Heritage Foundation Leadership for America

Chapter II:
Running the White House

"[It's] important to establish rules regarding discipline, behavior, and access to the President, to briefings,
to events, to Air Force One."

--Leon Panetta

Early in his term, a new President must make a series of important decisions, including designating his principal aides and determining the structure of his administration that includes the 400 to 500 members of the White House staff as well as 1,200 to 1,300 staff members housed in the Executive Office of the President.

Usually the most important decision a President-elect will make is his choice of Chief of Staff, a position of recent vintage, to oversee this large organization. In practice, the Presidents have tried different organizational structures to run the White House effectively. These different structures offer lessons to any new President.

The nation's earliest Presidents managed with one or two assistants, chiefly to handle correspondence. Presidents conducted their own negotiations with Congress and directed government business through the Cabinet. Presidential assistants, few as they were, stayed in the background.

For the last half century, however, almost every President has designated one principal adviser to organize and supervise the rest of the White House staff. The need for such a post arose from the increase in size of the President's staff and the bureaucracies that emerged as institutional appendages to it the middle of the 20th century. While some Presidents tried to manage without a chief of staff, all found it necessary to designate a trusted person to oversee the President's schedule; direct the flow of paperwork, information, and people to and from the Oval Office; provide the President with multiple policy options; present the President and his message in the best possible light; adjudicate budgetary and turf disputes between Cabinet officers; and "take the heat" for unpopular decisions.

The more recent Presidents all appointed a chief of staff, although the appointees varied greatly in style and in the authority they wielded. Students of the presidency regard the methods of operation adopted by Ronald Reagan during his first term and Bill Clinton from July 1994 through January 1997 as those most conducive to achieving a President's goals.

The systems used by Reagan and Clinton differ in one important respect. Reagan, in his first term, chose a "troika" of three trusted advisers to be at the helm of his White House operation: James A. Baker, Edwin Meese, and Michael Deaver. Clinton chose Leon Panetta, a strong but widely respected chief of staff reminiscent of Ford's choice of Richard Cheney.

Although the duties of Reagan's principal aides varied, with Meese responsible for policy, Deaver for the President's image, and Baker for paper flow, scheduling, and personnel, Baker was in many ways a traditional chief of staff. And although Panetta's primacy in Clinton's White House was apparent, he depended heavily on two deputies: Clinton loyalists Harold Ickes and Erskine Bowles.

Academic and political observers credit the success of the Reagan and Clinton presidencies, particularly during the Baker-Meese-Deaver period and the Panetta era, to how Reagan and Clinton chose to organize White House operations.

THE CHANGING NATURE OF THE PRESIDENCY

It was once customary for political science texts to describe the American President as the wearer of many "hats": chief executive, commander in chief, chief legislator, chief diplomat, head of state, leader of his party. Recent studies sometimes add manager of the economy. Yet Presidents do not wear one hat at a time; they often have to wear several simultaneously. In the past 50 years, the increase in the powers of the federal government and the centralization of policy development within the presidency have stretched the size of these hats. Furthermore, changes in technology, society, and the economy have added new responsibilities to the presidency.

As former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta observes, the demands on the presidency today are enormous and often contradictory.

The President [today] is not only commander in chief. He is also the chief negotiator, ambassador, and diplomat to the world. He is the primary policymaker that can have an impact on issues from the economy to budget to health care to other domestic areas. He is clearly the key spokesperson not only for his administration, but for the nation as well, in charge of a modern bully pulpit that has increased its impact with the expansion of television, the Internet, and all of the other high tech communications networks that are so much part of our society.

He is head of the political party. And our demands are that he raise huge amounts of money, not only for himself, but also for the party and for members and candidates of that party. He is largely in charge of relations with the leadership and members of the Congress. He has to often deal with the members of both the Senate and the House.

He has to be the national chaplain. He has to calm and console and often care for the victims of crises and disasters. He is the host to countless visiting dignitaries and officials and friends and visitors to the White House. He is the leader of an administration and responsible for what goes on in the various Cabinet departments and agencies in the federal government. He is husband. He is father. He's America's first citizen and the constant focus of rumor and scandal and jokes and tabloid stories and political attacks. Other than that, it's not a bad job.

