Ask the Scholar
Document scope · 1 page
Scholar
Ask about this object, its catalog metadata, its source description, or the page inventory.
For page-specific OCR and visual context, open one of the page chats.
Source Description
This file contains:
The Development of the White House Office, 1939-1967 by Alex B. Lacy, Jr., Woodrow Wilson Dept. of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia. 39 pages. [Report], 9/1/1967
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
26127070
label
WHSF: Returned, 39-4
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
26127070
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
WHSF: Returned, 39-4
description
This file contains:
The Development of the White House Office, 1939-1967 by Alex B. Lacy, Jr., Woodrow Wilson Dept. of Government and Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia. 39 pages. [Report], 9/1/1967
citationUrl
collections
Richard M. Nixon's Returned Materials Collection
Returned White House Special Files
imageCount
1
hasImages
yes
source
import
hasTranscription
no
Source extras
naId
26127070
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
0c746a9660c17de1
ocrText
Richard Nixon Presidential Library
White House Special Files Collection
Folder List
Box Number Folder Number Document Date Document Type
Document Description
39
4
09/1967
Report
The Development of the White House
Office, 1939-1967 by Alex B. Lacy, Jr.,
Woodrow Wilson Dept. of Government and
Foreign Affairs, University of Virginia. 39
pages.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Page 1 of 1
,
0
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE, 1939-1967
by
Alex B. Lacy, Jr.
11
Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
University of Virginia
Prepared for delivery at the 1967 Annual Meeting of the
American Political Science Association, Pick-Congress
Hotel, Chicago, September 5-9. Copyright, 1967, The
American Political Science Association.
U.S. 5. CIVIL SERVICE COMMISSION
JUN i 7 1968
#
*
LIBRARY
Abstract: "The lopment of the White House Office, 1939-1967"
by Alex B. Lacy, Jr.
Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
University of Virginia
Prepared for delivery at the 1967 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science
Association, Pick-Congress Hotel, Chicago, September 5-9. Copyright, 1967,
The American Political Science Association.
In the first section of the paper the development of White House staff facili-
ties prior to 1939 is summarized briefly. The Reorganization Act of 1939 and Re-
organization Plan NO. 1 of that year are discussed as the legal foundation of the
establishment of the Executive Office of the President including an expanded White
House Office in that year. The debate over the merits of the "institutionalization"
of the Presidency is reviewed and the nature of the study of which this paper is a
part is described.
In the second section of the paper data for a biographical profile of the
White House Office staff of each of the five Presidents since 1939 is presented.
The typical staff member during this period has been in his mid-forties, white
(only three Negroes served), male, from the Eastern half of the United States, with
prior experience in the federal government, and holder of at least one Ivy League
degree.
The third section of the paper is a discussion of the organization of the
White House Office under Presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy,
and Johnson. Attention is given to such topics as the relationship of the staff
to the President, work habits, the evolution of major staff positions, and staff
schedules.
Finally, the impact of expanded staff facilities in the White House Office
on the Presidency 10 evaluated.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE WHITE HOUSE OFFICE, 1939-1967
by Alex B. Lacy, Jr. *
Woodrow Wilson Department of Government and Foreign Affairs
University of Virginia
Prepared for delivery at the 1967 Annual meeting of the American Political
Science A ssociation; Pick-Congress Hotel, Chicago, September 5-9.
Copyright, 1967. The American Political Science Association.
When Thomas Jefferson entered the White House in 1801, his professional staff
was composed of a messenger and an occasional secretary. He paid the secretary
out of his own pocket. However, the secretary, William Short, was rarely in
Washington, and, for the most part, Jefferson handled his own correspondence.
More than a century later Woodrow Wilson conducted a world war and a major
international diplomatic effort with only seven personal aides. In the years se-
parating the experiences of these two eminent political theorists, other Presidents
had struggled along with little staff assistance. Grant had only two professional
staff members and McKinley had the painful experience of having an offer to Mr.
J.A. Porter to become his Secretary refused because of "the low recognition
value of the job. 1
When Franklin Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933 in a time of grave
emergency, he quickly found that the President had very little assistance outside
of the Bureau of the Budget, still primarily a center for the correlation of budget
estimates from the departments, and the line departments and agencies, Roosevelt
operated throughout his first term with three formal, professional staff members -
the three secretaries - and a small clerical staff. In order to get the job done, he
borrowed staff from the line departments and agencies - sometimes moving them
physically to the White House, usually leaving them in their old offices and call-
ing on them when needed. In addition, he relied on old friends like Judge Samuel
Rosenman to give him assistance when a special task had to be completed.
When the emergency was over and the President had time to give attention to
the structure of the executive branch in 1936, he called on three political scientists,
Charles E. Merriam, Luther Gulick, and Louis Brownlow, to give him advice on
the subject. This team under the leadership of Brownlow formed the President's
Committee on Administrative Management and their report in 1937 led to a major
reorganization and expansion of the President's staff facilities.
2
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
2
Since the work of the Brownlow committee and the events which followed the
report are well known, only a very brief summary of the report and the following
events will be given here 3 The Committee's basic thesis was that the
organization of the executive should be designed to increase the effectiveness
of the President as administrative manager of the executive branch. They found
the President bogged down with an impossible workload:
Where, for example, can there be found an executive in any
way comparable upon whom so much petty work is thrown
Or who is forced to see so many persons on unrelated matters
and to make so many decisions on the basis of what may be,
because of the very press of work, incomplete information?
How is it humanly possible know fully the affairs and problems
of over 100 separate major agencies, to say nothing of 4 being re-
sponsible for their general direction and coordination.
The report emphasized that priority of attention should be given to presidential
staff and its first recommendation was that the White House Staff be expanded. 5
The Committee then went on to recommend the other ingredients of the Executive
Office of the President. When President Roosevelt transmitted the report to
Congress in 1937 he firmly supported its conclusion:
that the President cannot adequately handle his responsi-
bilities; that he is overworked; that it is humanly impossible,
under the system which we have, for him fully to carry out his
constitutional duty as Chief Executive, because he is overwhelmed
with minor details and needless contacts arising directly from
the bad organization and equipment of the Government. I can
testify to this. With my predecessors who have said the same
thing over and over again, I plead guilty. 6
One major result of the Brownlow Committee study was the passage of the
Reorganization Act of 1939 which formed the legal basis for Reorganization Plan
No. 1 and Executive Order 8248 of September 8, 1939 which established the
Executive Office of the President with an expanded White House Office as one of
its ingredients
Since 1939, the Executive Office of the President has grown at a rapid pace.
Since it is our purpose here to deal only with the White House Office, it is enough
to say that the White House Office expansion is illustrative of what was happen-
ing in the entire Executive Office. The Executive Office. has now overflowed the
old State, War and Navy building which a few years earlier had housed three
major departments.
President Grant operated the White House Office on a budget of $13,800 and a
total of six employees. McKinley had a budget of $44,340 and a total staff of
twenty-seven. Coolidge's White House had forty-six employees operating on a
Gaylord
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
3
budget of $93,520.
7
When the Brownlow Committee made its report in 1937,
Roosevelt had thirty-seven employees in the White House Office and a budget of
about $200,000. By 1967 the budget had increased to nearly three million dollars.
The total White House staff for 1966 has been estimated to be 2,845.8
Table I
White House Office Budget, 1937-1967
Fiscal year
Total Personnel
Total Obligations Incurred
1937
109,222
200,000 E*
1938
128,759
211,380
1939
126,066
213,160
1940
145,842
222,900
1941
172,005
222,800
1942
164,448
224,860
1943
180,782
226,210
1944
225,789
302,190
1945
235,643
339,131
1946
250,996
342,588
1947
772,122
848,507
1948
1,067,200
1,194,502
1949
1,023,060
1,123,843
1950
1,185,660
1,304,735
1951
1,367,294
1,495,699
1952
1,446,264
1,609,398
1953
1,525,290
1,732,324
1954
1,435,479
1,640,452
1955
1,640,038
1,854,770
1956
1,649,934
1,877,952
1957
1,672,258
1,846,946
1958
1,748,437
1,051,970
1959
1,878,940
1,222,000
1960
1,906,000
2,221,000
1961
2,097,000
2,478,000
1962
2,003,000
2,449,000
1963
2,045,000
2,534,000
1961
2,156,000
2,717,000
1965
2,248,000
2,841,000
1966
2,435,000 E*
2,940,000 E*
1967
2 450,000 E*
2,955,000 E*
*Estimate
Gaylord
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
4
The budgetary story of the expansion in the White House Office can be seen
in Table I. The first big jump in budget after 1939 occurred in 1947 when President
Truman insisted that all borrowing of personnel from the agencies and departments
had to cease. The 1947 budget then was the first "honest" one for the White House
Office. President Truman's staff was not that much larger than Roosevelt's. The
increase in budget since 1947 has been steady, although on several occasions it
has been cut slightly from one year to the next. The trend has been steadily up-
ward.
Although the professional staff in the White House Office has not increased as
rapidly as these budgeting figures might st.ggest, Roosevelt after 1939 operated
with an average of eight professional staff members while Eisenhower began his
Presidency in 1953 with twenty-one and Kennedy began his Presidency in 1961 with
that same number.
It cannot be denied that the Reorganization Act of 1939 and Reorganization Plan
No. 1 rank among the most important events in the development of the American
Presidency. Moreover, few political scientists today would argue that the "in-
stituion" of the Presidency, the Executive Office of the President in general and the
White House Office in particular, is not important. As Clinton Rossiter has put
it, "We can never again talk about it (the Presidency) sensibly without accounting
for the men around the President. 9
The term "institutionalization" is a difficult one to define as applied to the
Presidency. It is generally operationalized as synonymous with the expansion
of the Executive Office of the President. It certainly has meaning in much broader
terms than this, however. It involves, at the very least, formal constitutional
developments relative to the office, informal, political developments relative to
the office including especially recent developments in presidential-congressional
relations, and the evolving national and international public image of the office
as well as the development of staff. 10
However, the merits of this "institutionalization" (in the narrow sense) of
the American Presidency have been the subject of heated debate. The debate is
a familiar one and it is not necessary for us to consider it in detail here. Pro-
fessors Rossiter and Corwin, both writing in the mid-1950's under the immediate
influence of the Eisenhower White House, are able spokesmen for the opposing
sides of the argument. Rossiter viewed Executive Order 8248 as the salvation of
the Presidency and the Constitution:
I have already pointed out, with the help of Professor White, the
momentous administrative significance of this development in the
modern Presidency. Its constitutional significance, it seems to
me, is even more momentous. It converts the Presidency into an
instrument of twentieth-century governme nt; it gives the incumbent
a sporting chance to stand the strain and fulfill his constitutional
mandate as a one-man branch of our three-part government; it de-
flates even the most forceful arguments, which are still raised
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
5
occasionally, for a plural executive; it assures us that the
Presidency will survive the advent of the positive state.
