Robert T. Hartmann Papers, (1884) 1930-1981

The Ford Library has two Robert Hartmann collections - the Hartmann Files and the Hartmann Papers.  The Hartmann Papers consist of historical materials from throughout his career that the Ford Library received in 1992.  Described below under separate headings are Hartmann's career, the scope and contents of the collection, and related materials in the Ford Library.

 Hartmann's Career

Although born in South Dakota, Hartmann spent most of his early years in southern California, graduating from Beverly Hills High School and Stanford University.  After his college graduation in 1938, he took an extended trip to Japan, Manchuria, and Korea, returning via Europe.  He then took a job with the Los Angeles Times.  During World War II, he served in the Pacific in Navy public relations and press censor posts.  Returning to the Times after the war, he worked for many years as a reporter, editorial and special writer, and bureau chief in Washington and Rome.  In 1951, he spent a year reporting from the Middle East as the recipient of an Ogden Reid fellowship.  After leaving the Times in 1964, he spent a brief stint as a public affairs officer for the United National Food and Agriculture Organization.

During Hartmann's newspaper career, he developed friendships with Richard Nixon and other California Republican leaders.  His media expertise and these political connections assisted him in obtaining a position as an editor and public relations consultant for the Republican Conference of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1966.  In this position, he advised the House Republican leaders on media strategies, coordinated research projects on the Johnson administration, edited publications, and drafted some speeches.

When Melvin Laird, chairman of the House Republican Conference, left Congress in 1969 to become Secretary of Defense, Hartmann joined the personal staff of Minority Leader Gerald Ford.  Hartmann and Ford were close in age, had served in the Navy during World War II, had ties to Richard Nixon, and had similar beliefs on policy issues.  Over time, Hartmann assisted Ford in his efforts to improve his speech delivery and media contacts.  Ford also came to appreciate Hartmann's candid and unvarnished advice on political and policy matters.  In addition to his continued writing and political duties, Hartmann took on new duties in the area of liaison with the Nixon White House.

After President Nixon nominated Gerald Ford to be Vice President on October 12, 1973, Hartmann coordinated Ford's preparations for the confirmation hearings on the nomination.  He then became Vice President Ford's chief of staff.  It soon became obvious that the burden of administrative matters -- hiring staff, finding office space, etc. -- kept Hartmann from devoting sufficient time to speeches, political liaison, and advising the Vice President.  Ford solved this problem by hiring L. William Seidman as an assistant for administration.

When Gerald Ford succeeded to the presidency on August 9, 1974, he quickly named Hartmann as Counsellor to the President, with Cabinet status.  In this position, one of Hartmann's main responsibilities was supervision of the Editorial Staff in the preparation of presidential speeches, statements, messages, and correspondence.  He also handled White House liaison with Republican Party organizations and advised President Ford on a wide variety of matters that went beyond his formal duties.

In the early months of the Ford administration, Hartmann continued to draft a number of President Ford's speeches, as he had done for several years, but as time passed he worked on fewer speeches (except for major addresses) and concentrated on his other duties.  Although Paul Theis and then Robert Orben headed the day-to-day work of the Office of Editorial Staff, Hartmann often edited material prepared by that office.

Hartmann was also responsible for White House liaison with the Republican Party and various Republican organizations.  Gwen Anderson and John Calkins assisted Hartmann in this work.  Although Hartmann worked with Republican organizations throughout the administration, White House Chief of Staff Richard Cheney's office handled liaison with the President's campaign organization, the President Ford Committee.  One of Hartmann's key contributions to the campaign was the drafting of President Ford's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention.

In his role as an adviser to the President, Hartmann spent considerable time conferring in the Oval Office, attending Cabinet and other meetings, and reading for input or editing copies of White House staff and federal agency memoranda before they were submitted to the President.  Hartmann often clashed with other White House staff members and administration officials, especially Nixon administration holdovers whom he suspected of working in their own self-interest rather than the President's.  Although some administration officials found Hartmann hard to deal with or were jealous of his close relationship to the President, Ford remained loyal to his long-time aide and friend.

After the end of the Ford administration, Hartmann devoted himself to the drafting of his memoir Palace Politics:  An Inside Account of the Ford Years, which was published in 1980.  He also continued to assist former President Ford with major speeches.