The many roles performed by today's President, Panetta explains, have changed the nature of the presidency and the White House support system needed to staff the presidency:

The role of the staff has gone from being largely a liaison or conduit to the Cabinet and to other officials to being now a central policy coordinator and indeed, policymaker. In a very fast-moving world in the presidency, proximity is power. And if that's the case--and I believe it is--then obviously staff in the closest proximity to the President can have the greatest degree of power in influencing the decisions of that President.

Still, the new President can put his own stamp on the structure of the White House, and he can choose how he interacts with the Cabinet and the White House staff. Reagan Counsel Edwin Meese points out from his experiences that the new President has complete authority to decide how to organize and staff the White House. He starts with a clean slate:

How the White House runs is, to a great extent, a reflection of the personality and the style of each President. It reflects in many ways the political interests and also the policy objectives of the President. For example, when President Reagan's Administration came into office, we found that the Carter Administration had several positions and several units that were different from those which followed in our Administration. This had to do with the particular objectives and interests of the respective Presidents.

In one sense, each President and his staff, when they take the White House over, come in and start from scratch. I remember arriving on the afternoon of the 20th of January 1981, after the big parade and all the ceremonies were over. I found desk drawers absolutely empty--I think there was one paper clip--and filing cabinets with no documents in them.

On the other hand, notes George Mason University Professor of Government James Pfiffner, there may be less to this freedom than there first appears:

The President of the 21st century is no longer free to do some of the things that early Presidents could do. Whoever takes office in 2001 is not free to do a number of things. He or she is not free to have a leisurely transition. He or she is not free to implement Cabinet government.

It is not possible to run the administration without an assertive White House staff and, I would argue, not possible to run the White House without a chief of staff. It's not possible to choose personally most of the people who will be appointed in the administration. It's not possible to present a broad and varied policy agenda to Congress. At least, if a President ignores these lessons of recent presidencies there are going to be significant problems.

A new President may also find it difficult to focus on the task of building the staff that will be closest to him on a daily basis. As Brookings Institution scholar Stephen Hess points out:

[Presidents] have to be concerned with the rate of inflation, with the rate of employment, with whether we are at war or peace. All of these things change over time and his needs change in that regard, too. The problem in part is that Presidents don't particularly think about [the White House structure]. They have much more important things to think about than organization and personnel. They start in a transition, in the period between their election and their inauguration, and they are overwhelmed with questions of personnel. They design an organizational chart and they never again think about it as intensely as they do early on (unless something quite dysfunctional happens, as I think happened in the early Clinton Administration for a variety of reasons).

They look on it as almost a butterfly that you can pin to a corkboard--you can come back and look at it and see its beauty and it's always the same.

THE ROLE OF THE CABINET

While centralization of power and policy development are likely to remain in the White House, Cabinet departments and agencies continue to have the expertise, institutional memory, and skills necessary to implement them. They also are required by statute to discharge certain functions. Unlike White House aides, those who carry out these line functions are accountable to Congress and the public. Some Presidents have stumbled when they, or those with whom they had entrusted power, forgot this delineation of authority.

Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan took special steps to see that their cabinets and the White House functioned as a team, with all the players knowing their proper roles. Eisenhower would assemble everyone who had an interest in or responsibility for a certain area. Each attendee would then air before him the options available and their special "take" on a subject. Eisenhower would then decide the matter and rely on the White House staff to follow up to ensure that his wishes were carried out.

Reagan tried to meet a similar objective by meeting with smaller groups designated as "Cabinet Councils." (See Chapter 4.) He would occasionally meet with lower level officials to keep them apprised of administration policy. All of these efforts helped ensure that presidential appointees carried out the President's objectives rather than those of the departments or constituent groups. They also helped ensure that professionals implemented decisions.

Whenever there is a change of party in the presidency, incoming administrations assume the civil service will resist the new administration's initiatives. But administration veterans from both parties affirm that the professional service can be responsive to the President's policies if the relationship is carefully developed. Like political appointees, the professional service also needs to be apprised early of the President's objectives.

As Edwin Meese explains, Reagan believed that building a team based on the Cabinet was critically important to carrying out his mission:

One of the things that President Reagan was very strong on, right from the start, was the involvement of the Cabinet and having the Cabinet as the principal forum for decisionmaking. He had developed that idea of the Cabinet in California during his governorship, and he carried it over into the White House.

