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June 22, 1997 contents

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The room at the top - continued

Policies were debated vehemently and endlessly in front of the president by aides who, by design, represented different sides and groups along the political spectrum. Meetings ran amok. The presidential schedule became nothing more than a sheet of paper that bore minimal relation to Clinton's actual day. The result: chaos, which led to bad decisions, which many blame, at least in part, for the historic 1994 elections that saw the Democrats lose their ruling majorities in both chambers of Congress.

The problem was not unique to Clinton. Scholars say that Democratic presidents historically have more trouble limiting access to the Oval Office than their Republican counterparts do. ``The difficulty with Democrats is they have a tendency for inclusion, and generally there is a representative imperative running through their selection of top advisers,'' says Colin Campbell, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University and author of Managing the Presidency. ``Not only do you have more people getting access to the president, but their views are likely to be discordant. You are likely to have a cacophony of advice, and a confusion of issues rather than a clarification.''

Finally, in late June of 1994, Clinton summoned the press to the Oval Office and announced that he was replacing his lifelong friend Thomas F. ``Mack'' McLarty III, a man dubbed Mack the Nice by White House subordinates, with Leon Panetta, a former congressman and the president's budget director.

Panetta quickly found the roots of many of the administration's problems. He asked for a hierarchy chart - who answers to whom - and was told it didn't exist. That changed. Next, he asked who typically had access to the president. Better had he asked who didn't, and that changed, too.

``You had people off the campaign who don't have the background or discipline,'' says Panetta, looking back over his early days as chief of staff. ``You have a lot of young people without discipline. People had an issue, they walked into the Oval Office. There were a lot of generalists without specific assignments but [who] were advisers on everything.''

The Oval Office door was slammed shut. No one, not Stephanopoulos, not even friends from Hope or Hollywood, could enter without Panetta's permission. Aides were told to refine their briefings for the president and were often ordered to practice them before Panetta first. It was a shock for most people in the White House, the president most likely included, and it was a success. The flow of the president's day changed dramatically. Panetta often met him in his private residence shortly before 9 a.m., to brief him as the president pulled on his pants, and from there they were off at a rapid clip.

These days, Panetta has returned to his native California, replaced by Erskine Bowles, a North Carolina investment banker who preached the gospel of management structure and accountability when his appointment was announced by Clinton last November. Unlike Panetta, Bowles has a tendency to delegate authority more widely and easily around the White House and the Old Executive Office Building, ``reempowering the policy shops,'' in his words.

Like Panetta, Bowles has kept the Oval Office doors tightly closed to anyone who fails to get his permission to enter. Perhaps most important, he has continued and even enhanced a policy launched by Panetta, one that past Republican presidents like Nixon and Reagan practiced as if it were a religion: unscheduled time. Every day, usually in the late afternoon, Clinton is given a block of time in the Oval Office, without interruption, to do whatever he pleases, whether it is to call friends or summon advisers, read, or sit at his desk and try to draw the proverbial big picture.

``He has about three or four hours a day that are relatively unstructured, when he can think or reflect,'' says Bowles, sitting in his own office on the other side of the West Wing. ``It's hard to plan for the future if you're just putting out fires all day.''

Scheduling has been a fine line for almost all presidents. Gerald Ford, who entered the Oval Office in 1974 following the Watergate crisis, believed at first that he should remain accessible to virtually any member of his administration who wanted to see him. Within a few months, he realized that was impossible, and most of his information was filtered through his two highest aides.

``People tended to linger beyond their allocated time, and pretty soon the day got all screwed up,'' Ford says. ``I was part of the problem. I liked to talk to people.''

Perhaps no president in post-World War II America has been as successful at managing the Oval Office as Ronald Reagan in his first term, when he established an unorthodox triad of top and equal advisers who were allowed unobstructed access. Under that strategy, the three different advisers, James Baker, Edwin Meese, and Michael Deaver, served as hubs of information for the president, reaching out like spokes to other people in the White House. It allowed Reagan to get a vast amount of advice interpreted, disseminated, and delivered by a few choice advisers.

Perhaps the least successful Oval Office management strategy was also followed by Reagan, this time in his second term, when chief of staff Donald Regan, who arrived in Washington from Merrill Lynch on Wall Street, blocked the flow of information to the Oval Office and made the president appear distant, even out of touch with his White House and the country. His was called a linear management approach, and scholars say it does not work in government.

Lyndon Johnson may have had the most unusual management style. He had no chief of staff, despised being alone, and invited all senior aides to the Oval Office for a free-wheeling, free-flowing discussion of policy. ``There were seven or eight advisers who had regular access,'' says George Christian. ``He said that if there were more than two people in his office seeing him about something, I should come in. He said if he didn't want me there, he'd throw me out.''

Johnson also had an unorthodox workday. Because of doctors' orders related to his heart condition, he remained in bed until after 9:30 each morning, but had a stream of advisers over to provide bedside briefings. Late afternoon brought his daily nap, also a part of his doctors' orders. By 5 p.m. or so, he had showered and shaved again and returned to the Oval Office for what amounted to a second day of work.

Carter was hampered by his desire to be a part of every White House decision, large and small. Clinton was like that early on. Now, Bowles says flatly, ``All of the decisions that go into the Oval Office are big decisions. My job is to make sure the small ones are made in the right places.'' Spoken like a true Republican, at least in terms of Oval Office management. Republican presidents have tended to have stronger chiefs of staff limiting access to the office. Nixon had Bob Haldeman; Bush had Sununu.

``You try to maintain as much access as you can, while giving the president as much time to work on the issues he has to work on,'' Sununu says. ``It is a never-ending competition. Everyone on the hill is always looking to create an Oval Office photo opportunity. Every Cabinet officer is looking for a private Oval Office meeting with the president. Every old high school buddy wants to come in.''

And Republican presidents have tended to carve out more free time in their schedule to think rather than react, something Clinton's staff has tried to replicate. Nixon had what was called ``staff time.'' Bush tried to maintain some free time each day, but with mixed success. Reagan received an hour a day, probably his favorite hour, aides say. ``You did not bother him,'' recalls Fitzwater. ``It was sacred. The important thing was not what he did, but that it was his to decide what he did. It was the only period of the day when someone wasn't telling him what to do. He was in the Oval Office, at his desk. If he wanted to see people, that was fine.''

Reagan, Fitzwater says, was the consummate president, on the job and off, born to the part, linked with the office forever. On the morning that Reagan left the White House in January 1989, he stopped by the Oval Office for a final visit before attending Bush's inauguration. The way Fitzwater tells the story, when Reagan walked under the portico from the White House mansion, he found the West Wing barren. All his aides had been ordered out to make way for the new regime.

Overnight, the office had been stripped of all Reagan's chosen paintings and western sculptures. All the lights were off, and the wan January sun cast a yellow hue as it filtered through the bulletproof glass. Reagan sat at his desk for a moment, then walked around it to read a plaque on the front. He roamed the room, touching the walls with his outstretched fingers, letting his hands slip pointlessly across the furniture. Walking out the French doors, he paused and turned and gave the office a slow, silent two finger salute. With that, he walked away.