Scope and Content of the Materials
The first two series in this collection concern Hartmann's early life and his newspaper career.  While they provide detailed documentation on some periods and some aspects of his life, there are several gaps.  For instance, the collection contains only scattered items from the years 1939-54.  Extensive materials appear on his relationship with his parents and other family members (boxes 2-9); his college days at Stanford University (Boxes 2-3 and 19-20); a 1938 trip to Japan, Manchuria, and Europe (Boxes 3-4 and 11-14); and his work as a Los Angeles Times bureau chief (Boxes 5-7 and 21-34).  Only a single box documents his brief service on the staff of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and much of that concerns his search for a different job.

More than one third of the collection consists of a significant set of files concerning Hartmann's work for the Republican leaders of the House of Representatives.  Materials from his service on the staff of the Republican Conference (1966-68) include research files on issues and the activities of the Johnson Administration, transcripts of the joint press conferences of the Republican leaders of Congress (Boxes 50 and 51), liaison with Republican Party organizations (Boxes 83-96), and information on the drafting of Republican responses to President Johnson's State of the Union addresses (Boxes 96-97).

With the inauguration of a Republican President in 1969, Hartmann's role shifted to liaison with the White House.  Documentation on his new role includes case files on weekly liaison meetings of the Republican leaders of Congress with President Nixon and his staff (Boxes 106-107) and files on legislation introduced by the Nixon administration.  The collection also contains extensive documentation on the 1972 delegation to China headed by Gerald Ford and Hale Boggs, including transcripts of their discussions with Chinese leaders and their reports to President Nixon and the House of Representatives (Boxes 41-44).  Although Hartmann assisted Representative Ford in the attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas during 1969 and 1970, little of significance on that issue appears in this collection.

The Hartmann Papers contain only a small fragmentary subject file dating from Gerald Ford's brief service as Vice President.  The material is uneven in quality - much is routine in nature or duplicates information found elsewhere in the Library's holdings.

The extensive files from the Ford presidency are divided into a subject file and a speech file.  While there is some duplication between these materials and the documents in the Robert Hartmann Files, there is also much that is unique.  Included are notes from the President to Hartmann and Hartmann's notes on various meetings.

The subject file reflects the broad range of Hartmann's duties and interests, including such topics as the organization and operation of the Editorial Office, selection of a new vice president in 1974, the 1976 presidential campaign, liaison with national and state Republican Party leadership, and public opinion polling.

Hartmann's case files on presidential speeches and statements contain significant files on Ford's three State of the Union addresses, including handwritten instructions from the President to Hartmann on the drafting of the 1976 address.  Other large case files include those for the major speeches celebrating the Bicentennial of American independence, the Republican Convention acceptance speech, and various addresses to Congress.  Smaller, but often significant, amounts of material appear for other speeches.

Documents from the post-White House years consist mainly of drafts and research materials for Hartmann's memoir Palace Politics, although some information on speeches drafted for Gerald Ford also appears.

Related Materials (November 2004):
This collection includes much material that Hartmann took from his office at the end of the Ford administration, along with such items as early family papers, correspondence from his newspaper career, and drafts of his memoirs.  Hartmann originally donated this collection to the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.  The collection remained at the Hoover Institution until August 1992, when it was transferred to the Ford Library at Hartmann's request.

In addition to the papers which Hartmann took home in 1977, he left behind in the White House a large collection of files covering the entire period of his work for Gerald Ford.  Those materials came directly to the Ford Library as part of President Ford's donation and currently comprise the Hartmann Files (part of the White House Staff Files) and the Hartmann series in the Ford Congressional and Vice Presidential Papers.  The documents in these collections are closely related to, and sometimes duplicate, those in the appropriate series of the Hartmann Papers.

Additional related materials from the White House years include the files produced by the staff members of the Editorial Office, which Hartmann supervised, and the files of his political aides Gwen Anderson and John Calkins.

January 1994 Accretion

In January 1994, Robert Hartmann delivered to the Ford Library approximately 10 cubic feet of additional papers comparable in scope and nature to the papers described above.  These new papers are not available to research, pending completion of a deed of gift for them and subsequent archival processing.