He was cognizant of the role that Henry Kissinger had played, for example, in the Nixon Administration, where in a sense he overshadowed the Secretary of State when he was the national security assistant. To some extent, Zbigniew Brzezinski had had a similar role under Carter. And there was a concern that the Cabinet not be in any way overshadowed by the White House staff and that the White House staff be seen in a subordinate role.

Meese also says that the direct involvement of the President was a key to achieving the right chemistry:

When the President was in town, it was not at all unusual for him to participate in four to six Cabinet events every week. There would normally be a full Cabinet meeting at least once a week. He would then have Cabinet Council meetings, usually one or two of the councils related to domestic matters, and then two or three times a week with the National Security Council.

This meant that the Cabinet members had frequent contact with the President in a formal setting, but also informally before and after Cabinet meetings. They had the sense that they were in close touch with what was going on in the White House and particularly, that they had the opportunity to be with the President on a regular basis.

BUILDING A TEAM AROUND THE PRESIDENT

The Reagan team recognized that many items are not suitable for discussion by the Cabinet as a whole but are best handled through subgroups, or Cabinet Councils, based on key members of the Cabinet and key White House staff. As Meese explains:

[Reagan] created the Cabinet Councils, which was an innovation, although it was patterned after the one Cabinet Council that had been created by a statute in 1947: the National Security Council.

In the first term, President Reagan had eight Cabinet Councils: one for economic affairs, one for commerce and trade, another for agriculture and food policy. That was an interesting one. Why would a specific subject like that have a Cabinet Council all to itself? The reason was the grain embargo and the fact that agricultural policy pertained to both domestic and foreign policy. So it was deemed necessary, at least for a couple of years, to have that council.

Then there was the council on legal policy, a council on management administration, a council on the environment and natural resources, and one on human services. In the second term, those were collapsed into three Cabinet Councils, the Economic Policy Council, the Domestic Policy Council, and the National Security Council.

Furthermore, Meese notes, Reagan recognized that it was important for the President to reach beyond the Cabinet itself to build a strong and united team throughout his Administration.

An important part of managing the government is team-building. That is for the President to keep in touch, even though it's very difficult to do, with not just the Cabinet members but with the sub-Cabinet members, the undersecretaries, the deputy secretaries, the assistant secretaries, all of whom are his appointees and who feel at the start a great loyalty to the President. And one of the purposes of the White House staff is to maintain that loyalty throughout the presidency.

During our Administration, we held meetings several times a year in the Indian Treaty Room or in the auditorium of the Old Executive Office Building at which these sub-Cabinet officials would hear talks by the President or by other Cabinet members, and as a result, continuing to feel that they were part of a team.

REACHING OUT TO THE CIVIL SERVICE

Experience shows that it is also vitally important for the President to make his objectives clear to the permanent civil service, especially when there is a change of party. As Leon Panetta notes:

If someone from another party gets elected, there's going to be a natural suspicion and paranoia about the career service, as to whether or not they're really going to represent the ideals of the new presidency. They've served under another party. They've become ingrained with the other party's point of view on issues and priorities.

This requires the new President to embark on a form of diplomatic offensive with the civil service. There are three specific reasons for this, says Meese, although he admits that not all the senior officials in the Reagan team followed through with the strategy:

[First, a] President and his appointees, his Cabinet and subcabinet people, have to be clear in what their objectives are and provide that leadership so that the people in the career service know. Second, they have to provide actual leadership, knowing what their people are doing and being available for two-way conversation even when somebody says that's a dumb idea that was tried two administrations ago, and give respect to the civil service. And third, I think there are a lot of little things that people in government can do to show their respect for the career servants, like going to the award ceremonies that they have a couple of times a year. I was somewhat appalled that only two or three of us out of the Cabinet would attend those things on a regular basis, supporting the Federal Executive Institute by going out there to lecture occasionally, and doing those kinds of things to let them know that you believe that career service is important.

THE CRITICAL ROLE OF THE WHITE HOUSE STAFF

As the presidency plays an increasing role in policy development both within the executive branch and throughout the American political system, Presidents have come to rely on larger numbers of people to assist them. Presidents once conducted government affairs through Cabinet officers and handled legislative relations themselves. They relied on a handful of clerks to assist them with correspondence and other chores related to managing the President's official and private households.

In recent years, Presidents have had between 400 and 500 people on their personal staffs, and they oversee mini-bureaucracies numbering more than 1,000. Meese has observed that these presidential helpers usually fall into one of three categories: those who serve the President personally, those who develop policy or perform liaison or management functions, and those engaged in communications and other forms of "outreach."