Executive Order 8248 may yet be judged to have saved the
Presidency from paralysis and the Constitution from radical
amendment. 11
Corwin, on the other hand, a critic of the Brownlow Committee from the very
beginning, 12 viewed the institutionalization of the American Presidency with
alarm. As he saw it, most of the dangers of institutionalization had been fulfilled
in the Eisenhower administration. The tendency toward "bureaucratization" had
been fulfilled and Eisenhower was "reigning rather than ruling" to an extent that,
when he became ill in midterm and was incapacitated for a lengthy period of time,
"the 'administration' went on notwithstanding the disaster with scarcely a tremor. 13
However, even Corwin concluded that "the office remains highly personal. "14
Corwin's answer, of course, was a new type of Cabinet which would stabilize the
relationship between the President and Congress.
Now, nearly three decades after Executive Order 8248 and more than a decade
and two administrations after Professors Rossiter and Corwin wrote, precisely
what has been the impact of expanded staff facilities on the American Presidency ?
What have been the most salient characteristics of the "institutionalization" of
the office? Is the President, in fact, still free "both in law and conscience, to
be as big a man as he can ?15
In order to begin to try to answer these questions, the present study is an
effort to analyze the role of one aspect of the expanded presidential staff, the
professional staff in the White House Office, since 1939. How have the five
presidents in the period organized their staffs ? What have been the work patterns
of the staff members ? What kind of men have served in the White House Office
and how did they view their work What role has the professional staff of the
White House Office played in presidential decision-making?
Political scientists have conducted very little research on these questions
and most of the studies that are available were completed in the 1950's. Edward
H. Hobbs covers the White House Office in his pacemaking studies of presidential
staffing and its impact on administrative management. Richard Neustadt, a member
of the Truman staff and close to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, has written on
the subject in several excellent articles and certainly has to be counted as the
leading authority on our subject. Louis W. Koenig has written poignant bio-
graphical accounts of three staff members in our period, Thomas G. Corcoran,
Harry Hopkins, and Sherman Adams. Rexford G. Tugwell has some interest ing
observations on the role of presidential staff in his volume, The Enlargement of
the Presidency. Finally, J. C. Heinlein has contributed an excellent monograph
on presidential staff and national security policy. 16
One reason that so little research has been conducted on the White House
Office is simply that data on the subject are very difficult to obtain. There are
very few personal memoirs of staff members, and those that have been written
Gaylord
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
6
frequently are not helpful. The oral history projects of the Truman, Eisenhower,
and Kennedy libraries working with the National Archives are promising, but
little of their work is available for use and much of it will not be available until
all persons involved in the record are deceased. Journalistic accounts of the
White House Office are not available in quantity until the Eisenhower period and
they are frequently not revealing.
With so little written material available, most of the data for this study was
collected through interviews with men who have served in the White House Office
since 1939. Since early 1966 I have conducted interviews with nearly twenty
per cent of the men who held professional staff positions in this period. The
interviews covered staff members of all five administrations and lasted an average
of about ninety minutes. The interview schedule was flexible and questions were
open-ended. The respondents were generally questioned about staff organization
and work patterns, their perceptions of their role in the White House Office, and
their relationship to the decision-making processes in the White House. In
addition, they were asked to give their account of the process by which they were
recruited to the White House Office and, in some cases, their reasons for leaving
the job were solicited. In a number of instances the respondents discussed
alternative patterns of staff organization and work habits and gave assessments
of the potentiality and limitations of the White House Office of the future. Some
respondents were also questioned about specific decision-making crises in the
White House which will be discussed in a later paper. All of the respondents
were assured that they would not be quoted and that observations would not be
attributed to them directly.
In this paper I will deal first with some of the data for a biographical profile
of the White House Office professional staff for each of the five Presidents since
1939. The major part of the paper will then be devoted to a discussion of the
organization and work habits of each of the staffs. Each of these subjects will
be discussed in more detail and the role of the staff in presidential decision-
making will be treated in a book length manuscript which is now in preparation.
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
7
A Biographical Profile of the White House Professional Staff, 1939-1967
Since the reorganization of the Executive Office of the President in 1939, 169
men have served at the professional staff level in the White House Office 17
The
typical staff member during this twenty-eight year period since the reorganization
was in his mid-forties, white (only three Negroes served), male (no women held
professional positions during this period although several personal secretaries
were quite influential), from the Eastern half of the United States, with prior
experience in the federal government service, and holder of at least one Ivy League
degree.
Age
The typical appointee to the White House Office staff since 1939 has tended
to be several years younger than other executives in top positions in the federal
government, 18 and slightly older than business executives on their first senior
appointment in the business world. 19
As the data in Table II indicate, the Roosevelt staff was five years older on
the average than the youngest staff, the Truman staff, while the average age of
the Kennedy staff was only several months older than the Truman staff and the
average age of the Eisenhower and Johnson staffs was exactly one year older than
the Truman staff.
Table II
Age Distribution and Average Age at Date of Appointment, White House
Office Professional Staff, 1939-1967
Age
1
FDR
2
DDE
3
JFK4
5
HST
LBJ
20-29
0
1
4
0
1
30-39
2
6
27
10
4
40-49
4
7
25
12
18
50-59
7
4
22
1
4
60-69
1
1
7
5
2
Over 69
0
0
1
0
0
Average Age
49.6
44.6
45.6
44.9
45.6
1
Data available for 14 of 16 staff members
2
Data available for 19 or 22 staff members
3
Data available for 86 or 86 staff members
4
Data available for 28 or 28 staff members
5
Data available for 29 of 33 staff members
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
8
The White House Office clearly has not been a place for the very young or
the very old since 1939. Only six men under the age of thirty have served during
the period: the youngest were Stephen Hess and Stephen Benedict, who were
appointed at the age of twenty-six in the Eisenhower Administration. Only one
staff member, former Senator Walter George, who held a brief special assignment
for Eisenhower, was over seventy years of age at the time of his appointment. The
high pressure and long hours of employment in the White House make it a position
for the middle-aged man.
Geographical Origins
In an effort to give a realistic answer to the question "Where are they from ?",
the data in Table III take into account the region of primary experience of each
staff member as well as his birthplace. Like other federal executives and business
leaders, White House staff members generally had their principal occupational
experience in a region other than their birthplace. 20 Their mobility tended to be
from farms and small towns to cities, especially Washington.
Thirteen of fourteen staff members for whom data is available in the Roosevelt
Administration after 1939 and fifteen of twenty Truman staff members were born
in rural areas. However, nearly all of them had their principal experience before
appointment to the White House Office staff in Washington or the Middle Atlantic
cities. On the other hand, a majority of the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson
staff members were born in urban areas. Those who were born in rural areas had
their principal experiences in the cities of the East and there was even a tendency
for those born in urban areas to migrate to Washington for their major occupational
experience prior to appointment to the White House Office. Only two of the fifty-
seven staff members of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations for whom data is
available had their principal experience prior to their White House assignment in
rural areas.
Naturally, Presidents tend to find a primary recruiting ground in their own
native regions. Thus Truman relied more than the other Presidents on the West
North Central states. Similarly, Kennedy relied on New England and Johnson has
relied on his native Texas. Eisenhower, long removed from his midwestern origin,
tended to favor the business world of the Middle Atlantic states as his primary
recruiting ground. Roosevelt's staff members were not concentrated in any parti-
cular region of birth, but half of them had had their primary experience in Washing-
ton.
The East South Central, West South Central, Mountain, and Pacific regions
were noticably underrepresented on the White House Staff, both as regions of
birth and principal experience, compared with the total population of the region.
The South Atlantic region, almost entirely because of the location of Washington
in the region, was overrepresanted as an area of principal experience. The Middle
Atlantic region was overrepresented as a region of birth and, to a large extent, as
a principal region. Significantly, ten of the staff members in this period were
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
9
Table III
Geographical Origins, White House Office Professional Staff, 1939-1967
FDR2
HST³
DDE⁴
JFK5
LBJ
6
1
Census
% of pop.
Prin.
Prin.
Prin.
Prin.
Prin.
Region 1950 cen. Birth loc. Birth loc. Birth loc. Birth loc. Birth loc.
New Eng-
land
6%
0
2
3
1
11
8
5
8
4
5
Middle
Atlantic
20%
0
2
5
3
25
33
3
3
8
6
South
Atlantic 14%
3
7
3
14
8
25
1
12
1
14
East South
Central
8%
2
0
1
0
3
0
0
0
1
0
West South
Central
10%
1
0
1
0
4
1
1
1
6
2
East North
Central
20%
3
3
1
0
11
10
2
0
4
1
West North
Central
9%
3
0
5
2
9
2
4
1
1
0
Mountain
3%
0
0
0
0
5
3
4
0
3
0
Pacific
10%
0
0
1
0
4
4
1
3
0
1
Foreign
2
0
0
0
6
0
2
0
0
0
Rural*
13
3
15
0
36
12
12
2
12
0
Urban
1
11
5
20
50
74
16
26
17
29
* Includes Small Towns
1 New England: Ma., Vt., N.H., Mass., Conn., R.I.
Middle Atlantic: N.Y., Penn., N.J.
South Atlantic: Del., Md., D.C., W.Va., Va., N.C., S.C., Ga., Fla.
East South Central: Ky., Tenn., Miss., Ala.
West South Central: La., Ark., Tex., Okla.
East North Central: Ohio, Ind., Mich., Ill., Wisc.
West North Central: Minn., Iowa, Mo., Kan., Neb., S.D., N.D.
Mountain: Mont., Idaho, Wyo., Nev., Utah, Col., Ariz., N. Mex.
Pacific: Wash., Ore., Calif., Alas., Hawaii
2 Data available for 14 of 16 staff members
3Data available for 20 of 22 staff members
4 Data available for 86 of 86 staff members
⁵Data available for 28 of 28 members
6 Data available for 29 of 33 staff members
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
10
21
foreign-born
Education
The White House Office staff members have been extremely well educated
since 1939. Their educational level was generally comparable to that of other
federal executives
22
and somewhat higher than that of business executives, 23
The educational level has generally improved since the Roosevelt Administration
when nearly half of the staff did not have a college degree. Although there was a
slight decline in percentage of college degrees in the Eisenhower Administration,
it is rather difficult to compare percentage figures for the Eisenhower staff members
to those of the other Presidents because of the significantly larger number of re-
spondents for the Eisenhower staff. For the entire period, about three out of four
staff members had a college degree.
Table IV
Education, White House Office Professional Staff, 1939-1967
Educational
1
2
3
4
5
Level
FDR
HST
DDE
JFK
LBJ
No college
6(42.9%)
2(10%)
14(16.3%)
2(7.1%)
2(6.9%)
degree*
Bachelor's
degree*
7(50%)
16(80%)
63(83.3%)
25(89.3%)
25(86.2%)
Advanced
degrees
5(35.7%)
13(65%)
47(54.6%)
18(64.3%)
17(58.6%)
- Masters
1(7.1%)
5(25%)
18(21%)
5(17.9%)
4(13.8%)
- LL.B
3(21.4%)
8(40%)
25(29.1%)
12(42.6%)
10(34.5%)
- Ph.D.
