Remembering James T. Lynn: Budget Cutter and Survivor

I remember answering the phone and hearing a crisp, clear voice at the other end.  “This is Jim Lynn,” he said, responding to my letter asking to interview him about his work as President Gerald R. Ford’s budget director from 1975 to 1977.  I was researching what later became Gerald Ford and the Challenges of the 1970s (University Press of Kentucky, 2005), and as the book focused on Ford’s economic policy, Lynn became a central figure in the narrative.  Subsequently, I met Lynn at his Maryland office, and his cheerful friendliness immediately stood out.  Upon greeting me, he led me to the office kitchen and fixed us coffee before we started the interview.  His personality sparkled and his affability was effusive, almost like a bottle of soda that had just been opened.

That gregariousness was a hallmark of James T. Lynn, who died this month at the age of 83.  In fact, he began his service in the federal government by letting his warmth and spontaneity speak for him.  That work was not his initial career path.  After graduating summa cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he edited the HarvardLaw Review, Lynn joined the Washington branch of the Jones Day law firm, which was based in Cleveland, his native city.  He soon became a partner, but feeling restless and eager for greater challenges, he made a bold move.

After the 1968 presidential race, while president-elect Richard Nixon formulated his new administration in Manhattan meetings, Lynn—a complete stranger to the Nixon team—walked in off the street to offer his services.  Nixon’s aides immediately saw Lynn’s qualities—a sharp mind, engaging personality, and appetite for hard work—and awarded him a job.  Lynn became a counsel in the Commerce Department, and in 1971 he was promoted to undersecretary of commerce.  In that post, Lynn helped to negotiate U.S.-Soviet trade agreements as Nixon’s détente policy thawed Cold War tensions.  In 1973, Nixon named Lynn secretary of Housing and Urban Development, succeeding George Romney.

As Nixon’s White House began to implode from Watergate, Lynn hewed to his HUD duties and kept the department free from any taint of scandal.  His no-nonsense approach to issues won respect from both parties.  House Majority Leader Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, a Democratic titan, called Lynn “a tough, two-fisted Republican whom I liked.”  In 1973, after Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned and Nixon named House Minority Leader Ford to replace him, Lynn approached O’Neill to marvel at the constitutional process.  “Tip, what do you think of this?” he asked.  “History is being made tonight.  The Twenty-fifth Amendment is being enacted for the first time.  I bet we’ll never see another night like this one.”  Like many Democratic politicians, O’Neill distrusted Nixon.  “Don’t count on it,” he told Lynn.

Lynn had a rough start with the new vice president.  Ford described him as “a feisty little guy,” and while seated together at an official dinner, they argued over a HUD appointment.  “At the party that night,” Ford later recalled, “Jim and I wound up in a shouting match.”  But they put the incident behind them, and when Ford became president, he found Lynn’s talent and advice indispensable.  “He was smart and articulate, and I liked his aggressiveness,” Ford said.  Whereas Ford replaced many Nixon holdovers to form his own staff, he asked Lynn to stay and serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Although the OMB lacked Cabinet status and the new post meant a pay cut, Lynn relished the chance to restrain government spending.  At a time when annual budget deficits ran in the $50-70 billion range and the entire federal budget stood below $400 billion, Lynn warned that these amounts were excessive.  Later, the budgets and deficits of the early twenty-first century—measured in the trillions—appalled him.  During his tenure in the mid-1970s, Lynn wanted to rein in federal spending, and he encouraged Ford’s strategy of vetoing costly congressional bills.  Ford used the veto “like a scalpel” to trim the federal budget, Lynn said, maintaining that Ford’s sixty-six vetoes during two and a half years represented a great achievement rather than obstructionist politics.  Once again, later trends dismayed Lynn; during their respective eight years as president, Bill Clinton vetoed only thirty-seven bills, and George W. Bush, just twelve.