In organizing the White House staff, Presidents have varied greatly in their style of operation. Some preferred loose structures, while others thought of themselves as the hub of a wheel with staff emanating from the center like spokes. Others prefer pyramid-like arrangements with the President at the top of a structured bureaucracy. Most experts agree, however, that in whatever direction a new President wishes to go, he must make this decision early--preferably even before he takes office.

The Executive Functions of White House Staff

Ed Meese says that there are three critical decisions that need to be made regarding the operations of the White House:

In determining the organization and structure of the White House and the reporting relationships, there are three critical decisions that a President has to make. One has to do with access--who will have immediate access to him and who will have what you might call deferred access, or have to have authorization through one of the other higher level staff members. A President's time--his time and energy--are probably the most valuable commodities that he has. They have to be guarded carefully or the President will be inundated with people, all of whom have great ideas of what he ought to do or how he ought to do it.

A second decision has to do with the paper flow and the approvals that are necessary. When someone calls a department of the government and says, "This is the White House calling," I've always felt the proper retort should be, "I don't speak to buildings." But nevertheless, when you say it's the White House calling, there is tremendous power behind those few words. So, it's important to establish a structure of paper flow and information flow, but also of authorization of who can say what or request what.

And third, the President has to make a decision in regard to the role of the Cabinet. How will the Cabinet relate to him and how will it relate to the White House staff?

A President can address these questions in various ways, depending on what he feels will work best for him. But whatever approach is used, says Leon Panetta, it is important to appoint the senior staff as soon as the President is elected:

That ought to be on a new President's schedule every bit as much as looking at a new Cabinet, because you need to have your personal team in place as you move forward. I would suggest the following: You need to have your chief of staff and your deputies if possible, because that's your key management operation in the White House. You need to have your key foreign policy team. The head of the NSC [National Security Council] is now largely responsible for coordinating all foreign policy issues with the State Department and the Defense Department playing their role. But make no mistake about it, the NSC Director is extremely important to the foreign policy development of the presidency.

The same thing is true with the economic team and the Directors of the NEC [National Economic Council] and the OMB [Office of Management and Budget]. Those individuals ought to be appointed. They can be appointed as part of the economic team, but they ought to be appointed early. The Domestic Policy Council is important to coordinate other Cabinet members who are put in place to deal with domestic issues. You also need the White House Counsel, because of the legal issues that can take place and will take place in any administration; the press secretary and communications director because of the communications responsibility; and the legislative director.

All of these key positions ought to be filled early so that when the President takes office, there is a team in place that can immediately respond to issues. There is a tendency to think that the honeymoon period of an administration will last for a long time and that there will always to be an opportunity to appoint this team. The reality is: If you are not establishing policy within the White House on Inauguration Day, if you are not taking the offensive within the White House, then others will. It's just the nature of this town.

The Size and Composition of the White House Staff

While making sure that the top positions are filled, the next President should ponder whether the number of White House staff in recent years has grown beyond the efficient level. As commentator Michael Barone notes, the White House was not always so large. Franklin D. Roosevelt won World War II with about a dozen staffers. But today, more than 1,000 people work within the Executive Office complex:

I often wondered as I walked by the White House to the Old Executive Office Building, or as I went into the West Wing: What are all those people doing? I'm not sure that there's not a great amount of staff doing memos to staff and staff initiating things mainly to interface with other staff. And that staff may also be in the Cabinet departments. It may be in Congress, where staff are constantly dreaming up bills.

I would recommend to the next administration that they at least think about whether or not they could function, at least initially, with somewhat less staff, and not take it as inevitable that you need the large number of people working there. Because once you get them in, you're not going to get rid of them. So you might at least start off with the leaner staff and see if you could do this.

... If you go look through the telephone books, there are deputies and subdeputies and assistants to the subdeputy. And in fact, the title profusion in this administration has really gotten baroque and wonderful. I suspect that there are a number of people in this administration, as there have been others, who can't remember their own title.

