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:
Dealing with the Old Administration. 41 pages. [Report], n.d.
Scholar Source Context
Document identity
localId
26127094
label
WHSF: Returned, 39-16
core
doc
dtoType
document
citationUrl
pageCount
1
Source metadata
id
26127094
sourceUrl
contentType
document
title
WHSF: Returned, 39-16
description
This file contains:
Dealing with the Old Administration. 41 pages. [Report], n.d.
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
26127094
levelOfDescription
fileUnit
recordType
description
ocrSource
nara-archive
Single page context
seq
1
pageIndex
0
type
document
mediaId
230ab52e141fd681
ocrText
Richard Nixon Presidential Library
White House Special Files Collection
Folder List
Box Number Folder Number Document Date Document Type
Document Description
39
16
n.d.
Report
Dealing with the Old Administration. 41
pages.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
Page 1 of 1
MEMORANDUM FOR
MR. NIXON
DEALING WITH THE OLD ADMINISTRATION
Introduction and Summary
Relations between Presidents and Presidents-Elect of different parties
have always been delicate and often strained. Frequently the President's
natural disappointment at his party's defeat has been tinged with personal bitter-
ness because his administration and policies have borne the brunt of his succes-
sor's campaign salvos. Nor has graciousness been an inevitable characteristic
of Presidents-Elect. Even the most sympathetic historians of the New Deal find
little to applaud in F.D.R.'s cavalier treatment of Hoover in 1932.
Yet cooperation is essential for several reasons. At least part of the public
will be offended if either fails to show courtesy and consideration. National unity
is hardly served by permitting a hard-fought campaign to merge into post election
feuding. And, of course, much of the machinery for preparing a new President
for the transfer of power can be utilized only with the concert of his predecessor.
Thus it is in your interest that the interregnum be a time when old hatchets are
buried and the grinding of new axes postponed.
Both because he has more to gain and because the task is easier for him,
the burden of maintaining good will between Administrators falls to the President-
Elect. The outgoing Administration has valuable information, experience, and
2
advice that you and your team will want to tap. To make cordial advances, to
overlook minor irritants, to soothe the President's wounded pride -- all these are
small prices to pay for such resources.
Pre-election Period. In order to exploit fully the opportunities for an effective
transfer of responsibility allowed by cooperation between the two Administrations,
you should consider the following actions:
- Appoint a counterpart to President Johnson's designee, Charles Murphy,
experienced in the operations of the Executive Branch and able to bargain with
Murphy on equal terms.
- Ask your designee to decide upon the requests to be made of the incumbent
Administration.
- Initiate planning for transition matters not directly related to relations with
the old Administration.
Post-election Period. Post-election customs are clear. President Johnson
will doubtless suggest an early meeting to set the tone of transitional cooperation
and lay the broad outlines of the actions you will take together. In summary -- to
be elaborated later -- you will want to touch the following points:
- Security clearances: You should make arrangements for expediting security
clearances for your appointees.
- Current and background information: You should seek access to such Admin-
istration information as daily intelligence reports, briefings and memoranda on
current problems, and appropriate "cable traffic. " You should also request other
information, to be described below, that may be difficult to obtain later or less
valuable unless studied in advance and acted upon early.
- 3 -
- National security and budget cooperation: You should plan for carly and
close cooperation on national security affairs and the budget process.
- Orientation of appointees: You should arrange for the general orientation
of your appointees: briefing of new officials by the predecessors, access to career
staff and files, clerical and professional assistance, and perhaps ground-rules
to be established for an "open office" policy.
I. Pre-election contacts
1. It will be very much to your advantage to accept President Johnson's
invitation to begin discussions now about the transition. After Election Day you
will want as much cooperation as you can get from the outgoing Administration.
The more you get, the more effectively you and your appointees can govern after
January 20.
You cannot ask much prior to November 5. Whomever you designate to
negotiate with the Administration can, however, lay the groundwork for fulfilling
your many post-election requirements.
You must first therefore choose an individual to act for you in these nego-
tiations. President Johnson's appointee, Charles Murphy, is an affable but very
tough Southerner, long experienced in Washington. He acted for Truman in the
1952-53 transition, served in Agriculture and on the C.A.B. under Kennedy and
Johnson, returned to the White House recently as a Special Assistant, and reportedly
represented Johnson in Chicago during the democratic Convention. Your designee
must be able to deal with Murphy on equal terms. It seems essential that he possess
not only personal shrewdness and bargaining abilities, but experience in the total
operations of the Executive Branch, preferably in the Executive Office.