1(7.1%)
1(5%)
9(10.5%)
4(14.2%)
2(6.9%)
- other
1(7.1%)
2(10%)
5(5.8%)
2(7.1%)
2(6.9%)
* The total of the "No College Degree" and "Bachelor's Degree" columns may
not add up to 100% because some staff members took advanced degrees in lieu
of a Bachelor's Degree.
1 Data available for 14 of 16 staff members.
2
Data available for 20 of 22 staff members.
3 Data available for 86 of 86 staff members.
4 Data available for 28 of 28 staff members.
5 Data available for 29 of 33 staff members.
More than half had advanced degrees with the majority of these being in the LL.B.
category. The Kennedy staff, according to the data in Table IV, was the best
educated staff of the period under study. Nine out of ten Kennedy staffers had
bachelor's degrees, two-thirds of them had advanced degrees, and one out of
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
11
The Ivy League schools did not dominate the list of institutions granting de-
grees to members of the Roosevelt and Truman staffs. However, for the Eisenhower,
Kennedy, and Johnson staffs the trend definitely is toward the Ivy League for both
bachelor's and advanced degrees. Ivy League schools awarded 21:7% of the
bachelor's degrees and 33% of the advanced degrees awarded to Roosevelt and
Truman staff members. They have awarded 38.1% of the bachelor's degrees and
61.8% of the advanced degrees awarded to Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson staff
members. Harvard has awarded the most degrees to White House staff members
in each of the major categories, B.A., LL.B., M.A., and Ph.D. Princeton is a
strong second in the B.A. category. The Washington area schools, Georgetown
and George Washington are relatively high in the LL.B. and M.A. categories.
Occupation Prior to White House Appointment
The five presidents who have served during the period of this study have
differed a good deal in the occupations from which they have recruited their
staff members. Roosevelt recruited primarily from government and news reporters -
getting about one-fourth of his staff members from each category. Truman re-
cruited about half of his men from the ranks of government employees. Eisenhower
looked primarily to the business world for his staff, recruiting about one-third
of them from that category. Kennedy recruited two-thirds of his staff members
from government ranks, most of them having had experience on the staff side of
government, and the academic world. Johnson has relied primarily on government
service, again mostly staff men, and the business world for his staff members.
Although a good many members of the staff in each administration have held
law degrees, relatively few of them have been engaged primarily in the private
practice of law before their appointment to the White House. None of the Roosevelt
and Truman staff members had received their primary occupational experience in
the academic world, but that category has become rather prominent for the three
most recent Presidents. Eisenhower naturally showed some preference for men
who had had backgrounds in the military - several of them had served on his
military staff. Five of Eisenhower's appointees came directly from student status
on the campus to the White House without significant employment along the way.
Only one staff member in the period, Roosevelt's Daniel J. Tobin, has been re-
cruited from the ranks of organized labor, and he remained on the staff only a few
months.
Political experience does not appear to have been a particularly important
qualification for White House Office staff service. Only fifteen of the 169 staff
members since 1939 have had their primary experience as politicians, and most
of them have served for short terms on special assignments - half of them in the
Eisenhower administration. As one of the respondents put in in an interview,
There is only room in the White House for one politician." However, this is
not to say that political know-how is of little value to White House staff members.
A good many of the men in the "government service - staff" category in Table V
were involved primarily in politics.
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
12
Table V
Primary Occupations Before Appointment, White House Office
Professional Staff, 1939-1967
Occupation
1
2
3
4
FDR
HST
DDE
5
JFK
LBJ
Government,n
political
4(26.6%)
11(55%)
11(12.8%)
11(39.3%)
13(40.6%)
- (Staff)
(2)(13.3%)
(2)(10%)
(5)(5.8%)
(10)(35.7%)
(10)(31.3%)
Politics
3(20%)
0
8(9.3%)
3(10.7%)
1(3.1%)
Business
2(13.3%)
1(5%)
26(30%)
1(3.6%)
7(21.9%)
News Reporting
4(26.6%)
3(15%)
6(7%)
1(3.6%)
3 (9.4%)
Law, private
practice
0
3(15%)
12(14%)
4(14.2%)
4(12.5%)
Academic
0
0
11(12.8%)
7(25%)
4(12.5%)
Military
1(6.6%)
2(10%)
7(8.1%)
1(3.1%)
0
Labor
1(6.6%)
0
0
0
0
Student
0
0
5(5.8%)
0
0
1
Data available for 15 of 16 staff members.
2 Data available for 20 of 22 staff members
3 Data available for 86 of 86 staff member S.
4 Data available for 28 of 28 staff members.
5 Data available for 32 of 33 staff members.
The Road to the White House
There is no typical road to the White House for the aspiring staffer. A1-
though a good many staff members, especially the key ones, had had previous
experience with the President and were well-known by him, a majority of the
White House staff members had not had a significant relationship with the President
prior to their appointment - this was particularly true during the Eisenhower period.
In response to the questions, "Could you tell me how the initial contact was
made with you about the possibility of a White House job?" and "What was your
previous relationship to the President ?", most of the White House staff members
interviewed in this study emphasized "chance, circumstance, and a good bit of
luck" as the key factors in their appointment. For instance, one Eisenhower staff
member (a recently retired Democratic precinct chairman) was looking for a re-
search post in Washington, and thinking primarily about the CIA, when he bumped
into an old army friend of World War II days who happened to be on the Eisenhower
White House Office staff. The unemployed friend was quickly added as an assistant.
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
13
Another Eisenhower staff member was picked up from a relatively minor govern-
ment post after he gave testimony before a government committee which impressed
Sherman Adams. Another Eisenhower staff member was appointed after a Harvard
dean had been asked to recommend a Republican lawyer with political experience
under the age of thirty. This man emphasizes that he got the second offer for
the position. One Roosevelt staff member was appointed primarily because Ed
Flynn and Henry Wallace thought the President was losing interest in politics and
needed someone around to stimulate his interest. One Truman staff member was
appointed because Truman remembered a bill he had written for him when he first
entered the Senate.
Few White House staff members have been appointed because of their special
expertise in a particular subject matter of interest to the President - with the
major exception of press relations. Moreover, few White House staff members
have been obvious choices, indispensable members of the President's team before
he reached the White House - men like Sorensen, O'Brien, Moyers, Jenkins, Adams,
Persons, and Howe are exceptions to this rule.
Usually, the staff appointee simply happened to know the right people - fre-
quently another staff member, a Corcoran, Murphy, Adams, Sorenson, or Moyers -
and be available at the right moment.
One reason for the lack of prior relationship to the President for most staff
members at the time of their appointment is that most of the presidents have come
to the office from positions where they maintained relatively small staffs. This
was particularly true for Truman and Johnson - both of whom had been operating
with modest staffs in the Vice-Presidential office.
For the two Presidents who have come to the office fresh from critical electoral
victories since 1939, the presidential campaign staff has been a major source
of White House Office staff material. About two-thirds of Eisenhower's initial
staff members had been active, usually full time, in some phase of the 1952
campaign. About one-half of the initial Kennedy staff members had earned their
stars as full time members of the 1960 campaign staff and others like McGeorge
Rendy, Walt Rostow, end Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. had been advising from the
sidelines.
Turnover
Exact data is not available for dates of appointment and dates of departure
for some members of the Roosevelt and Truman staffs. However, membership on
both staffs was relatively stable. World War II necessitated some changes in the
Roosevelt staff which involved short-term appointments. President Truman had
some difficulty in getting the men he wanted in the White House for a few months;
but, after 1947, his staff was remarkably stable.
It is difficult to compare the Eisenhower staff to the others during this period
on the question of turnover because of its unique organization involving various
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
14
short-term, special assignment positions. The Eisenhower men stayed in office
for an average of thirty-eight months with six of them remaining for the entire
96 months of his two terms in office. 24 There was no noticeable turnover problem
in the Eisenhower administration.
The Kennedy staff had a remarkable turnover record. The only front-line
Kennedy men to leave the White House before the assassination, Richar d N. Goodwin,
Walt W. Rostow, Frederick G. Dutton, and Harry L. Wofford, Jr., left to accept
other positions in the State Department and the Peace Corps.
If comparable statistics could be obtained for each of the administrations
under study, the highest turnover rate would probably be that for the Johnson
staff. One of the major reasons for this, of course, involves the emergency
conditions under which President Johnson took office. Several of the Kennedy
staff members resigned within six months after the assassination. However,
twelve of them stayed for more than a year. Only five Kennedy men (counting
Rostow, who has returned from the Department of State) are still serving on the
Johnson staff. However, the loss of the Kennedy staff members tells only part
of the turnover story for the Johnson White House staff. Only three of President
Johnson's eleven early staff appointees in 1963 and 1964 are still on the staff.
Moreover, the turnover on the Johnson staff has involved key men like Bill Moyers,
Walter Jenkins, Jake Jacobsen, Jack Valenti, and Horace Busby.
Salaries
President Roosevelt's Administrative Assistants and Secretaries to the
President earned $10,000 per year after the reorganization was effected. In 1948
the Truman Administrative Assistants and Secretaries to the President were still
earning $10,000 although John R. Steelman, as The Assistant to the President, had
a salary of $15,000 and Clark M. Clifford, as Special Counsel to the President,
had a salary of $12,500. Salaries creeped near the $20,000 mark under Eisenhower
and the Kennedy staff men received $21,000. President Johnson's top staff aides
now receive $30,000 annually with the second line professional staff members
receiving $27,500.
For most White House Office Professional staff members since 1939, appoint-
ment to the presidential staff has meant an increase in pay. Some, primarily the
businessmen of the Eisenhower Administration, have taken salary cuts. However,
it has not been customary for staff members to dispose of investments while in
the White House and thus few of them suffered losses as a result of conflict of
interest practices as cabinet appointees frequently do.
However, after leaving the White House most of the staff members have taken
positions which represent a substantial improvement on their White House salaries -
several of them earning more than $100,000 annually.
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
15
The Organization of the White House Office, 1939-1967
The Roosevelt White House Office, 1939-1945
The most impressive characteristic of the Roosevelt White House Office is the
extent to which Roosevelt himself dominated its every activity. The staff was in a
very personal sense an extension of the President. If the staff appeared at times to be
on the brink of chaos and assignments to be without reason or purpose, no one ques-
tioned his motivations and his direction. Roosevelt initiated the assignments - fre-
quently giving instructions in great detail. He personally checked to be sure that
every assignment was carried out (staff members testify that he never forgot an assign-
ment) and the final reports were made directly to him. The Roosevelt professional staff
was larger than his predecessors had enjoyed, but not so large that he could not per-
sonally be available to all staff members whenever they needed his attention. There
was never anything resembling a hierarchy on the FDR staff.