According to Pfiffner, the modern President has to assert his authority over a huge, sprawling government, and this accounts for the growth of the President's staff. He further notes that in the 1960s, there were about 250 people in the White House office structure. By the 1970s, there were 575 in the Nixon Administration, and today there are slightly over 400 people. The White House staff has grown so substantially, he says, because many things that used to be done outside of the White House are now done inside:

Most domestic policy used to be done in the departments and agencies. Now it's coordinated by the domestic policy staff in the White House. National security, which used to be handled by State, Defense, and the CIA, is now done by the National Security Council staff. Legal advice to the President used to given by the Attorney General and the Justice Department. Now there's a bunch of lawyers in the White House Counsel's office. Trade policy used to be done in State, Agriculture, Commerce, and so forth. Now the U.S. Trade Representative is in the Executive Office of the President.

Things that used to be done by political parties are now done inside the White House. Personnel recruitment used to be done by political parties. Now there's the Office of Presidential Personnel. Congressional coalition-building on the Hill used to be dominated by political parties and now the Office of Congressional Liaison does that. Interest group outreach used to be done by political parties. Now the Office of Public Liaison in the White House does it. Political tactics and strategy used to be much more influenced by the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, but are now in the Office of Political Affairs in the White House.

So the new President in 2001 cannot easily jettison any one of these offices, I think. And so I predict that probably it's going to be hard to cut back seriously on the White House staff.

A small but significant part of the growth during the Clinton Administration was due to the inclusion of political consultants in key meetings. This pattern worries former Clinton Chief of Staff Panetta:

I think because of the message part of the presidency, there will be a growing reliance on pollsters and consultants to help fashion that message. And that's true not just in the White House, that's true throughout the world. The reality is that both parties now rely heavily on consultants and pollsters to kind of develop their "message."

... There were times, frankly, when people like Dick Morris crossed that line, and I thought that is not something that should be taking place in the White House. Yes, you can check the pulse. Yes, check what's happening out there in terms of the polls. But when that line is crossed and suddenly the polls are telling you what kind of policies you want to implement--I say that not only in the White House, but on Capitol Hill too--I think that's dangerous, because people do not elect their representatives to follow the advice and consultation of what a pollster says ought to be the policy of this country. That, I think is a very dangerous trend. I think future Presidents are going to have to be very careful that they don't cross the line.

THE ROLE OF THE CHIEF OF STAFF

Modern Presidents appear to have accepted the notion that whatever their personal style of operation, they need to place a trusted aide in charge of White House operations. Even those who have felt that they did not need a chief of staff when they came into office appointed one. Imposing order on White House operations, overseeing the President's schedule, keeping track of the flow of people and paper to and from the Oval Office, negotiating on behalf of the President, and "taking the heat" for the President require a special type of individual.

Some chiefs of staff are remembered for the spectacular part they played in helping the President succeed in office. Others are known primarily for the unceremonious nature of their falls from grace. Surprisingly, Presidents often spend less time thinking about their choices for principal aides than they do for less important appointees they will seldom see after their confirmations. For reasons easily understandable, the chief of staff position and the people who have held it are attracting the attention of presidential scholars and journalists.

Leon Panetta sums up the role he played as Clinton's Chief of Staff in this way:

The chief of staff performs functions crucial to the President: integrating policy and information; organizing the White House; doling out office space, which of course is very contentious; guarding access to the President; making sure that there is no freelancing on the part of the White House staff. He is the presidential enforcer; takes heat for the President--as former Carter Chief of Staff Jack Watson said, he is the President's javelin catcher--and has the stature to settle disputes among Cabinet secretaries, which nobody else except for the President really can do.

James Pfiffner and most other analysts of the presidency argue that a chief of staff is essential today because the White House is such a large and complex organization, although it means that the President must give up some control. But Pfiffner adds a warning:

If a chief of staff takes a domineering approach to the office, there's going to be disaster. In my judgment, we've had four domineering chiefs of staff: Sherman Adams for Ike; H. R. Haldeman for Nixon; Don Regan for Reagan; and John Sununu for George Bush. Each of these chiefs of staff alienated the press. They alienated members of Congress. They often denigrated members of their own administration. Some of them had a reputation for a lack of civility. And each of them resigned in disgrace after doing serious harm to their Presidents.

So, the chief of staff is necessary, but that person, I would argue, should play a facilitating or a neutral broker type of role. [Examples include] Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Jack Watson, James Baker, Mac McLarty, Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles. The domineering approach is likely to lead to disaster.