2. You should develop with your designee a catalogue of your transitional
needs. For both political and administrative reasons, these will fall into three
general categories: (a) services that can be performed, at least in part, by the
outgoing Administration prior to November 5; (b) post-election cooperation that
can be plotted and arranged prior to the election; (c) post-election services that
need not, or should not, be discussed with the incumbent Administration until
after the election. In subsequent sections of this memorandum, we suggest
several cooperative efforts and services you may want to request and, where
important, try to indicate the time when action is most usefully initiated.
3. Although not directly related to dealings with the old Administration,
certain other transitional matters bear a short comment. In order to coordinate
later cooperation with the Administration and to make maximum use of interregnum
preparation, you should begin thinking about designees to perform two functions.
First, you will need some person(s) to direct and organize your transition activi-
ties in general. This man would conceivably play much the same role as Henry
Cabot Lodge did for Eisenhower in 1952-1953. Second, you may want to select a
transition planner, whose task will be to perform "think work" about the transition.
The services of Richard Neustadt for Kennedy in 1960-61 suggest the nature of his
responsibilities.
II. The Immediate Post-Election Period
A. Meeting with the President.
4. The President will probably contact you shortly after November 5 and
suggest an early meeting. In order to gain maximum lead time for the transition,
you should accept the earliest possible date. Preliminary negotiating at the staff
level can settle many details of agenda and format, which then need not occupy the
time of the principals. *
5. You and the President may wish to issue a joint statement after your
meeting. The ideal statement would leave everything open and yet obviate any
appearance of friction which might result if the President later feels compelled to
emphasize that his power continues unimpaired until January 20 or if you later
wish to disclaim responsibility for interregnum Executive actions. A suggestion
follows:
The President and President-Elect had a full, friendly
and useful discussion. They and their associates will
cooperate in every appropriate way in order to insure
a smooth and effective transfer of responsibility on
January 20. They will continue to consult as they
think desirable and are confident that such coopera-
tion can be achieved without impairing the orderly func-
tioning of the Executive Branch in carrying out the
President's Constitutional responsibilities.
B. Principals' tone shapes transition.
6. You and the President will have to take strong and positive action to
surmount the impediments to effective cooperation that have traditionally charac-
terized transitions. Many in Government will feel that they and their policies
were treated unjustly during the campaign. Some new people will act as if they
*
For bargaining purposes, you will want these "White House negotiators" to be
aware not only of your various needs for the transition, but of their relative
priority. In addition, you will want to thenk about the general format of the
meeting. You may wish, for example, to request the presence of key members
of both Presidential staffs, either for purposes of coordination OF in the hope of
exposing subordinates to the spirit of cooperation shown by the principals.
- 6 -
were already in office. New appointees have been known to assume that their
predecessors were fools or scoundrels or both and to show no regard for past
decisions, present reasons, or future insights. Some incumbents may attempt to
"sell" their policies to the new people. And the new people may feel that they are
being asked to commit themselves prematurely.
By frankly anticipating these characteristic attitudes, you can try to offset
them. Hopefully, so will the retiring President who must set the example of
neither preempting his successor unnecessarily nor deferring all action in critical
areas. And if he, who has suffered campaign criticism, is willing to act respon-
sibly and constructively, his subordinates can be encouraged to do the same.
You, in turn, cannot be too emphatic in urging your appointees to take
advantage of their predecessors' valuable experience in coping with their depart-
ments, their constituencies, and their particular Congressional committees. In
the past, incoming officials have forfeited much of the advantage to be gained in
tapping this source of information and advice. In 1952, for example, Charles
Wilson neglected entirely te profit from the experience of Robert Lovett. Eight
years later, the Kennedy Administration retained General Andrew Goodpaster
through the transition period but made little effort to draw upon his experience.
Those of your appointees who served in the Eisenhower Administration would do
well to recall how little their own readiness to assist their successors was appre-
ciated. If you can convince your appointees that the advice of former officeholders
is a valuable resource not to be wasted, you will have taken a major step toward
an effective and efficient transition.
