Philmont roots: GOP leaders and Boy Scouts’ ranch
Many Republicans have trekked NM’s wilderness
Arugged piece of northern New Mexico wilderness provides a connection between Presidentelect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state and other highprofile members of past Republican administrations.
Think “Do a good turn daily” and “Be prepared” and you’re on the right track.
Trump nominee and Exxon Mobil head Rex Tillerson, along with former Secretary of State Robert Gates — who recommended Tillerson to Trump for the job — and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld all tramped hills and trails as Boy Scouts at the Philmont Scout Ranch near Cimarron in Colfax County.
Tillerson and Gates are also former national presidents of the Boy Scouts of America — Tillerson from 2010-12 and Gates from 2014-16. Those two and Rumsfeld all have received the Boy Scouts’ national “Silver Buffalo” award for outstanding service to youth.
Rumsfeld, 84, first discovered New Mexico when he served at Philmont as a scout ranger or guide in the late 1940s. He later bought several properties in Taos and has a home there.
Gates, 73, was head of the CIA in the 1990s and served as Secretary of Defense from 2006 to 2011, serving under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. He and Tillerson, 64, are friends and both were Eagle Scouts back in the day.
Trump decided on Tillerson as his nominee for Secretary of State after “being prodded” by Gates and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, according to the Wall Street Journal. Exxon Mobil is a client of a international consulting firm run by Gates and Rice.
“Gates said Exxon is only ‘one of many clients of ours’ and that he recommended Tillerson because of a personal relationship rooted in leadership roles they both held in the Boy Scouts of America,” the newspaper reported.
In a blog titled “Walk the Walk with Bob Mazucca,” a Boy Scout executive from when Tillerson was president of the organization, Mazucca writes about “walking backcountry camps at Philmont Scout Ranch” with Tillerson.
A request for comment from Philmont on Tillerson’s time there resulted in a statement from the Boy Scouts that said Tillerman’s service includes “upholding the long-standing traditions of character and good citizenship that are essential to Scouting’s mission.”
Gates visited Philmont as a teenager. “When he was thirteen, Gates went to the Boy Scouts’ National Junior Leader Training Program at Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico,” says a 2014 Esquire magazine article.
“‘It was the only formal management course I’ve ever had in my life,’ he says. ‘Can you imagine a better experience for learning leadership? Being thirteen years old and figuring out how to get a bunch of kids your own age to do what you want them to do and what they may not necessarily want to do, and do it willingly,’” the article said.
It’s fitting that Tillerson, as head of a huge energy company that is the sixth largest in the world in revenue, would have camped at Philmont.
Another leader in the oil business, Waite Phillips of Oklahoma, acquired a 300,000-acre northern New Mexico ranch in 1922, and in 1938 he offered more than 35,000 acres to the Boy Scouts to create Philmont. Phillips eventually donated a total of more than 127,000 of the 140,000 acres of the current scout ranch.
Tillerson, because of Exxon’s operations in Russia and his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, is expected to face harsh scrutiny during Senate confirmation hearings. He’s also catching flak from the religious right because under his leadership, the Boy Scouts embraced allowing boys identifying as gay to become members.
Unreciprocated love
Rumsfeld’s love affair with northern New Mexico that started at Philmont was not wholly reciprocated. A 2007 Journal North article by Polly Summar recounts when Rumsfeld, in the midst of the war in Iraq, was burned in effigy in Taos and was refused service when he ordered hot chocolate at a local business there, until another server stepped in.
Despite the acrimony, Rumsfeld’s residency in Taos was said to have attracted his close friend Martin R. Hoffman to buy a home there in the early 1990s. Hoffman, who died in 2014, was Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford.
Trump’s prospective cabinet is in fact well populated with Eagle Scouts — former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, Trump’s picks for Energy secretary and attorney general, respectively, also earned the honor, and Perry has been given the national “Distinguished Eagle Scout” service award. No word on whether either Perry or Sessions ever made it to Philmont.
Scouts too ‘neat?’
Former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich apparently hasn’t always appreciated the character-forming traits that Trumps’ assorted nominees assign to their Boy Scout backgrounds.
“I think one of the problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” Gingrich said in a 1978 speech to college students. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words which would be great around a campfire but are lousy in politics.”
But Gingrich later made amends for that oft-cited quote. He endorsed a 2014 book by Perry called “On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For,” saying the book “examines the left’s attacks on a venerable American institution that has had a profound impact on the values and virtues of young Americans.” (Perry mentions Philmont in his book but doesn’t say if he went there.)
The Gingrich Foundation also selected the Boy Scouts as its “Charity of the Month” in 2011. “Newt and I encourage all Americans to support the valuable work they do in helping to develop our next generation of leaders,” wife Callista Gingrich said then.
If history holds, it’s a good bet that some of that next generation of leaders will spend time around a campfire at Philmont. (National political prognosticators, take note: There’s a photo of Republican Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry at the ranch in 1977).
Whether those new leaders will be, in Gringrich’s words, “neat, obedient, loyal and faithful” is, of course, a question for another, future time.