to end the military draft.
He assisted the selection two vice presidents; guided a young army officer named Colin Powell to a White House assignment in the early 1970s; and even had a young intern in the 1960s who was then named Hillary Rodham.
Laird, who spent much of his retirement living quietly in the Forest in south Lee County, died a week ago from respiratory failure. He was 94.
Laird was a onetime Navy officer from Wisconsin who survived a Kamikaze attack on the destroyer USS Maddox in the Pacific in World War II. For all his life, Laird remained a strong advocate for national defense and a skeptic of sending American troops into long wars in Asia and the Middle East.
"He came back with a different view of war and a different set of priorities and we're all better for it," said his son, David Laird, a real estate developer in McLean, Virginia.
Bob Williams, a friend and former campaign aide to Laird, said the former Pentagon head had been thinking recently about ways to ensure that either President-elect Donald Trump or his losing opponent, Hillary Clinton, picked a capable secretary of defense to lead the nation's military.
"Oh my, yes, he took that so seriously because of the power you had and the power to influence the president," Williams said of the defense appointment.
After returning from World War II, he served in the Wisconsin state Senate and represented the 7th Congressional District for nine consecutive terms, helping to build up the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"He was a Washington grown-up," said Gerald Whitburn, a University of Wisconsin regent who served as an assistant to the secretary of the Navy while Laird headed the Pentagon.
From the archives: Former Secretary of Defense Laird's political comments
In an authorized biography by Dale Van Atta published in 2008, "With Honor: Melvin Laird In War, Peace and Politics," Laird is lauded for attributes — bipartisanship and pragmatism — that are often perceived as lacking in Washington today.
"He was a Republican to the core, but he was a Republican that really believed government was a worthy cause," Jim Doyle said.
As secretary of defense, Laird had an interest in some 4,000 pieces of legislation and amendments.
"I never lost a vote, in both the House and Senate," he said. Both bodies were controlled all that time by the Democrats.
Laird blamed a large part of the demise of partisanship on television, according to an October 2008 interview in The News-Press.
"Everyone wants to get credit. They all want an oar in the water," he said. "Everyone is anxious to get out there and get on the TV news. They can get on their hometown TV news that evening and more individuals are competing for those few minutes of TV time."
It is a symptom for which there is a cure.
"You fix it by having leadership," said Laird.
But Laird was also once described by The Wall Street Journal as "a kind of unguided missile within the Washington establishment, leaving intrigues, strategies and inside information in his wake."
In the Nixon administration, Laird tangled constantly with national security adviser Henry Kissinger, who resisted Laird's push for faster withdrawals from Vietnam.
Once, when Kissinger was planning a top-secret trip to Beijing to lay the groundwork for Nixon's opening to China, Laird added a fake Taiwan visit for the same dates to his own public schedule and then called off the sham trip a few days later.
Speaking later of Laird, Kissinger joked that "it is much less painful to do what he wants."
In Congress, Laird took an interest in health and helped expand agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He even played a role in the rise of the NFL, according to Van Atta's book. He helped secure an antitrust exemption in Congress that made revenue-sharing possible (and allowed the Green Bay Packers to compete with far larger cities).
After the Defense Department, Laird moved into a position as a White House adviser during the unsettled time of the Watergate investigation.
Laird helped steer Nixon into picking Gerald Ford as his new number two, believing he had the integrity and standing with Congress to pick up the pieces after Watergate. Laird also helped persuade Ford to pick Nelson Rockefeller as his vice president.
Laird was skeptical of American involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, but argued for a phased drawdown of American forces rather than a hasty action.
"Wars are very easy to get into," Laird said in 2009, "but they're awfully hard to get out of."
Laird got to know Southwest Florida through his vacations in Naples. He selected Southwest Florida for his retirement because he and his wife, Carole, liked the area.
He loved The Forest because, he said in his 2008 interview, "the people are so friendly."
From the archives: Melvin Laird bemoans lack of bipartisanship
Laird lived in what people in The Forest called "The White House. He flew the American flag, the flag of the state of Wisconsin and, at times, the flag of the U.S. Navy, on a tall flag poll.
He was a frequent visitor at the country club until a short time ago.
The News-Press archives and USA TODAY - network contributed to this report.
Laird's accomplishments
Name: Melvin R. Laird Jr.
Born: Sept. 1, 1922 in Omaha, Neb.
Military: Served as an officer on a destroyer in the Pacific; wounded in action.
Political party: Republican
Political career: Wisconsin State Senate (succeeding his father): 1946-1952. U. S. House: 1951-1969. Secretary of defense: 1969-1973. Counselor to the president for Domestic Affairs: 1973-1974.
Some accomplishments:
• Engineered resignation of Vice President Spiro T. Agnew.
• Forced President Nixon to accept Gerald Ford as vice president.
• Moved the draft to a lottery system to make it fair. Ended the draft, establishing an all-volunteer force.
• Withdrew combat forces from the Vietnam war under a system he called Vietnamization.