-7-
III. Clearance of New Appointees
7. Arrangements must be made for investigating the personal background of
your appointees for two reasons. First, some of your appointees will need the
immediate security clearancès necessary for direct access to classified informa-
tion of the Johnson Administration. Nor will you yourself wish to entrust classified
materials to your people, either before or after the inauguration, without the assur-
ance of at least preliminary clearance. Second, you will probably want to continue
the practice of investigating all potential Presidential appointees -- regardless of
their need for classified data -- in order to assure yourself of their personal
suitability for high government office.
8. The timing problem: Investigations not begun before the election require
attention. Obviously, the process should be initiated as early as possible to avoid
the delays incident to overloading the investigative agencies.
9. General procedure: (a) The reports on those needing pre-inaugural
access to classified information must first be examined by the Administration --
perhaps the White House itself -- which can then relay both its decisions and the
reports to you. Exposing such reports to the Administration may be politically
undesirable but is probably unavoidable. It seems unlikely that the information
thus revealed would be misused by the clearing officials. (b) Unless you receive
direct access to the investigative agencies, reports on persons not in the preceding
category must also be channeled through the Administration. Here, however, the
Administration is merely a conduit to you; it has no need to examine the content of
the report. You sho 'd arrange for the Administration, therefore, to transmit to
you the unopened reports on persons not requiring pre-inauguration security
clearances.
S -
10. In both the pre-election and post-inauguration periods, the problem can
be mitigated through the use of temporary clearances. You will have to determine
the availability, limits, and conditions for such clearances.
IV. Information for the President-Elect and his designees.
A. Current information.
11. You should request the kind of military, diplomatic, and foreign intelli-
gence provided routinely for the President. Such information will give you back-
ground for decisions you will have to make after January 20th. Also it should help
you to establish early guidelines for distinguishing presidential from departmental
"business. " And it may permit you to judge the form and adequacy of such informa-
tion for your needs.
12. You will, of course, need a staff to sit astride this information flow,
direct your attention to the matters most relevant for you, and otherwise absorb
and use this flow. * Let us emphasize that your most useful and significant infor-
mation may come not via formal transmissions from the old administration but
via your own people working closely with incumbent counterparts -- as discussed
later in this memorandum.
13. You should request a channel for obtaining appropriate briefings and
memoranda on current problems for yourself and your people. The Administration
would probably offer some on its own initiative but you should clear the way for
making your own specific requests for information and analysis on both substantive
matters and on transitional and organizational topics. **
*
Your basic needs for a transition staff were noted in our August 15 memorandum;
a later memorandum will address itself to White House organization.
**
Whether you should seek authority to request data directly from the departments
or from departmental staff is discussed in a Inter section.
- 9 -
Details are not crucial in your initial dealings with the Administration; they
can be worked out later. What you must establish at the outset is the basic prop-
osition that the President-Elect is entitled to full access and that government infor-
mation should move freely to you and your designees. Whatever you can do to
create an atmosphere of willing cooperation and respect for the President's own
responsibilities will facilitate the flow of information.
14. One of your most difficult and critical problems during the transition
will be the gaining of mastery (insofar as mastery is possible) over national security
affairs. You may want to request President Johnson to assign you one or more
career officials qualified to brief you during the transition period on military,
intelligence, diplomatic and related matters. The person(s) selected would be
appropriately cleared, sufficiently knowledgeable to interpret and amplify informa-
tion received about substantive and agency problems, and sufficiently experienced
and senior to be respected by both sides for intelligence and discretion. Such a
person would know when it is appropriate to seek further information from the
staffs with which he is familiar and when not to do so.
15. You might want to request access to some "cable traffic" into the White
House as a preliminary exposure to later responsibilities. Your personal staff
for national security matters, to take one example, could serve as an effective
recipient of this information to promote their own education and as a conduit to you.
B. Other information, especially from the White House and Executive Office.
16. You should ask President Johnson to arrange some way of giving access
(controlled by him) to national security materials that might be available, or
readily available, only in White House files which leave with the retiring President.