As Richard Neustadt has perceptively observed, Roosevelt's pattern of relations
with his 25 staff were motivated by "a concern for his position as the man in the White
House.
He was also an action oriented President with "a strong feeling for a
cardinal fact in government: that presidents
act in the concrete as they meet
deadlines set by due dates. 26 The Roosevelt staff members had to be jacks-of-all-
trades, prepared to tackle any domestic or foreign assignment. There was no spot on
the Roosevelt staff for anyone because he was a specialist on some subject of interest
to the President, and no staff members developed special areas in which they had pre-
emptive influence.
Roosevelt felt a special need, perhaps in part because of his own physical limita-
tions and the restrictions those limitations placed on his activity outside of the White
House, to have differing points of view available to him before he made decisions.
He frequently gave two or more staff members the same assignment and delighted at
their rivalry. In SO far as I can tell, this disconcerting practice did not produce any
permanent hard feelings among the staff members, although it did contribute to occa-
sional "jockeying for position.
The implementation of Reorganization Plan No. 1 in 1939 did not radically change
the Roosevelt White House Office. Three Administrative Assistants (six had been
authorized) were added immediately and a fourth was added the following year.
Roosevelt continued his practice of borrowing staff from executive agencies and depart-
ments and was reluctant to put them on his own payroll, even after that became
politically feasible in 1939. One of the borrowed staff members noted that he worked
in the White House for four years before being placed on the White House Office pay-
roll in 1944.
The big changes in the White House Office under Roosevelt had taken place in
1933-34. This was when the berowing process was started and the expansion which
actually took place in presidential staff at that time was a more significant one than
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
16
the addition of the three Administrative Assistants in 1939. As one Roosevell staff
member said, FDR had to have additional staff in 1933 "because the people began to
look to the President as they never had before - writing to him, calling him. A big
change in the Presidency brought about change in the staff. The President was doing
more. He had to have more-help.
Even after the reorganization provided for the six Administrative Assistants "with
a passion for anonymity, " White House Office activity continued to center around the
three Secretaries. Although none of the Roosevelt men had absolutely fixed assign-
ments, there were certain recurrent presidential obligations that had to be met day af-
ter day and the three Secretaries' responsibilities were oriented around the most
persistent of these obligations. Stephen Early (followed by Jonathan Daniels) was in
charge of relations with the press; and, although he sometimes handled other assign-
ments, most of his time was spent on this job. Marvin H. McIntyre handled appoint-
ments and made overall arrangements for FDR's trips, public appearances, and meet-
ings (the military aides handled the details). Brig. Gen. Edwin M. "Pa" Watson was
special legman, confidant , and, in some respects, the successor to Louis Howe.
He later took over the appointments job when McIntyre succumbed to tuberculosis;
and, when Watson died at sea abroad the Quincy returning from Yalta, Early inherited
the appointments job.
The first three Administrative Assistants, James H. Rowe, Jr., William A.
McReynolds, and Lauchlin Currie were jacks-of-all-trades and handled whatever
tasks were at hand. However, each did develop an area of special interest. Mc-
Reynolds developed special skills in personnel matters and was an especially valua-
ble coordinator of civil service matters. Rowe developed into a political trouble
shooter with a special interest in patronage, Currie continued to keep a close watch
on economic matters. The other six men 28 who were appointed as Administrative
Assistants from 1940 to 1945 also developed some areas of special interest - for
instance, David K. Niles became a skilful student of racial and minority group matters.
But the great task of the Administrative Assistants was to serve as eyes and ears for
the President and to be available for any task that Roosevelt might throw their way.
During the war years the organization of the White House Office changed consid-
erably. Judge Samuel I. Rosenman became Special Counsel to the President, a title
especially designed for him in recognition of his years of service to the President
as his primary speech writer and adviser without pay. Rosenman continued to have
primary responsibility for drafting speeches and messages to Congress and also was
responsible for reviewing all bills and Executive Orders from both a legal and policy
perspective. Although McIntyre, Watson, and Marguerite "Missy" LeHand, the
President's able and influential personal secretary, died during the war years, leav-
ing major gaps in the staff, Rosenman was in no sense 29 a chief of staff even though
many crucial staff services centered in his office.
Earlier in the war period Harry L. Hopkins had moved into the White House with
the title of Special Assistant to the President. Hopkins role in World War II is well-
known and does not need to be treated in detail here. 30 Hopkins was a very special
assistant who was involved in almost every aspect of White House Office activity
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
17
during the war years. His position was made firm by his special relationship with
FDR and this, in turn, was enhanced by the fact that he actually lived in the President's
personal quarters on the second floor of the White House. Numerous stories are
available about Hopkins' clashes with other staff members on policy and procedural
matters - Hopkins usually won. However, although Hopkins' position was a very
special one in the war years, he too was never a chief of staff. Roosevelt might tell
a staff member to "talk to Harry" about some problem rather than listen to the details
himself, but Hopkins was not a Sherman Adams as some writers have suggested.
A third special appointment during the war years was that of Eugene B. Casey as
Special Executive Assistant to the President. After the 1940 election, a number of
leaders in the Democratic party organization became concerned that Roosevelt was
losing interest in politics. It was becoming more and more difficult for them to make
contact with the President. At the same time, Henry Wallace and other leaders inter-
ested in agriculture were concerned that Roosevelt's interest in the war would lead to
the total neglect of their interests. Casey, with the encouragement of Ed Flynn and
Wallace, became a special coordinator for the President on party and agriculture
matters.
A fourth special wartime position was that of "Chief-of-Staff to the Commander-
in Chief" held by Adm. William D Leahy. He presided over the meetings of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff and was FDR's main contact with the military. He gave the President a
daily briefing on the military and intelligence situation.
A more important change during the war years occurred when Roosevelt himself
gradually became less involved in staff work on domestic matters. The staff men,
especially the Administrative Assistants, worked with less direction and with fewer
conflicting assignments after 1942.
The image of lack of organization in the Roosevelt White House was reinforced by
the comings and goings of borrowed staff members who had no office in the White
House, but frequently spent more than half of their time there. Among the more impor-
tant men in this category were Benjamin Cohen and Thomas Corcoran (who usually
occupied the table in the Cabinet Room as a base of operation). Cohen and Corcoran
were as important as most of FDR's official staff members for several years before
Corcoran fell out of grace. 31 There were occasional conflicts between the official staff
members and the "outside" staff. Corcoran, for instance, was frequently at odds with
McIntyre about appointments and Hopkins about political matters.
The schedule of the White House Office staff was designed to complement the
President's schedule. The White House Office day usually began with a brief confer-
ence while Roosevelt had his breakfast. Although Roosevelt never held staff meetings,
several staff members would show up at breakfast and the day's work would be dis-
cussed. Watson, Early, McIntyre, William O. Hassett, Rosenman, and Hopkins were
frequently in attendance in varying combinations. The only other time when the staff
members regularly met with the President in groups of three or more was in the hour
preceding his press conferences when briefings were completed and strategy on possi-
ble questions discussed. After the breakfast conference, the staff members were
PAGE 18 MISSING
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
19
of the situation, he quickly cleared out these early job seekers and not one of them
received an appointment to the White House Office staff. Truman then requested
several Roosevelt staff men, including Rosenman, Hassett, and Niles, to stay on the
job and they did SO.
In less than one year Truman had decisively reorganized the White House Office
to suit his own needs. Although several individual members of the Roosevelt staff
became very helpful aides for Truman, the new President could not have operated with
Roosevelt's staff organization and work habits. The Truman staff men continued to be
generalists. Most of them did not come to the job as specialists on a particular sub-
ject. However, they did tend to fall into fixed areas of assignment much more readily
than the Roosevelt men. There was none of Roosevelt's lack of organization in the
Truman office.
Throughout his Presidency Truman did follow Roosevelt's example by using the
three Secretaries to handle the most recurrent duties of the White House office.
Charles G. Ross served as Press Secretary until his death in December, 1950. He was
replaced by Joseph Short who also died in office near the end of Truman's term.
Matthew Connelly, an old confidant served as Appointments Secretary and primary
political troubleshooter. Hassett continued to serve as Corresponding Secretary.
Staff work on matters of policy tended to center around two offices, the office
of "The Assistant to the President" and the office of the Special Counsel to the Presi
dent.
John R. Ste clman served as "The Assistant to the President. " Steelman had served
with distinction on the United States Conciliation Service for ten years under Roose-
velt and was an industrial consultant in New York when Truman came into office. He
was highly recommended as a specialist on labor affairs by Francis Perkins and
Truman's Secretary of Labor, Lewis B. Schwellenbach. Truman had some difficulty
in persuading Steelman to return to government service from his high paying position
in New York, and came up with the new title as a special incentive to keep him in the
White House. The title came out of the experience of James F. Byrnes in the Office
of Defense Mobilization where Byrnes had had unusual powers delegated to him by
Congress and the President, and was frequently referred to as "The Assistant Presi-
dent. It was the same title that Eisenhower was to give to Sherman Adams.
Steelman was a mediator in the White House. He handled labor matters, but he
was even more important to Truman as a coordinator of the executive tments and
agencies. He Handled the family fights in the executive branch and in performing
this task he worked very closely with the Bureau of the Budget. It was during the
Truman Administration that the Bureau became something more than a budget agency,
although Harold Smith had started it on the way under Roosevelt. In some respects,
the Bureau was an extension of the White House Office, furnishing the Office with
valuable assistance and providing a primary recruiting ground for its staff members.
David Stowe, David Bell, Richard Neustadt, David Lloyd, and Feederick Lawton all
moved from the Bureau to the White House Office and several of them later returned
to the Bureau.
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
20
Rosenman stayed with Truman as Special Counsel until late 1945. After his
departure, the office remained vacant for about six months, although Truman's naval
aide, Clark Clifford, who had worked with Rosenman on several speeches, began to
do much of Rosenman's work. Clifford was appointed Special Counsel in June, 1946,
and remained in that office for four years. The duties of the office remained much as
they had been under Rosenman. Clifford was responsible for writing speeches and
checking bills and Executive Orders from both a legal and policy point of view. Under
Clifford and his successor, Charles Murphy, it was the key position on the staff for
policy formulation.
Many of Truman's speeches were major policy formulation events and the White
House Office staff worked very closely with the Cabinet members and the departments
in their formulation. Truman relied on his Cabinet and the departments much more than
Roosevelt had, and this, plus his use of the Bureau of the Budget, is one reason
that he was able to keep his White House staff SO small. He seldom had more than
eleven men reporting directly to him from the White House Office. The major speeches
went through seven to ten drafts and throughout this process there was constant
interchange with the appropriate departments and agencies.
Clifford took on one new chore that was beginning to be a recurrent one in the
White House and that was the task of coordination of national security matters.