The functions of a chief of staff, however, can take different forms. In the first Reagan term, key responsibilities were divided among three individuals. Ed Meese, as a member of this "troika," understood Reagan's logic:

The President came into office with some very clear objectives. He looked, at the outset, for a 180-day period, which happened to be the time between taking office on the 20th of January and the time that Congress normally leaves for recess in August. It was about a six-month period and he knew that in order to get his objectives accomplished, he had to get most of his program through in that period of time.

His objectives were basically threefold: to revitalize the economy; to rebuild our military capability; and to restore the United States' position of leadership in the world, particularly as it related to the Cold War. He organized his White House staff primarily based upon his experiences as governor, using a relatively structured system very similar to what President Eisenhower used.

Reagan's White House was shaped to carry out these specific objectives. And the work of developing the White House and its basic structure, as well as principles of operation, began during the transition. Among the first appointments he made, even before some of the Cabinet members, were the top three people in the White House staff.

We had what was called in the first term "the Troika," a name that was coined by the news media, but there were three of us who had the division of responsibilities on the top level of the White House staff. Mike Deaver had the responsibility for those things relating particularly to the President personally, things like scheduling and travel. Jim Baker, as Chief of Staff, had the responsibility for the administration of the White House and for the legislative, the press, and the communications responsibilities. I had the responsibility as counsellor to the President for policy development, the administration of the Cabinet, and the liaison with the executive branch.

Clinton chose the more traditional approach in designing the position. Under Panetta, the chief of staff had two deputies:

I established two deputy chiefs of staff. One was involved in political and in policy areas; that was Harold Ickes. The other was assigned to oversee largely the personnel operation in the White House, but also the scheduling operation, which is really significant in terms of setting the agenda for the President; that was Erskine Bowles and later Evelyn Lieberman.

The Chief of Staff's Daily Functions

Panetta says that the meetings and day-to-day functioning of the chief of staff, his deputies, and other senior staff is critical to the success of the White House:

There was a group of 14 or 15 key staff people that I met with at 7:30 each morning. Obviously, that included the chief of staff, myself. The chief of staff's responsibilities are those of not only overseeing the staff, the schedule, and operations of the White House, but also coordinating policy development.

Coordinating Policy Development
Panetta also explains the importance of carefully structured daily staff meetings to keep everyone focused in order to advance the President's strategy:

The primary purpose of that 7:30 a.m. meeting was to focus on a schedule, a summary of the schedule of events for the President that day; to discuss foreign policy issues that were taking place; to discuss economic issues; to discuss what was happening in the Congress; to discuss any legal issues that were coming up; and in addition to that, to focus on the event of the day for the presidency. In other words, the message of the day that the President wanted to get out in that particular event.

There was a second group of staff that we met with at 8:15. And the purpose of meeting with that second group was to ensure that they, too, were aware of the President's schedule and the events in each of the areas I discussed. They would report from their particular areas. That meeting included the following: the staff secretary, responsible for all of the documentation that flows through the White House; the Cabinet secretary, responsible for liaison to all of the Cabinet members; public liaison, an increasing role these days as the individual who is responsible for ensuring that every public interest group and every private key constituency is made aware of whatever decisions or events that are going to take place in the White House; intergovernmental liaison, which relates to the governors and all of the state and local officials; personnel and the various appointments that have to be made by the President; White House operations, the overall view of White House operations throughout the West Wing and the White House generally; the schedule and advance teams, another growing area because not only do you have to lay out the full schedule for the President, but you have to "advance" wherever that President goes; the Council on Environmental Quality; the National Science Advisor; the Office of National Drug Control Policy; the Military Office; what we call Walkout, which is a basic communications setup for the President wherever he goes; a social secretary; and then other supporting staff and aides.

Such routine meetings are well understood to be critically important, according to Panetta:

There was a reason why Bob Rubin, who used to attend these meetings in the morning as head of the NEC, asked that he could continue to attend the 7:30 meetings in the White House when he became Secretary of the Treasury. He understood that that was where a lot of the key decisions would be made, and he wanted to be a part of it. I think you're going to see proximity increase as a base of power. As a result, I think we have to recognize the reality that in the modern presidency, an effective and capable staff is going to be essential to an effective and capable presidency.

Imposing Order and Discipline
One of the most important daily functions of the chief of staff is imposing order and discipline in a situation prone to chaos. Panetta sees two possible approaches--but suggests that one is clearly superior to the other:

One is an informal approach in which there is open door approach to the staff, allowing them to have free access to the President, free access to briefings and discussions that take place with the President. This is a center-of-the-wheel kind of approach that President Kennedy put in place, where he was at the center and allowed for access from a number of key assistants.