- 10 -
a) One aspect of this request is easily presented and justified:
Eisenhower-Khrushchev conversations were covered completely only in the White
House files which left with President Eisenhower. President Johnson would
doubtless agree that a new President must know what the preceding President said
to foreign officials.
b) Your request should, if possible, embrace a second and more
elusive matter: There might be "limited distribution" or other closely held docu-
ments or memoranda that are conveniently assembled only in White House files. *
c) Perhaps you can do no more than to (1) raise the problem, (2) express
confidence that President Johnson will do everything he properly can to make sure
that his successor is fully informed on significant national security matters, and
(3) leave the details to be worked out by your national security adviser(s) and
their incumbent counterparts. This reinforces another point: Unlike President
Kennedy's adviser, McGeorge Bundy, who did not begin work until January or
assemble his staff until later, your national security staff should be appointed
early and begin performance as soon as possible.
*
It is conceivable, for example, that complete details of various contacts with
foreign officials on Vietnam matters may be so sensitive and restricted that full
information vital to the new President might not be readily known to carry-over
personnel or readily revealed by surviving files. In offer becaus, Important
material might be contained in permanent departmental files be you no. readily
accossible because disporsed among voluminous other materials.
- 11 -
17. You should ask to SCC Task Force reports prepared for the President
and not yet released to the public. You could point out that work by thoughtful
people should not be wasted. You should, however, state your willingness to
accept any limitations imposed by President Johnson as to acknowledgment, attri-
bution, or quotation, and defer to his wishes regarding any reports which he might
issue publicly himself or use in late messages and speeches.
18. You should ask for reorganization studies completed or underway in the
Budget Bureau or in the Departments.
19. You will want to specify certain useful personnel information that could
easily be assembled by the Bureau of the Budget: available Presidential and
Departmental appointments (to the extent not published elsewhere), expiring term
appointments, Presidential powers with respect to various classes of appointees,
personnel policy decisions that need to be made within the first three months, etc.
20. You should request the preparation of a memorandum on technical opera-
tions of the White House, office and mansion -- budget, accounting, permanent
personnel, customs, etc. This should be supplemented by personal consultation
between incoming and outgoing officials. In addition, William Hopkins, the
Executive Clerk, is a great storehouse of information on these matters.
21. The preceding enumeration of reports must not disguise the important
truth that your best source of information lies not on paper but in people. Present
(and former) members of the White House Staff are perhaps the most valuable
resource of all for a new Administration. The unique experience and responsibility
of Presidents seem to forge a common bond among them notwithstanding differences
- 12 -
of party or policy. Presidential staffs should find a similar bond arising from the
special institution they serve. The insights, experience, and occasionally the
negative example of incumbent and former staff members can be extremely illum-
inating for new people. And a common loyalty to the Presidency should be enough
to encourage the future staff to seek and the present staff to offer candid discussion
of the Office and its problems.
V. Orientation of New Appointees.
A. National Security and Budget observers.
22. Since you will need to master, at the earliest possible moment, the
massive flow of communications and advice relating to national security policy,
you should give high priority to obtaining from the outgoing administration permis-
sion for your prospective Special Assistant(s) for national security affairs to work
with their incumbent counterpart(s), and, if possible, immediately nearby, hope-
fully in adjoining offices. If such an arrangement is not offered by President
Johnson, you should request it. The terms of your understanding with the outgoing
President should not preclude your designating more than one person for this
function. Even if you choose to centralize responsibility on your own staff, your
designee will want assistance to help in learning procedures, in mastering substan-
tive issues, and perhaps in examining files soon to be removed.
23. In addition, your Administration must become familiar -- promptly and
in depth -- with the Budget Bureau and its current work on the 1970 budget. Apart
from intimate intra-Administration considerations of peculiarly partisan matters,
- 13 -
it would be helpful for your Director (or other designee) and a few key staff to
observe as much of the budget preparation process as they can absorb. In this
way, your appointees can understand the nature of current issues, can help you
make preliminary judgments about the issues you want to re-examine after
Inauguration, and can better handle the new or repeated departmental requests
confronting them in early 1969. Close cooperation during the transition period
has become traditional in Budget, and it is a salutary tradition. In the unlikely
event that the Administration fails to offer cooperation in this area, you should
request it.
B. General orientation of appointees.
24. To reiterate a key point, you will find no greater resource in the out-
going Administration than the expertise and experience of its staff and appointees.
In the past, incoming officials have generally suffered to learn the same lessons
time and again because they have not profited from their predecessors' experience.
On the whole, this seems attributable more to mistrust of the predecessors rather
than to any unwillingness of the latter to be helpful. Of cour se, not everyone can
be equally helpful. Of course, much that is said will have to be discounted by
different interests and circumstances. But the fact is: outgoing officials are a
valuable resource that should be utilized by the incoming officials during the transi-
tion period.