This, of course, was Hopkins bailiwick during the war, and Roosevelt himself had
been constantly involved with the war effort after Pearl Harbor. After the war, there
was even more need for coordination of defense matters as the defense establishment
itself underwent an extensive reorganization. Most of Clifford's efforts involved the
defense and post-war recovery agencies. A major part of his effort was devoted to
coordination of policy and practices between these agencies and the State Department.
Murphy, as Special Counsel, was not as actively involved in national security
matters as Clifford had been.
In addition to the Steelman and Clifford operations, Truman found that he had to
formalize congressional liaison work much more than Roosevelt had done. When
Roosevelt had a special task involving Congr.ess, he called on Corcoran or Rowe
or someone else to do that particular job. Truman, facing a Congress controlled by
the opposition party soon after he took office, began to look to Charles Murphy to
coordinate the executive's relations with Congress. Murphy did not develop any
elaborate machinery in the White House for congressional liaison. However, he did
gather around him a group of bright young assistants - Bell, Neustadt and Lloyd among
them. In addition to these duties, Murphy also had special responsibility for draft-
ing messages to Congress and assisted Clifford on speeches. Murphy's position as
Administrative Assistant then was another important office highly involved in policy
and political matters. After he replaced Clifford as Special Counsel in 1950, Murphy
continued to carry on the congressional liaison work from that office. The new duties
apparently blended quite well with his old ones.
Another Administrative Assistant who had a special area of responsibility was
Donald S. Dawson. Dawson was staff coordinator on matters of personnel and patro-
nage. George J. Schoeneman and Raymond R. Zimmerman had handled these matters
Gaylord
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
21
before Dawson's appointment in August, 1947. Dawson handled liaison with the
departments and agencies on management problems on a rather elaborate scale. He
kept in close touch with politicians in and out of Congress on patronage matters and
apparently maintained good relations with the Civil Service Commission at the same
time. The patronage tasks were among the most difficult ones in Truman's Presidency
and they tied very directly into the work of Steelman (with the departments) and
Murphy (with Congress). Dawson's work then was pivotal and he developed some very
firm procedures in his office. He kept a detailed file on potential candidates for
office and most of Truman's appointments outside of the customs positions and federal
courts came from the Dawson file. After 1948, Dawson also handled arrangements for
Truman's trips and political appearances.
With the exception of Murphy and wson the Administrative Assistants tended
not to be front-line men in the Truman Administration. In fact, they served primarily
as assistants to Murphy, Clifford and Steelman. The development of an able cadre
of supporting staff for key staff members was an important aspect of the Truman White
House Office. In my interviews with the Truman men, I soon discovered that they
liked to talk about span of control and most of them felt that the President should not
have more than a dozen staff men reporting to him. When asked, "Were the profes-
sional staff services adequate to meet the demands on the President?" and "For in-
stance, did you need more men on the staff?", the ten Truman respondents unanimous-
ly replied in the negative.
Although Truman did not use borrowed staff in the White House Office, he did
make maximum use of his military aides, Gen. Harry H. Vaughan, Adm. William D.
Leahy, and Adm. Robert L. Dennison. Leahy had been Chief of Staff to the President
under Roosevelt and continued as a trusted aide to Truman for the immediate post-war
period. Vaughan was an old friend who had been with Truman longer than anyone else
except Connelly. Both he and Dennison were among the President's favorite poker
companions. Vaughan tended to handle specific military problems and developed a
special interest in the F:B.I. Dennison was held in especially high regard by his
fellow staff members. He was responsible for maritime matters and had charge of the
White House processing of military and intelligence communications.
Like Roosevelt, Truman found that the pressures of war necessitated special
services from his White House staff. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, Truman
appointed W, Averill Harriman as a Special Assistant to the President with the special
responsibility of keeping the President informed about the war situation. Harri
sat with the National Security Council and gave special attention to the coordination
of State and Defense efforts. 36 Harriman quickly assembled a huge staff which was
larger than the rest of the White House Office staff combined. He never really
functioned as a White House Office staff member, and in 1951 he and his staff were
installed in a new office, the Director for Mutual Security, in the Executive Office.
The daily schedule of the Truman staff members was designed to complement the
President's schedule. The day began with a formal conference attended by most of
these conferences were held at 8:00 or 8:30
Gaylord
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
22
hour was gradually moved up to 9:00 or 9:30 A. M. The staff meetings were so regular
that everyone sat in the same position relative to the President's desk at each confer-
ence. Truman presided at the conferences and began by discussing previous reports
and handing out new assignments. Then Truman went around the circle, permitting
each staff member to be heard - beginning with Leahy when he was in the White House.
The Truman staff members felt that these meetings were especially important.
As one respondent evaluated them, "Every staff man could hear what his colleagues
were doing - be informed, know what was going on. " There can be little doubt that
the daily staff conferences were important as a means of coordination. When minor
disputes would arise among staff members, Truman would iron them out here. It per-
mitted the staff members to get to know each other and apparently gave them some-
thing akin to a sense of teamwork. One staff member estimated that Truman initiated
about three-fourths of the staff assignments, but the give and take of the conferences
permitted the staff members to make a case for the need for a particular chore.
Immediately after the staff conference, Dennison gave the President a briefing
on the morning's intelligence communications. Unless a press conference was to be
held that day and special briefings were in order, the President was generally not
available to the staff again until 3:00 P. M. The hours from 3:00-5:00 P. M. were set
aside exclusively for staff and Cabinet members, and it was during these hours that
basic policy matters were discussed. These were invaluable hours for Clifford and
Murphy.
After the afternoon conference, Truman would depart for his living quarters with
a huge leather desk folder under his arm with cabinet matters in a pocket on one side
and staff matters on the other. The evenings were devoted to reading and study for
the President and his staff and the staff was constantly amazed at Truman's capacity
for evening reading
Truman's staff was made up of very able men who came to be especially devoted
to their chief. Although they did not have an intellectual background comparable to
the Kennedy staff, Truman probably could not have gotten maximum mileage out of a
group of intellectuals. He did get maximum mileage out of the men he had. In the
words of one of the staff members, "He Truman] had a good concept of staff work.
He could delegate. Once he got confidence in a man, he used him to his advantage.
"
The Eisnehower White House Office, 1953-1961
Unlike his immediate predecessors in the office, Eisenhower entered the Presi-
dency with some very definite ideas about staff work. The key aspects of his theory
involved organization, efficiency, and keeping as many burdens as possible off the
President's shoulders. Eisenhower, of course, had had extensive experience with
military staff and he brought this experience into the White House with him. The
President was convinced that his staff operation was never understood by its critics--
the politicians, political scientists, and reporters. In response to some writers who
suggested that the chaotic state of the Roosevelt staff might be better for the
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
23
Presidency than the precision of the Eisenhower staff organization, he noted: "I have
been astonished to read some contentions which seem to suggest that smooth organiza-
tion guarantees that nothing is happening, whereas ferment and disorder indicate pro-
gress.
Organization was the key to the Eisenhower staff operation and Sherman Adams
was the key to the organization. As one respondent mentioned at the end of my
interview with him, as if to reinforce and summarize what he had said, "You will
have to give key attention to Adams in your study. He was the key to the whole
thing and he managed everything with a firm hand. Adams inherited Steelman's title,
The Assistant to the President, but his job was entirely unlike Steelman's. Adams
was, in every sense of the term, a Chief of Staff. He was at the top of the clearly
structured hierarchy of the Eisenhower White House Office staff and this was the way
Eiscnhower wanted it. According to Adams, Eisenhower "never specifically defined
my responsibilities or outlined their limits
except when I was acting on an
explicit directive from 38 the President, my duties and responsiblities were implied
rather than stated. Eisenhower and Adams were both sensitive to the charge that
Adams made decisions for the President, but, even the dust jacket to Adams' own
book describes him as "the man who probably exercised more power as a President's
confidential adviser and co-ordinator than any other individual in modern times."
Adams presided over a highly structured staff. Each man had a special job which
took all or most of his time: appointments, patronage, press, minority group matters,
economic policy, legislative liaison, speech writing, cabinet secretary, checking
bills and Executive Orders for legality, and many more. A complex set of new titles
were developed and generally indicated where one stood in the chain of command.
Old titles were discredited. For instance, the Rosenman-Clifford-Murphy post of
Special Counsel was stripped of most of its duties - only the routine legal work was
left. The Eisenhower staff men rarely received an assignment outside of their
speciality and they all reported directly to Adams and received their instructions from
him. When they had particularly difficult problems, they took them to Adams and he
made the decisions. It must be added that he also took the responsibility for them.
It would be impossible to begin to go into detail within the limits of this paper
on the work patterns of the main body of the White House staff. Their basic job was
to reduce the President's load. An important motto was that nothing should go to the
President's desk if it could be handled elsewhere, and, if it had to go to the President,
it should be condensed to a one page memo. Adams developed a reputation among
other staff members as an expert draftsman of these one page memos. Memos were
not supposed to go to the President's desk until the "O.K., S.A. " was affixed.
Moreover, the memo should include recommendations. One staff member recalled
that he once went to Adams with a problem which was potentially explosive for the
White House. "Adams listened and said, 'Well, what do you want me to do about
it?' You were wasting his time unless you had a recommendation."
Most of the respondents in this study believed that Adams' reputation as a
"hard boss" and "a difficult man to get along with" was well earned. Their relations
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
24
with him were formal and cool - strictly business. Nevertheless, they had a profound
respect for him and they marvelled at his ability to get work done and make decisions.
In retrospect, they felt that his work habits were justified. As one of his closest
assistants said, "He could, get the most out of a man. Ike could not have anticipated
that Adams would have such 39 talent for chief of staff work, but he was excellent. He
knew how to work people.
Although it is impossible to discuss the complex Eisenhower staff organization
in detail, four aspects of it do deserve special attention. One of the innovations of
the Eisenhower years was the development of a special office to manage the clerical
staff, handle correspondence, and, most important, handle national security and
intelligence communications. The first two aspects of the work of this office had been
handled by a career man, William Hopkins, under the title of Executive Clerk since the
days of Roosevelt. Hopkins continued to work in the office but he was under the direc-
tion of the Staff Secretary. Although Adams supervised the work of this office in a
general fashion, it was largely the province of the Staff Secretary, a position held by
two very able Army men, Col. Paul T. Carroll and Gen. A. J. Goodpaster. In parti-
cular, Adams was not involved in the military and intelligence communications coordi-
nation of this office which went directly from the Staff Secretary to Eisenhower. The
Staff Secretary also handled arrangements for conferences between the Joint Chiefs and
other military personnel and the President.
A second aspect of the White House Office organization that must be discussed
involves White House efforts to coordinate national security matters. Eisenhower
formalized the work that had been handled by Clark Clifford for Truman. He had two
assistants who were primarily responsible for coordination of national security policy
matters in addition to the Staff Secretary who handled communications. The Special
Assistant for National Security Affairs served as an adviser for the National Security
Council and its various machinery and a Special Assitant to the President 40 served as the
President's representative on the Operations Coordinating Board. The first
position
was held by a senior staff member, and the latter was held by a more junior member
of the staff.