Lynn was also responsible for perhaps the most impressive event in presidential budget-making history.  Throughout 1975, Ford administration members grew frustrated as the president’s approval ratings stayed stuck below fifty percent.  A deep recession drove unemployment to 8.9 percent, and Chevy Chase portrayed Ford as a bumbling klutz on Saturday Night Live.  At the White House, insiders saw someone different, a knowledgeable leader who exuded integrity, forged healthy relations with Congress, and charted a solid course for economic recovery.  The administration must get that image across, Lynn thought, and let Americans see the Gerald Ford the staffers knew.  He decided to bait the president.  He knew that Ford admired and identified with Harry Truman, and the parallels were clear:  a fellow Midwesterner, Truman was also thrust into the White House unexpectedly and suffered a public approval swoon—one far worse than Ford’s—yet Americans later appreciated him for his common sense and decency.  One day, as Lynn left the Oval Office after reviewing the 1977 fiscal year budget, he turned and asked Ford if he knew that Truman was the last president to give his own budget briefing.  No, Ford responded, but Lynn’s question had the intended effect.  The next time they met, Ford asked, “Would you mind if I gave the budget briefing myself?”

What followed was a singular act.  In January 1976, at a large State Department auditorium, Ford faced reporters to unveil the 1977 federal budget.  Lynn and other administration members sat near the president, but he never relied on them for help.  Instead, he spoke for more than an hour, displaying intricate knowledge of the budget and federal agencies and answering reporters’ questions with a specificity that awed Cabinet officers.  After it was over, Lynn took the presidential limousine with Ford back to the White House.  “How did I do?” Ford asked.  “I’d give you an A+,” Lynn replied.  “Ford was just beaming,” Lynn remembered.

Ford lost the 1976 election, and with that vanished any chance to achieve his grand goal of a balanced federal budget.  Over the years, Lynn reflected that with the right mix of vetoes and spending cuts, Ford might have balanced the budget by 1980.  But the spending cuts would have been draconian, and Lynn frowned upon the lofty promises of later presidents.  In 1988, George H. W. Bush accepted the Republican presidential nomination and uttered the fateful words, “Read my lips:  no new taxes.”  Watching the speech on television, Lynn turned to his wife Joan and declared, “He’ll be a one-term president.”  The pledge, Lynn predicted, was political poison; Bush would have to raise taxes to tame the deficit, and conservatives would never forgive him for breaking that promise.

By that time, Lynn had returned to the private sector.  Upon leaving the White House, he rejoined the Jones Day law firm, and in 1984 he became chief executive officer of Aetna, the nation’s third-largest insurance corporation.  The same qualities that made Lynn a popular, well-respected government official endeared him to Aetna colleagues.  Peter J. Connell, an Aetna vice president, recounted an incident that became legendary at the corporation.  One evening, as Lynn left work late, he walked down a lonely corridor and encountered a custodian mopping the floors.  Lynn introduced himself and told the man how much he appreciated his work.  The conversation and the compliment, recalled Connell, reflected Lynn’s respect for his colleagues, whether they were U.S. presidents or part of the night cleaning crew.

During his Washington years, Newsweek magazine noted how “nice” Lynn was.  He engaged in easy banter, warmed to people easily, and peppered conversations with informal remarks like “You betcha.”  He was, above all, kind and helpful.  The most common question Lynn asked was “What can I do for you?”

Lynn had another salient quality—tenacity, a mental toughness that allowed him to remain focused on tasks and survive at high-ranking positions in the executive branch.  That virtue became especially important during the Nixon presidency’s waning days, when Lynn concentrated on running HUD regardless of Nixon’s fate.  His tenacity allowed him to become a valuable figure in the new administration, serving during all 895 days of the Ford presidency.  In the end, only two men—James Lynn and Henry Kissinger—survived at top-level posts spanning the eight years of the Nixon and Ford eras.  When Ford prepared to turn the White House over to Jimmy Carter, his Cabinet officers presented him with a gift, a model Cabinet table with officers’ names inscribed at the places where they sat.  At the gift ceremony, Kissinger spotted Lynn across the room and motioned for him to come over.  The secretary of state raised his wine glass and, in his deep, thickly accented voice, offered a toast:  “To the survivors.”

Lynn was also a friend of history.  Although he never wrote a memoir of his White House work, he made himself accessible to historians, donating his papers to the Gerald R. Ford Library and generously granting interviews in which he shared memories of Presidents Nixon and Ford.  In so doing, he embodied the accessibility and transparency of an open democracy.  Historians have benefited, and so did the government.  Washington needs more survivors like James Lynn.