25. You should press the old Administration to encourage Secretaries,
Under Secretaries, Assistant Secretaries, Administrators, and other Presidential
appointees to receive their counterparts and to acquaint them with the administrative
practices and substantive issues of their agencies.
- 14 -
a) You can expect the office of each Presidential appointee to have
prepared an appropriate "briefing book" on administrative and substantive matters.
Even excessively voluminous and routinely bureaucratic products can be useful to
the appointee (or his special assistant). Even the routine product can identify such
basic information (often unknown to new appointees) as both the "hot" and recurring
issues facing the agency, the identity and arguments of important interest groups
concerned with each issue, and the relevant Congressional considerations.
b) On such topics, you should advise your appointees to seek the views of
the incumbents. The direct exchange can be more sharply focused and more candid.
c) Furthermore, you should recommend that your appointees ask outgoing
officials (on a discreet and informal basis) for their views on the agencies' career
people. (We would hope that some information of this type would have been gathered
in the pre-election period.) The new official with a different policy outlook may
react differently, but incoming and outgoing officials will often have a common
reaction - independent of policy to a subordinate's qualities. In time, the new
people may learn, as did their predecessors, that a subordinate is analytical,
concerned, diligent, articulate, concise, skeptical, discreet, or the opposites.
While the new official will not want to be bound by the predecessor's opinions, the
latter's views can accelerate the process of testing and appraising. And, of course,
subordinates are most useful to one who knows what discounts and premiums to
apply to their work.
26. Some incumbent officials may value their successors or their agencies
sufficiently to open their offices to their successers, letting them read much of
the paper traffic and to observe conferences and meetings with subordinates and
- 15 -
outsiders. Whether any particular official makes such an offer will depend upon
his work and working habits and the mesh of personalities. This assumes that the
"open office" approach occurs to him both as a possibility and as one to which the
President would not object. It follows, therefore, that if the President makes no
mention of the subject to you, you should diplomatically suggest its usefulness.
You should urge him, if agreeable, to authorize such cooperation perhaps by
mentioning it in a Cabinet discussion of transitional arrangements. Some such
approach as this is almost imperative in the State and Defense and perhaps else-
where, depending on your plans.
27. These approaches are not without this danger: such one to one interaction
between incumbents and new appointees may unconsciously and uncritically tend to
freeze existing patterns of organization, allocations of responsibility, or ways of
seeing problems. We see two possible countermeasures: First, you can make
your appointees conscious of the issue, demand critical thinking about it, and warn
that organizational arrangements are subject to review and revision. Second, it
may be possible to postpone the appointment of some Assistant Secretaries in
those departments which can be efficiently managed at the outset without the full
complement of Assistant Secretaries. If so, your primary appointees would have
more time for a thorough personnel search and for a careful review of effective
organizational possibilities within the department.
28. Pre-inauguration access of appointees to the departmental staffs will
probably be opposed by the old Administration which might fear a premature
transfer of staff loyalty. Because no categorical rule can cope entirely with
individual and departmental variations, such contacts are best left to be worked
out agency by agency. At the Presidential level, you should limit yourself to two
requests:
a) Your study groups and task forces may feel particular need for access
to relevant departmental files and experts. Fully knowledgeable outside experts
are, to be sure, often available. But where this is not the case, the government
experts may be essential for thorough appreciation of the data and correct analysis.
You should specify these situations as clearly as you can and request access rele-
vant to them. (They will be relatively few in number.)
b) You should seek agreement in principle that agencies lend a suitable
"expert or two" to the new officials or task forces when they request them and
when such aid can be provided without disrupting the current work of the agency.
29. General pre-inauguration access to files (as distinct from staff) might
be rejected altogether if sought at the Presidential level. Since permanent depart-
mental files will be available later, the Administration may hesitate to grant early
access. You should ask no more than authority to make arrangements on a case-
by-case basis with each department. In light of your hopes to include younger men
in the intimate workings of Government, you might seek permission to designate
relatively junior persons --- prospective special assistants to high officials -- to
study relevant files and other background information which they can later bring to
bear in giving post-inauguration assistance to their chiefs. In other situations,
such work might make it possible to delay the appointment of some Assistant
Secretaries, as discussed earlier. This technique could prove extremely valuable
- 17 - -
in selected offices where orientation of new appointees is difficult. Possible
examples are the Secretariat and a few other offices in the State Department as
30. You should arrange quite early to have at least one incumbent official
remain as Acting Secretary in each Department. He will exercise formal statutory
power until the new Secretary and his team are confirmed (which might not occur
on Inauguration day or the next).