The work of these two assistants was not within the sphere of influence of
Sherman Adams. They reported directly to Eisenhower and received their assignments
directly from him. They worked closely with the Staff Secretary and these three staff
members usually saw the President daily. The following description by one of the
national security staff members of his relationship to Adams would be an accurate one
for all of the men who held these positions: "I seldom saw Adams except in the White
House Mess at lunchtime. He may have been 'Assistant President' for domestic
affairs, but he had no influence over national security matters. "
The task of coordinating national security and foreign affairs matters was a very
important one and Eisenhower apparently made a clear decision early in his Presidency
that the coordination had to come from the White House. Eisenhower used the National
Security Council "regularly and seriously. " It was an important apparatus of coordina-
tion for him. He developed and announced all of his national security and foreign
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
25
policy decisions in its meetings so that each department and agency involved knew "how
he made the decision, why, and what the rationale 42 was. Eisenhower, working closely
with Dulles for whom he had great respect,
exerted his greatest influence as President
in the national security and foreign policy areas.
Unfortunately, Eisenhower had much less interest in domestic politics and this
made the congressional liaison unit within the White House Office a very important
one. The relatively modest operation of Murphy and his team in the Truman Administra-
tion gave way to a very elaborate system under the direction of General Wilton G. Per-
sons in the Eisenhower Administration. Persons was assisted by a number of very able
men including Gerald Morgan and Bryce Harlow. Morgan took over direction of the work
when Persons replaced Adams in 1958.
All of the respondents in this study who had worked in legislative liaison for
Eisenhower agreed that, especially in the early years, it "was like pulling eye teeth"
to get the Republicans in Congress to support the President's program. Eisenhower was
asking the Republicans to support programs that they had been opposing and many of
them, including Senator Robert Taft, found this very difficult to take. It was in the
difficult early months of his Administration that the elaborate legislative liaison machi-
nery was developed.
The "Tuesday Morning Breakfast Conference" (in the first few months, it was held
on Mondays), which had been used steadily by Roosevelt and Truman, became the cen-
tral structure in Eisenhower's legislative liaison apparatus. Each Saturday morning a
member of the Persons staff, usually Morgan, would preside over a meeting of all the
legislative liaison men in the departments as a part of a careful effort to coordinate all
legislative liaison activities in the executive branch from the White House Office.
Using the matters discussed in this conference as a base, the Persons-Morgan staff
prepared a detailed agenda for the Tuesday morning meeting between the President and
the Congressional leaders. The agenda was cleared with Adams and the President and
then distributed in advance to the Congressional leaders. Then on Tuesday morning the
legislative leaders and the President met in the White House. The President generally
followed the agenda rether. rigidly and at the end of the meeting the legislative leaders
would bring up additional matters for discussion. Morgan and Pers^ns were usually in
attendance at these meetings and appropriate officers from the Departments were
frequently invited to attend.
The work of the legislative liaison team was greatly complicated by Eisenhower's
aversion to party politics. He was not appreciative of the bargaining which was at
the heart of normal, healthy Presidential - Congressional relations. One Republican
Congressman, when asked about patronage under the new Republican Administration,
complained that not only had he not gotten additional jobs but that he had lost one that
he had under Truman. This story is illustrative of the nature of the problem facing the
legislative liaison team and the elaborate machinery in the White House Office helped
to make up for the deficiency.
The same predispositions which led President Eisenhower to develop the kind of
staff operation he developed led him to make more use of the Cabinet than his immed-
late predecessors. In an effort to get as much order as possible
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
26
Cabinet, he created the post of "Cabinet Operations Officer, later changed to
"Secretary to the Cabinet. " The two men who held this position were both previously
Adams' immediate aides and they continued to work directly under his supervision in
their new post. They had some responsibility for coordination of affairs in the execu-
tive branch, but the really tough problems of coordination were handled directly by
Adams.
The White House Office experienced three periods of major strain during the
Eisenhower Presidency - the President's two lengthy illnesses and the departure of
Sherman Adams from the staff. The staff continued to function very smoothly during the
three periods of serious illness of the President. When Eisenhower was hospitalized
in Denver, the routine was disrupted to some extent because Adams and several other
staff members had to spend much of their time in Denver. However, for the most part
the staff functioned amazingly well during the illnesses. Most of the Eisenhower
respondents agreed that this was the case and attributed this to the efficiency of the
staff organization and the genius of Adams. 43 Eisenhower's critics were not so gener-
ous and concluded that the "business as usual" attitude in the White House was a sign
that it was Adams and not Eisenhower who had been running the Presidency for the
most part all along.
The departure of Adams from the staff in 1958 after the Goldfine case had exploded
led to a more serious disruption in White House Office routine. 44 Most of the respon-
dents were shocked when Adams announced his resignation. After the congressional
hearings, most of them thought the case was settled - that Adams had been indiscreet
but had done nothing wrong. Several of them thought that the whole thing had been
"masterminded" from Sam Rayburn's office far political reasons. They knew that
pressure was being put on Eisenhower for Adams' resignation by Congressional
Republicans who had to face elections in November. However, they had no idea that
he would yield to the pressure. They would all agree with Louis Koenig's assessment
that "the resignation 45 of Sherman Adams gained the Republican party little and cost
the President much.
The general tone of the interviews was that the "staff felt low" when Adams
departed. He was replaced as "The Assistant to the President" by Persons and the
nature of the White House Office was changed considerably. Persons was an easy
going man compared to Adams. He was much more willing to give staff members
freedom in their work. He still coordinated all staff activities, but he did not run the
tight ship that Adams had run for eight years. As one respondent who served under
both men for six years said, "Persons was a different kind of man, more easy going -
willing to let the staff go its own way. He asked, 'What do you think ought to be
done? Moreover, President Eisenhower became more involved in staff activities
under Persons. He began to take more initiative in the White House when the strong
hand of Adams was no longer present.
The daily schedule of the White House Office before Adams departure centered
around Adams' schedule in sharp contrast to the Roosevelt and Truman years when
the schedule of the Office centered around the schedule of the President. The typical
staff day kept them in the White House from 7:00 A. M. to 7:00 P. M. during the week
and
on
Saturdav
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
27
Adams always wanted the staff in the office when he was there, and he was an "early
to bed, early to rise" advocate, much to the dismay of his staff. The staff adapted
to the schedule because they knew that "he didn't like to call your desk and not be
able to get you. " They were gratified that Adams liked to play golf on Saturday
afternoons.
In 1953 Adams held staff meetings every morning. After 1953, he usually held
three a week. Eisenhower rarely attended these meetings. In these meetings Adams
gave assignments and outlined the day's work. The meetings were usually brief and
Adams did most of the talking. The respondents who attended them felt that they were
very important. They were a source of information for a highly specialized staff about
what was happening in other aspects of White House work. Persons held very few
staff meetings after he replaced Adams.
The Kennedy White House Office, 1961-1963
When President Kennedy came into office, he had been the recipient of more
advice about the organization of the White House Office than any of his predecessors.
Clark Clifford, Richard Neustadt, and the Brookings Institution had each prepared
elaborate background papers for him before the election in order to help him through
the transition. Each of these advisers had given detailed attention to the White
House Office and had discussed alternative plans of organization.
In reading the memoranda of those advisers, Kennedy immediately decided that
he could not operate his staff on the Eisenhower pattern. This decision was confirmed
by the 46 transition contacts between the Kennedy men and the Eisenhower staff mem-
bers.
The Kennedy staff organization represented a return to the basic characteristics
of the Roosevelt-Truman examples. The men who served on his staff were mostly
generalists although they had more fixed areas of assignment than the Roosevelt or
Truman men. However, Kennedy could not have made his White House Office a
replica of either the Roosevelt or Truman organization because government in the
1960's was vastly different from that experienced by these two Democratic predeces-
sors. Nor could Kennedy ignore everything in the Eisenhower organization precedent.
Some of the Eisenhower arrangements were useful for Kennedy and he kept them.
In addition to the advance planning, Kennedy had another advantage over his
predecessors when he took office. He had already been operating for many months
with a very elaborate staff organization in his campaigns for the nomination and for
the office itself. The campaigns had been a valuable testing ground for staff and
most of the appointees to the White House Office staff had survived the test of the
campaigns. They had already developed work patterns as assistants to Kennedy.
He knew what to expect from them and they knew his abilities, expectations, and
needs.
President Kennedy was his own chief of staff. He carefully supervised the work
of his staff in the White House Office. He initiated assignments, personally, re-
ceived all reports from his top aides, and, as Sorenson has written, "decided what
it is he need not decide. 47 He carefully guarded his own options. Again, in
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
2.8
Sorenson's words, Kennedy's staff organization "imposed upon him heavy burdens of
overseeing everything we were doing, but he much preferred those burdens to the
handicaps of being merely a clerk in his own office, caught up in the routines and
recommendations of others. 48 There was no hierarchy in the Kennedy White House
Office.
The workload of the Kennedy White House Office centered around several key
offices. Kennedy restored the office of Special Counsel to the status it had enjoyed
under Rosenman, Clifford, and Murphy and, in fact, greatly expanded its scope of
activity. Theodore Sorenson, one of his most trusted aides, was named to fill the
office and he was assisted by three very able men - Myer Feldman, Richard N. Good-
win, and Lee C. White. 49 Sorenson was the primary staff adviser on domestic policy
matters and speech-writer par excellence. His handiwork can be seen in almost
every message that Kennedy sent to Congress. However, he was much more than a
speech writer. Although he did not make decisions for the President, his opinion
was respected and frequently persuasive.
Since Sorenson's time was taken up with domestic policy matters, his assistants
were needed to handle the more traditional duties of the Special Counsel. Feldman
was viewed by his fellow staff members as an exceptionally able lawyer and he was
responsible for regulatory agency matters and most other matters relating to business--
including tariffs and trade. 50 He also supervised the drafting of Presidential proclama-
tions and Executive Orders. White handled civil rights matters in close coordination
with Robert Kennedy and received special assignments in matters of public housing
and power. White also handled presidential pardons and pleas for clemency. Goodwin
was primarily involved in speech-writing and quickly developed a special interest in
Latin American affairs.
Sorenson's counterpart on foreign policy and national security matters was
McGeorge Bundy. Although Kennedy was not enamoured with the complex national
security coordination efforts by the White House under Eisenhower, he did find it
necessary to have a strong foreign policy-national security operation in the White
House. However, where Eisenhower's national security advisers in the White House
were primarily concerned with organization and the coordination of the vast and com-
plex activities of Defense, State, and a dozen other departments and agencies, the
Bundy team was primarily concerned with advising the President on policy matters.