The other approach is a structured approach. The informal way has been compared to a soccer game in grammar school, where all of the kids go after the ball at the same time. And it can be very much that way if you try to provide a very informal approach in which everyone would have easy access to the President. It has to be structured and you have to have a disciplined approach to the responsibilities that are part and parcel of the staff.

The chief of staff's job in that light is not so much a management job as a battlefield position. The reality is that you have to have a sense of mission, of duty, of discipline. The staff has to remain focused, even though there may be incoming fire and a lot of issues that are breaking that are not necessarily related to what you want to have as the President's primary message for that day. Nevertheless, the staff has to be focused. They have to be disciplined and they have to continue to do their jobs. It is important, therefore, to establish a very clear chain of command and an organization chart in which each staff member knows who they are reporting to, who their supervisor is.

Among other tasks, then, Panetta saw himself as the chief enforcer of order and discipline:

[It's] important to establish rules regarding discipline, behavior, and access to the President, to briefings, to events, to Air Force One. There is always a natural tendency [to want to be] close to the President of the United States--you draw your energy source from being able to meet with the President of the United States. And the consequence is that any briefing with the President could result in as many as 25 or 50 people participating because that's the place to be. But you have to limit that tendency.

You can't get the business of the White House done unless those who participate in the briefings are only those who, in fact, have a responsibility for that particular issue. The same thing is true of travelling in Air Force One. People want to be able to be on the plane, to be able to have that opportunity. It's understandable but, at the same time, it can also result in chaos if you don't have only those who have a responsibility for that particular trip.

So you have to establish clear lines of discipline and behavior for access to the President. You have to assure that the briefings for the President are well-prepared, well-organized, brief, clear, direct, and that they present a set of options to the President so that he can ultimately make the decision. He's got to face a number of key decisions throughout the day. In order for that to happen in a smooth and effective way, briefings have to be well structured. When I was chief of staff, my approach was to have the briefing presented to me in the chief of staff's office, so that I could then see what kind of presentation would be made, what the options were and try to tighten it up as much as possible for presentation to the President.

Part of imposing order and discipline, adds Panetta, is making sure that the President's schedule allows him to stay focused over time:

The bully pulpit works, but it only works if it's focused and if it has a clear message and a clear event and a clear direction for the President that day. If he does too much, the message is not clear. If he focuses on one or two key events, then the message is clear to the public and to the country.

For that reason, it is important to establish discipline with regard to the schedule. And that means that you have to focus not only on today's schedule, tomorrow's schedule, next week's schedule, but the schedule of the President for the next four to six months. What are the invitations, the key events, the key activities that are going to involve the President of the United States? In fact, we even looked at the schedule for six to twelve months, to really begin to establish what activities the President would be focusing on over that period of time.

On the other hand, senior staff can easily end up organizing the President's time, access, and options so that their influence can be excessive. The new President should be wary of this. Michael Barone has a tongue-in-cheek solution:

I would like to add as my one small contribution to the political science of the presidency the rule (I would call it the Barone Rule, naturally) that every set of options must contain an even number of choices. I think there is a certain Goldilocks tendency to this: One is too hot, one is too cold, and one is just right. That tends to lead to manipulation. For example, option A is to have all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union and also send 5 million troops across the line. Option C is give away all of America's nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union and open our borders to the Red Army of China. And then there's option B. And guess what? Option B tends to be the option that the apparatchik who put together the option list has had as his pet project since he was an assistant professor at Squino College. If you give people an even number of options, they've got to do something that's at least a little asymmetric.

Moreover, a large and powerful staff within the White House is a mixed blessing for a President. Any new occupant of the White House should ponder the observations of James Pfiffner:

I see four central paradoxes of the modern presidency. [First,] with respect to the White House, the biggest threats to a President and an administration's legacy do not come from external enemies. They come from inside the White House: often overzealous loyalists, in the case of Watergate and Iran-Contra, or the President himself, in the case the Lewinsky affair.

[Second], with respect to the Cabinet, the best way to control the executive branch is to delegate as many issues as possible to Cabinet secretaries and keep in close touch with them. The White House should be selective and reserve presidential intervention for high priority issues. If the White House tries to control everything, it will get overwhelmed.