 Haig was the second of three career military officers to become secretary of state (George C. Marshall and Colin Powell were the others).His speeches in this role in particular led to the coining of the neologism "Haigspeak," described in "a dictionary of neologisms" as "Language characterized by pompous obscurity resulting from redundancy, the semantically strained use of words, and verbosity," leading Ambassador Nicko Henderson to offer a prize for the best rendering of the Gettysburg address in Haigspeak.On December 11, 1980, president-elect Reagan was prepared to publicly announce nearly
all of his candidates for the most important cabinet-level posts.