The President was his own coordinator when coordination was called for. Bundy's
own training and personality suited him for this kind of role. He no uld not have
been as well suited for the kind of role which Gordon Gray performed so ably for
Eisenhower.
Bundy was assisted by a group of very able men - an average of ten - in his
operation in the basement of the White House which Kennedy used to call his "Little
State Department. As a matter of fact, the organization of Bundy's office in some
respects resembled the State Department. For example, he had a specialist for
European affairs (Dr. Carl Kaysen who also handled disarmament matters), a special-
1st for Far Eastern Alfairs (Michael Forrestal), and a specialist for Near Eastern
affairs (Robert Komer).
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
2G
Bundy held the only meetings that even resembled staff conferences in the Kennedy
White House. Each morning he briefed key White House Office staff members on
significant foreign policy and national security developments during the past twenty-
four hours. This briefing was all that took place at the meetings, but they were an
important mechanism for coordination of foreign and domestic policy in the White
House. None of Kennedy's advisers were ever out of touch with foreign policy matters
and could shift from domestic assignments to assist in a foreign policy crisis with
relative ease.
A third office which was of central importance in the Kennedy White House was :.
that of the Appointments Secretary, Kenneth O'Donnell. O'Donnell occupied the same
office that McIntyre had occupied a quarter of century earlier, but his responsibilities
were much broader than McIntyre's had been. In addition to handling appointments,
O'Donnell was a primary political troubleshooter (comparable to Matt Connelly in this
respect), handled liaison with the Secret Service and F.B.I., and made arrangements
for the President's trips. Pierre Salinger in his 51 memoirs has ranked O'Donnell as the
most important member of the Kennedy staff. He certainly was the key man, outside
of the President himself, for the internal operation of the White House Office. Since
Kennedy dropped the Eisenhower position of Staff Secretary, O'Donnell also kept
watch over the general operation of the White House Office services. He worked
closely with his Massachusetts colleague, Lawrence O'Brien on all matters relating
to politics.
O'Brien was in charge of Kennedy's legislative liaison operations. Although his
White House Office liaison operation was not organized as elaborately as the Persons-
Morgan operation, his organization was much more elaborate than Murphy's had been
for Truman. Like Persons and Morgan, O'Brien viewed the office as a center of
coordination for legislative liaison officers throughout the executive branch and the
Tuesday Morning Breakfast Conference continued to be a central part of his equipment.
During Kennedy's first Congress, O'Brien demonstrated that he was a first-rate
political strategist and, although his tactics were often described as high pressure
efforts, earning him the title of leader of the Irish Mafia in the White House, he was
usually effective. Like Sorenson, O'Brien had a talented group of assistants led by
Mike Manatos and Henry Hall Wilson, Jr.
In addition to the O'Brien and O'Donnell offices a third position in the Kennedy
White House which was concerned primarily with politics was held by Ralph Dungan.
Dungan had worked with the Shriver group in the great "talent hunt" that had taken
place during the transition months and he continued to be concerned with personnel.
He was the key patronage man in the White House and was also a valuable assistant
on labor politics.
The position of Press Secretary was by now one of the oldest presidential staff
positions. Press relations were particularly crucial for Kennedy after the narrow
victory of 1960, and this position was held by another veteran of the campaign wars,
Pierre Salinger. He was assisted by one of the few Negroes to hold a Presidential
staff position, Andrew Hatcher. In addition to the regular duties of Press Secretary,
Salinger held frequent briefings for public information officers from the departments
and
agencies
in
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
30
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., held a unique White House staff position. He was the
White House's liaison with intellectuals in general and with Adlai Stevenson in
particular Kennedy did not know Stevenson well, but Schlesinger had assisted in
Stevenson's campaigns and was a natural choice for this job. Schlesinger was not
actively involved in the day by day work of the White House, although he did get
special assignments from time to time. He was the idea man 52 in the White House and
kept a steady stream of memoranda on the President's desk.
Although he dropped the title of Cabinet Secretary, Kennedy kept the function and
assigned the job to Timothy J. Reardon. He was responsible for preparing agenda for
Cabinet meetings and his duties also included some coordination of Presidential
relations with the executive departments and agencies. However, he was by no means
the exclusive staff member for the latter duty.
President Kennedy reacted strongly against the abundance of titles used for staff
members in the Eisenhower Administration. Titles were meaningless in the Kennedy
Administration. Most of the staff members were simply "Special Assistant to the
President" and 53 Kennedy once remarked that he wished that all the staff members had
had that title.
The old title of Administrative Assistant was rarely used by Kennedy. In fact,
it was given only to Reardon and to O'Brien's assistants, Manatos and Wilson.
Paradoxically, the 'passion for anonymity" attributed to the original Brownlow Commit-
tee creation was also not a particularly strong characteristic of the Kennedy staff. It
was inevitable that the position of staff assistant to the President of the United States
should be glamourized eventually, and this occurred as the youthful, active President
Kennedy attracted unprecedented public attention to the White House. Most of the
Roosevelt, Truman, and Eisenhower respondents in this study indicated that offers of
speaking engagements or other public appearances were rejected as a rule of thumb.
When I asked one Truman man if he had given interviews to reporters, he immediately
told me that this would have been "unheard of behavior" for a staff member. Most of
the respondents from the earlier administrations vowed that they would never write
memoirs about their White House years unless asked to do so by the President-- be-
cause "it would not be proper to do SO.
In sharp contrast to most of their predecessors the Kennedy men were constantly
in the news. They did make speeches and public appearances. The mass circulation
magazines carried detailed and frequently romantic stories about them. Already, three
of them have written memoirs. 54 They gave interviews to reporters rather freely. How-
ever, most of the Kennedy men did try to insulate themselves as much as possible from
the great pressures for publicity. Too much publicity would have made them their own
men and by definition useless to the President. As one of them put it, "While few 55 of
us had a "passion for anonymity, most of us had a preference in that direction.
The Johnson White House Office, 1963-1967
Although President Johnson is now in his fourth year in the White House, to write
about his staff organization and his approach to staffing is to write about something
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
31
which is still evolving. President Johnson was not really free to develop his own
"staff system" until after the election of 1964. For many reasons he felt that it was
desirable to keep as many of the Kennedy staff members as possible until after the
election. In the "let us continue" spirit, the presence of the Kennedy staff was an
important part of the continuity which characterized the very smooth transition -
standing in sharp contrast to the Roosevelt-Truman transition. Moreover, President
Johnson did not have an extensive staff of his own and he did not have time to develop
one before the election. He made a decidedly wise decision in asking the Kennedy
men to stay with him. However, this decision did make it more difficult for him to
put his own stamp on the staff.
The departure of Walter Jenkins from the staff during the campaign made it even
more difficult for Johnson to develop his own staff organization. kins had been
his primary assistant for two decades. During his months in the White House, he
apparently demonstrated his great ability. He knew Johnson well, had the complete
trust of the President, and undoubtedly would have been his key staff member if he
had not collapsed in 1964. The vacancy he left on the staff would be a very difficult
one to fill and led to a considerable reshuffling of duties among staff members.
Then, after the election, two more key assistants, Jack Valenti and Bill Moyers,
departed within a few months of each other. Both left to accept high salaried and
prestigious jobs outside of government. Thus, during his first three years in the
Presidency, Johnson lost three of his most important staff members. During the same
period, most of the Kennedy men were also leaving the staff. The result has been
that the President has not been able to develop a definitive approach of his own to
staff work.
However, some preliminary observations can be made about the Johnson style.
He has been intensely interested in alternatives of staff organization. One of the
first things he did in the White House was to hold a long session with Clark Clifford
about the transition in general in which the organization of the White House Office
was a primary topic. Moreover, he began to look around the Government in an effort
to find some good staff prospects. He did not hesitate to rob Secretary of Defense
McNamara of one of his most able men, Joseph A. Califano, Jr.
President Johnson has clearly kept firm personal control over the work of the
White House Office. Although Jenkins and Moyers were key assistants, they were
not chiefs of staff. Johnson would not be capable of working with the Eisenhower
kind of staff organization. More than any President since Roosevelt, he needs a
staff which is intensely personal and absolutely tuned to his own work habits and
needs.
Perhaps as a result of the difficulty President Johnson has had in developing the
White House Office into the type of staff service he needs, he has turned to outside
advisers more than any President since Roosevelt. Although he has found some
advisers in executive branch positions, most of them have been from the private
sector. The most important of them have been the three Washington lawyers: James
Rowe (a Roosevelt Administrative Assistant), Abe Fortas and Clark Clifford. The
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
32
latter two men have of course been brought into government positions during the
Johnson administration.
The Johnson staff men, like the Kennedy men, have been in the public eye with
the result that White House Office professional staff positions have now become among
the most glamourous positions in government. There can be little doubt that too much
publicity can seriously impede the effectiveness of any presidential staff member.
In fact, it may almost be stated as a firm principle that the more publicity White
House staff members get, the less useful they are to the President. Only the very
rare assistant can be his own man and serve the President at the same time.
Conclusion
As I concluded an interview with one of the Truman respondents, he perceptively
remarked, "Your project can't make recommendations or draw organization charts.
You can only say what has been done. " This is certainly the case. Even the keenest
observer of Presidential staffing practices could be of only limited value in advising a
President about the organization of his office. History has not produced a model
system. Each President must develop the staff organization and staffing practices
which can be the most useful to him. The White House Office exists to serve the
President in a. very personal manner. That has never been in doubt since 1939.
However, any President could learn much by studying the staffing practices of
His predecessors. He will not find all of the alternatives which will be available to
him in their experience. There is still plenty of room for innovation in Presidential
staffing practices. But he will get a general idea about the alternatives available to
him and he may be able to reject some of them immediately on the basis of the
experience of his predecessors.
Each President since 1939 has had a distinctively different White House Office
operation. However, each President has also learned from and built on his predeces-
sors' work to some extent. Thus Truman rejected the disorder of the Roosevelt staff
but he followed its most salient characteristics as he gathered a group of generalists
around him and, carefully guarding his own position as President, personally super-
vised their activity. And although Kennedy rejected the basic tenets underlying the
Eisenhower staff organization, he found that particular aspects of the Eisenhower
experience could be useful for him, and he incorporated them into his own organization.
In spite of the major differences which existed among the staffing practices of
the five Presidents studied here, a strong thread of continuity does carry through each
administration from Roosevelt to Johnson. The central structure of each White House
Office has been oriented around the recurrent. legal and political duties of the Presi-
dent. The titles and the incumbents' approach to their work have been different from
one administration to the next, but such functions as appointments, press relations,
and patronage have steadily formed the spine of the Office.
Each President's personnel decisions for the White House Office have been
Tn fact it mav be more difficult for a President to recruit personal staff
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
33
than to recruit Cabinet members. The criteria which the staff member must me et
are freguently more restrictive than those necessary for prospective Cabinet mem-
bers. Moreover, the application of the criteria can require some very subtle and
difficult judgments on the part of the President. The 169 men who have served on
the White House Office's professional staff during the period of this study have
been a very able, well-trained group. It is very difficult for anyone other than the
President himself to judge the effectiveness of their performances. However, there
have been very few abject failures among them.
