WASHINGTON (The The Baltimore Sun) - Every November for three decades, former Ford administration aides gathered at an exclusive club just down the street from the White House to reminisce over lunch, make speeches and snap pictures.

But when President George W. Bush took office, the venue changed.

The Ford advisers had assumed key positions in the new administration, including the vice presidency. And their new meeting spots inside Washington's highest corridors of power reflected a surprising legacy of Gerald R. Ford's presidency: A deep impact on the actions of the current White House.

Vice President Dick Cheney, a former Ford chief of staff, led the influx of Ford veterans into George W. Bush's administration. Others joining him included Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was secretary of Defense until recently, and Paul O'Neill and John Snow, who were Treasury secretaries.

Friendships forged as young men in the Ford administration helped them get their way as senior policy makers under President Bush. Experiences leading the country after Watergate shaped their moves in the current White House.

Cheney, in particular, has tried to reassert the authority of an executive branch whose powers he believes were unjustly diminished after Watergate and when Ford became president.

Measures enacted during the Ford administration "served to erode the authority I think the president needs to be effective," Cheney said in November 2005. "To some extent now, we've been able to restore the legitimate authority of the presidency."

Early in the Bush presidency, Cheney successfully fought Congressional efforts to learn about a secret energy task force he led. And after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the White House asserted broad powers to designate fighters as "enemy combatants" and eavesdrop without warrants on Americans.

All were designed to enhance the power of an executive branch weakened by Watergate.

After President Nixon's resignation, the White House was under attack. Fresh memories of Watergate had emboldened Congress to challenge the president, while the end of the Vietnam War meant there was no immediate foreign policy crisis Ford could invoke to strengthen the executive.

"There is almost nothing in American history that compares with Watergate and the major impact it had on people at that time," said Donald A. Ritchie, a Senate historian.

A Democrat-controlled Congress wanted to reassert itself, even calling on Ford to testify about his decision to pardon Nixon. On its heels, the White House desperately tried to protect its prerogatives. Ford vetoed 48 bills during his two years in office, almost double the number that Richard M. Nixon had vetoed during six years as president.

"Congress reasserted its authority in very dramatic ways at that time, and the people in the Ford administration felt hampered by that, and have been determined ever since to get it back," said Andrew Rudalevige, a Dickinson College specialist on presidential powers.

The bruising battles impacted Cheney and other Ford aides. Cheney "has a sort of left-over grudge against Congress from those days," said Rudalevige.