31. There are certain technical areas where you may expect a briefing from
the Administration. If one is not offered, you should request the following informa-
tion:
a) To what extent will departmental office space be available? In 1960-
61, ten new officials were housed in State and two in each of the other Departments.
To accommodate any larger number might well prove disruptive but if an "open
office" policy is in effect, new officials would have to be housed nearby. In other
situations location may not be crucial if adequate information is available.
b) What funds are available to the President-Elect under the Transition
Act for personnel, supplies, consultants, travel, and office space?
c) To what extent can the various departments help to absorb the
expenses of transition by lending office space and clerical and professional
assistance?
VI. The Handling of Crises
32. If a crisis arises during the transition and the response of the President
will have major continuing consequences (e.g., American response to a Chinese
invasion of Vietnam), the President will doubtless want to consult you since yours
will be the longer burden.
- 18 -
You probably have little choice but to assume that the President acts in
good faith when he calls upon you. The public would expect you to consult with
the President in a time of national emergency. You will have been receiving and
digesting information before and after the election; your confidence in the data
will be proportional to the variety of your sources. Nevertheless, you may
hesitate to share the responsibility, even symbolically, without clearly adequate
information or time for deliberation, without decision-making authority, and
without the inescapable mandate of office.
No one can tell either principal his duty. This much is clear: the President
can see that you are kept fully informed and invite you to express your views. You
may wish to decline and in most cases this is a real option. However, there may
be a crisis of such proportions that silence or the standard formulations of concern
are inadequate responses. Then if you have a clear policy view, there is every
reason to state it. Beyond this we do not venture.
STAFFING THE WHITE HOUSE
1. Introduction: your office. The White House Office is your personal office and
must be staffed and organized to meet your felt needs and work habits. Accordingly,
you must appropriately discount advice from outsiders-such as the authors of this
paper-who are unfamiliar with your tastes in staff work. For the same reason, we
have not tried to frame a prospective organization table for your White House. Rather,
we emphasize the tasks to be performed and recurrent dilemmas in meeting those
needs. We discuss the following topics:
I. General issues
2. Hierarchy V. equal access
3. Staff qualities
4. Minimize specialized and exclusive jurisdictions
5. Permanent V. occasional staff
6. Staff V. Executive Office
II. Staffing needs
7. Task, not positions
8. Appointments
9. Press relations
10. Congressional liaison
11. Personnel advice
12. Staff secretary
13. Scientific advice
14. Man for minorities
15. National security staff
16. Policy and program assistance; troubleshooting and speechwriting
20. Alternatives to staff
21. Staff-departmental relations generally
IV. Addendum
22. Forging a new team
23. Healing national divisions
Appendixes
"directed" other staff members and who "controlled" access to the President. In
alleged contrast, members of the Kennedy staff enjoyed "equal status" and equal access
to the President. In practical operation, the Eisenhower system permitted substantial
uncontrolled access by senior staffers. Adams' responsibilities did not extend very
far into the national security area. In this area, by contrast, Kennedy's Special As-
sistant, McGeorge Bundy, headed a significant staff and served as the primary channel
to the President not only for the staff but also for the departments. And on the domes-
tic side of the Kennedy White House, senior advisers doubtless enjoyed direct access
on some matters, but Sorensen was clearly chief adviser on program and policy. Thus,
both the Kennedy and Eisenhower systems mixed elements of hierarchy and diffused
access. There remains, to be sure, a question of emphasis.
We advise against any formal chief of staff system, especially at the outset, for
four reasons. First, unless that man knows you exceedingly well, his judgments rather
than yours may settle too many matters. Second, he could become a troublesome
bottleneck in the conduct of important public business. Third, if you keep arrangements
fluid, you can impose some informal hierarchical order after observing your staff in-
stalled and operating in the White House; it would not be equally easy to demote a man
you had appointed chief of staff. Fourth, a staff member can be more effective in deal-
ing with the departments and the public when they suppose themselves to be only once
removed from talking directly to the President.*
The chief of staff approach also enjoys a less attractive public image. Contem-
porary mythology seems to favor the "do-it-all" President ready to grapple with every
problem personally.