Each administration has also contributed an increased workload to the
next. The Roosevelt staff members worked hard and for long hours but between
periods of high pressure they had moments in which to relax. For the Kennedy-
Johnson staff members there have been few moments for relaxation. Every day is a
high pressure one. Every assignment is urgent. Each mistake is costly. The
workload of the President and of his staff has increased enormously since 1939.
Even when measured in such simp le terms as the number of telephone calls and
pieces of mail coming into the White House each day, the workload in 1967 is
staggering.
The size of the staff has also increased to some extent -- especially in
the number of men backing up the front-line staff men. However, the size of the
staff has not expanded as rapidly as the workload. Moreover, in order to serve the
President effectively, the personal staff has to be relatively small. Even in the
Eisenhower Administration, where staffing practices permitted a larger staff than
the other four Presidents found useful, the total number of staff members
seldom exceeded twenty-five and the respondents in this study agreed that additional
staff members in their respective offices would not have been useful.
The increasing workload has made the question of effective staff services
for President Johnson in 1967 much more important than the question was for
President Roosevelt when he received the report of the Brownlow Committee in
1937. The data presented here would seem to indicate that the availability of
expanded staff services has not significantly altered the basic nature of the
Presidency. The "personalized" Presidency has clearly survived the expansion of
the staff. In the one instance in which staff organization and practices had a
significant impact on the nature of the Presidency itself, the Eisenhower Administra-
tion, the President himself deliberately decided to operate his office in that fashion.
He made the choice. The people reelected him for a second term. More important,
his decisions were not binding on his successors and they were free to interpret the
Presidency and develop it as they saw fit.
During the past three decades then an expanded personnal staff in the
White House Office has not prevented the President from being "both in law and
conscience
as big a man as he can." In fact, the White House Office staff
gives the President a chance to overcome the many limitations on the Presidency to
an extent that his own personality can be felt as fully as possible in the office and
in the government. The staff has not helped to narrow the gap between the President's
authority and his responsibility but it has helped to make the responsibility bear-
able, the endless chain of decisions easier, and the consequences of them a bit
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
FOOTNOTES
*
Many of the interviews which provide the basic data for the study of which this paper
is a part were conducted while I was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of
The Brookings Institution during the summer of 1966. I am grateful to George Graham
and his colleagues at Brookings for making their incomparable facilities available
to me. In addition, the study has received support from Tulane University and the
University of Virginia.
1. The McKinley incident is reported in Edward H. Hobbs, Behind the
President (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1954), p.86.
2. See the Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management
(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1937).
3. For two excellent accounts of the Committee's work and its impact see
Herbert Emmerich, Essays on Federal Reorganization (University, Alabama: University
of Alabama Press, 1950), pp. 61-90; and Richard Polenberg, Reorganizing Roosevelt's
Government, 1936-1939 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966).
4. Report of the President's Committee on Administrative Management,
op. cit., p.3.
5. Ibid., p. 46.
6. President Poosevelt's Message to Congress, January 12, 1937, as quoted
in Samuel I. Rosenman (ed.), The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roose-
velt (New York: Random House, 1938), V, 668.
7. See Hobbs, op. cit., pp. 91-92.
8. This estimate was given by Bill Moyers in a news interview in which
he was describing White House economies. New York Times, January 12, 1966, p.14.
9. Clinton Rossiter, The American Presidency (New York: Mentor Books,
1956), p. 30.
10. See Louis W. Koenig, "The Man and the Institution," The Annals,
Vol. 307 (September, 1956), 13.
11. Rossiter, op. cit., p. 100.
12. See Edward S. Corwin, "The President as Administrative Chief,"
The Journal of Politics, Vol. I (February, 1939), 17.
Footnotes (con't)
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
13.
Edward S. Corwin, The President: Office and Powers (New York: New
York University Press, 1957), Fourth Edition, pp. 302-303. See footnote sixteen,
p: 495 for his specific response to Rossiter.
14. Ibid., p. 304.
15. The expression is Woodrow Wilson's from his famous lecture at
Columbia University.
16. See Edward H. Hobbs, Behind the President, op.cit.; "An Historical
Review of Plans for Presidential Staffing Law and Contemporary Problems, Vol. XXI,
663 ff. Richard Neustadt, "The Presidency at Mid-Century,; Law and Contemporary
Problems, Vol. XXI, 641ff.; "Approaches to Staffing the Presidency: Notes on FDR
and JFK, American Political Science Review, Vol. LVII (1963), 855ff. Louis W.
Koenig, The Invisible Presidency (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960).
Rexford G. Tugwell, The Enlargement of the Presidency (New York: Doubleday and
Company, Inc., 1960). J.C. Heinlein, Presidential Staff and National Security Policy
(Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 1963).
17. The "professional staff" category is a difficult one to define. It does
not include such positions as Physician to the President, Military Aide to the Presi-
dent, Social Secretary, or Personal Secretary to the President unless the men and
women in these positions were involved in aspects of White House Office work not
ordinarily within the province of their position. Some of them were so involved and
have been included in the study. Note that the total number of staff members in
the tables in this section may not total 169 because the Roosevelt men who stayed
with Truman and the Kennedy men who stayed with Johnson for more than six months
were counted as a member of each staff.
18. See Dean E. Mann, The Assistant Secretaries: Problems and Processes
of Appointment (Washington: The Brookings Institution, 1965), pp. 16-17; John J.
Corson and R. Shale Paul, Men Near the Top: Filling Key Posts in the Federal Service
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), p. 22; W. Lloyd Warner et.al., The
American Federal Executive (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 165-170.
19. See W. Lloyd Warner and James C. Abegglen, Occupational Mobility in
American Business and Industry (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1955),
p. 157.
20. Compare Mann, op.cit., pp. 18-19; Warner et.al., op. cit., pp. 39-55;
W. Lloyd Warner and James C. Abegglen, Big Business Leaders in American (New York:
Harper and Brothers, 1955), pp. 177-196.
21. Ireland 4, Canada 2, Austria, Malaya, Russia, Japan.
22. See Mann, op. cit., pp. 19-20; Warner et. al., op. cit., pp. 107-146.
Footnotes (con't)
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
23. See Warner et. al., Ibid.
24. Several others who had been in the White House Office since January,
1953 resigned in 1960 in order to accept appointments to other positions in the exe-
cutive branch.
25. Richard Neustadt, "Approaches to Staffing the Presidency: Notes on FDR
and JFK, APSR, LVII, 856.
26. Ibid.
27. See Alfred B. Rollins, Jr., Roosevelt and Howe (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1962), pp. 381-456 for an interesting account of the early years for Howe and
the Secretaries in the White House.
28. Two of them, Daniel J. Tobin and Lowell Mellett, were on the staff for
only a few months under rather special circumstances.
29. See Samuel I. Rosenman, Working With Roosevelt (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1952), pp. 366-541.
30. See Robert E. Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins (New York: Harper and
Brothers, 1948).
31. Koenig's account of Corcoran is a fasinating one. See his The Invisible
Presidency, op. cit., pp. 249-298.
32. Both Sherwood and Rosenman give interesting accounts of these sessions.
See Sherwood, op.cit.; Rosenman, op. cit.
33. Grace Tully, F.D.R., My Boss (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1949),
p. 354.
34. See Truman's account of the transition, Harry S. Truman, Year of Decisions
(New York: Doubleday and Company, 1955), pp. 9-52.
35. Truman regularly held Cabinet meetings every Friday when he was in
Washington and, apparently, they were frequently fruitful sessions.
36. Clifford was nc longer in the White House and Murphy was not particu-
larly interested in this aspect of Clifford's work.
37. Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House Years: Mandate for Change
(New York: Doubleday and Company, 1963), P. 114.
38. Sherman Adams, First-Hand Report (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1961),
n. 50
Footnotes (con't)
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
39. Robert Keith Gray, who held three major jobs under Adams (patronage,
Appointments Secretary, and Cabinet Secretary), gives some very helpful accounts
of Adams in his Thirty Acres Under Glass (New York: Doubleday, 1962).
40. He also held the title of Vice Chairman of the Operations Coordinating
Board.
41. Robert Cutler and Gordan Gray were the two appointees to the position.
42. Dulles was the only Cabinet member who could always enter the
President's office without appointment and unannounced. Eisenhower once scolded
a new Appointments Secretary for announcing Dulles.
43. Adams gives a detailed account of his work during the illnesses. See
Adams, op. cit. pp. 180-201.
44. Eisenhower's account of his decision to ask for Adams resignation differs
in some respects from Koenig's account. See Dwight D. Eisenhower, The White House
Years: Waging Peace (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1965), pp. 311-318;
Koenig, The Invisible Presidency, op. cit., pp. 389-399.
45. Ibid. p. 399.
46. See Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (New York: Harper and Row, 1965),
P. 232.
47. Theodore Sorenson, Decision-Making in the White House (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1963), p. 17.
48. Sorenson, Kennedy, op. cit., p. 259.
49. All three were Jews. When Sorenson felt that it was necessary to
appraise Kennedy of this fact, the President replied, "So what? They tell me this is
the first Cabinet with two Jews, too. All I care about is whether they can handle
it." Ibid., p. 252. This story illustrates the fact that no President has ever felt
the need to "balance" his White House Office staff because of political considerations.
There is no expectation in any political quarter that he should do SO. Instances in
which politicians have tried to influence appointments to the President's staff have
been rare and seldom successful. The staff appointees, of course, are not subject
to the advice and consent of the Senate.
50. The Kennedy respondents in talking about Feldman invariably referred
to Kennedy's statement, "if Mike Feldman ever sold out, we could all go to jail.
As quoted in Pierre Salinger, With Kennedy (New York: Doubleday and Company, 1966),
P. 70.
51. Ibid. pp. 64-65.
Gaylord
Footnotes (con't)
Lacy: The Development of the White House Office
52. Although Schlesinger's account of the Kennedy Administration is not
as useful as Sorenson's on our topic, his volume is a fascinating one. See Arthur
Schlesinger, Jr., A Thousand Days (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1965).
53. Sorenson, Kennedy, op. cit., p. 262.
54. Schlesinger indicates that Kennedy said at the start of his Administration
that he did not want "his staff recording the daily discussions of the White House.
However, after the Bay of Pigs, Schlesinger reports the following conversation with
the President: "Then after the Bay of Pigs he (Kennedy) said, 'I hope you sent a full
account of that.' I said that I had understood he did not want us to keep full accounts
of anything. He said, 'No, go ahead, you can be damn sure that the CIA has its
records and the Joint Chiefs theirs. We'd better make sure we have a record over here.
So you go ahead. I did." Schlesinger, op. cit., pp. x-xi.
55. Sorenson, Kennedy, op. cit., p. 261.