The New Prince by Dick Morris

Author:Dick Morris [Morris, Dick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781429978309
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2007-04-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

How to Get Your Staff to Do What You Want

WHEN PRESIDENT HARRY S. TRUMAN pondered how well his successor, General Dwight David Eisenhower, would do in the Oval Office, he shook his head sadly. “He’ll say ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ and nothing will happen. It’s not like the military.”

Even though a president appoints his staff and can generally fire them at will, it is very hard to get them to do what you want them to do, and even harder to stop them from manipulating you.

One reason for the independence of staff is that very few elected officials are entirely free to appoint whomever they choose to staff jobs. Some people have to be appointed to appease political factions or interest groups the politician needs to cultivate. Sometimes, a major financial donor or political leader, called a “rabbi” in the street parlance of ward politics, pushes a person for a staff job. Frequently, a staff position is really an ambassadorship or a liaison between a vital interest group or demographic block and the politician. This divided loyalty makes it all the more difficult to enforce your will on your staff.

Presidents from Abe Lincoln to Bill Clinton have chosen staffs made up of ambassadors to the various factions of their party. As President Lyndon Johnson said, earthily, “I’d rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”

Lincoln’s cabinet included virtually every one of his defeated rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. As the party’s second candidate for president, Lincoln felt acutely the need to include in his cabinet those who he needed in his governing coalition. Secretary of State William Seward had been the front runner for the 1860 nomination before the convention deadlocked. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton had also both been convention rivals. Montgomery Blair, the postmaster general, and Simeon Cameron, the ambassador to Russia (after a short, unhappy stint as war secretary) were both emissaries from the party organizations in Maryland and Pennsylvania respectively. Lincoln’s cabinet resembled a British cabinet, bring together all the leaders of his party, than an American cabinet, which is intended to be a group of advisors to the president.

President Clinton’s choice of his cabinet and staff reflected the same need Lincoln had, to include all the diverse members of his governing coalition. He had to be sure African-Americans were represented in his cabinet and staff, so he reached out for Mississippi congressman Mike Espy, whom he barely knew, to serve as Secretary of Agriculture. To represent labor, Clinton named Harold Ickes, a former union lawyer, as his deputy chief of staff. The Democratic barons in the House had their man, former congressman Leon Panetta, first as director of the Office of Management and Budget and then as chief of staff. House Democratic Speaker Dick Gephardt saw his own former staff member, George Stephanopoulos, enter the president’s inner circle. Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle’s former chief of staff, John Hilley, became the president’s director of congressional relations.

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