1
team spirit to work harmoniously, the sense to know when to decide and when "to keep
options open," understanding of government, and, of course, sound and balanced judg-
ment. We comment specifically on several qualities and raise a few recurring
questions.
(b) Generalists V. specialists. To cope with the diverse subject matters confront-
ing the White House, you need generalists capable of operating efficiently across sev-
eral fields with a presidential rather than a specialist's perspective. But you cannot
tolerate amateurism or superficiality in your staff. A White House assistant must
have sufficient expertness to understand fully the issues being debated within and
among the departments. He must know enough of the substance and politics of an issue
to perceive and react to the nuances of departmental drafts (statements, letters, legis-
lation, press conference "answers," etc.) submitted for White House clearance or use.
His understanding must be detailed enough to forestall those White House statements
or instructions which greater knowledge might show to be unwise but which the depart-
ments implement as issued and without questioning. ** He must quickly perceive the
* Nor do we belabor the characteristic staff tasks of (1) advising you, (2) briefing
you on current intelligence, on other information, and names, (3) suggesting points or
questions you may wish to raise with department heads or others, (4) briefing you on
impending problems which have not yet reached the crisis stage, (5) serving as a gen-
eral point of contact between the White House and the operating departments without
usurping your power of decision but able to reflect your views and needs, and (6) listen-
ing to those you don't wish to hear. Other staff functions are discussed later in this
paper.
* It might seer paradoxical that many Presidential decisions on matters of gen-
eral policy will not be immediately, fully, or effectively implemented in the departments.
The text refers, however, to such specific matters as draft legislation, particular ad-
ministrative decisions, or the content of particular statements. Cabinet members (and
their assistants) will often implement such decisions without challenging them because
they do not wish to "use up their capital" by disagreeing with "the White House" in
"minor" matters.
2
The acquisition of such detailed command of substance obviously requires consid-
erable time and energy. And, of course, a man's experience in a field is cumulative:
the longer he operates on a subject matter, the greater will be his command. But no
assistant should become so specialized that he loses your perspective. * *
(c) Mastery of government process. Your staff must develop an absolute mastery
of governmental process. You ought not to have to think about how a decision is to be
carried out or about the timing of its execution. You should be able to trust your staff
to know and tell you whether something can't be done or whether it requires a different
timing.
(d) Follow-through V. letting-go. The staff should understand its role in following-
up your decisions. On the one hand, your assistant should satisfy himself that your
decisions are being carried out. He should know if snarls develop and take steps to
unsnarl the matter. But if he forgets that operating responsibilities lie in the depart-
ments, he will both overburden himself and impair departmental morale. Perhaps,
follow-up should be the province of junior staff members who would have the time and
who would not have sufficient status to appear to be running the departments from the
White House.
* Without belaboring the point, the staff assistant must appreciate, understand, know,
or know where to learn about a prospective action's implications for various interest
groups, meaning to overall program, probable costs, agencies involved, likely objec-
tions, probable public or world reaction, chances for congressional approval, and
alternative routes to the same goal.
* * And to emphasize a point made later: no speciality should become so wide as
to give an assistant the illusion of exclusive personal jurisdiction. See 14.
3
your department heads, carelessness or inaccuracy can mislead you or your subordi-
nates. And if your departmental officials lose confidence in his fidelity, they will seek
to bypass him and either communicate directly with you or minimize White House com-
munication altogether. You and they must have absolute confidence that a communica-
tion through your assistant is an almost perfect substitute for direct communication.
This also implies that your assistants must clearly distinguish when they (1) speak for
you, (2) predict your probable decisions, or (3) state their own views. In the past, many
presidential assistants have been quite willing-consciously or not-to let the depart-
ments believe they were speaking for the President when they were in fact speaking for
themselves. Obviously, the White House assistant should not be conducting his own
policy on any issue.
(f) Anonymity. Your staff will be much in demand as speech makers and as sources
for the press. Most members of the Eisenhower staff maintained relative anonymity.
Although a few gave speeches, most did not. And their press contacts were mainly
"not for attribution." By contrast, some members of the Kennedy staff gave themselves
considerable prominence during their White House service. Public statements by staff
members can give the public a satisfying glimpse of your establishment. Discussions
with staff and quotations by name (including descriptions of intra-White House activities)
make the press both happy and sympathetic.
We believe, however, that staff anonymity is the wiser course. There have been
cases where 2 publicized staff member has exaggerated his role. And to demonstrate
&
that he was a knowledgeable insider, he revealed more than was appropriate. Even
worse, he may have begun to think-in his outside or inside statements-of his position
and appearance rather than the President's. This possibility compromised his internal
role, both with the President and with the departments. Cabinet officers did not trust
4
staff available to the press, you can make clear your objection to personal publicity
for staffers. As for outside speeches, your staff will have enough work without them,
although speeches usually do little harm (except that partisan speeches may reduce a
staff member's usefulness for certain purposes). Unless you tell them otherwise, they
may feel a reluctant "duty" to show the White House flag at political and other gather-
ings. Our main point is this: if you object to publicity for your staff, you should es-
tablish early ground rules.
(g) Devil's advocacy. We cannot emphasize too strongly the need for effective
devil's advocacy within your staff. Although you do not want your staff to oppose your
will, every leader needs advisers willing and able to perceive and to marshal lucidly
the considerations opposed to a favored course of action. Similarly the departments,
close advisers, and staff itself will at times be clear and even unanimous in a recom-
mendation to you. Again, you want to know the best case to the contrary.* We are not
suggesting an àll-purpose advocate or a formal devil's advocate procedure on every
issue. Rather, we urge the importance of having advisers accustomed to perceiving
and worrying about "the other side" of any problem they consider.
4. Minimize exclusive jurisdictions. (a) The problem: We suggested above that
you need advisers who are expert in various areas. Some specialization within your
also
staff is therefore inevitable. But the adviser with an exclusive subject matter juris-
diction presents three serious problems: First, his outlook may become parochial
with the result that you will have to coordinate his views with other sources. He will
*Many Presidents have suffered because their advisers gave them only one side of
a problem or-which is the same thing-stated the opposing considerations in a weak
or conclusionary way. This fault is not always conscious. More often, the recommend-
ing official has either failed to perceive the opposite factors or has not had the time or
occasion to think about the "other side" except in cliches.
5
thus fail to give you what you need: advice based on the full range of factors that you
must consider. You need advisers with an outlook as broad as your own: foreign and
domestic, ideals and reality, merits and politics, international and congressional. The
specialized adviser will not be forced to have that outlook. Second, he may come to
resent intrusions into his domain from other staff members who may thus be discour-
aged from contributing or questioning in his area. Third, there may be no other staff
members sufficiently knowledgeable to exchange views with him or to challenge his
views or his advice to you.
Can you minimize these concerns without undue sacrifice of efficiency and con-
venience ? We note several ways to expand staff perspective beyond particular special-
ties, to deprive any specialist of the illusion that he owns a whole policy area, and to
broaden and deepen staff competence in important areas.
(b) Duplicating assignments. Many writers have praised the duplicated assign-
ments they saw in the Roosevelt staff. It is said that FDR often gave the same assign-
ment to different persons working competitively. This procedure does not seem a
wise way to get the multiple sources of information, analysis, and recommendation
that would protect you from undue dependence upon a single adviser. *
(c) Shared, overlapping, or shifting jurisdictions"- but with clear action respon-
sibilities-can protect you from the worse dangers of broad and exclusive jurisdictions.
For example, you might have several senior advisers working in the national security
area. ** One could carry international economic affairs in his portfolio. Another
might have total responsibility for Vietnam matters (so long as that remains an
* The President who would digest the independent output of duplicating advisers
could gain greater mastery of the problem and greater awareness of the alternatives.
But duplicating assignments can be inefficient in a triple sense. First, it requires
more of the President's time, and energy used in one way is not available for other
matters. Second, first-rate talent for any job is always scarce, as is the time of those
your men consult. You may not have talented men to spare. Third, the analyst who
knows his work is being duplicated elsewhere may be tempted to bypass the hard ques-
tions, to ignore the counter-considerations, and otherwise to do less well than he does
when he has primary responsibility.
* * Our separate memorandum on National Security Organization discusses this
matter in more detail.
6
overwhelming issue). A third might oversee the remainder of Asia and other areas.
Their respective responsibilities would be relatively clear and not duplicative. Each
would be broadly current. They could profitably talk to one another. And, on difficult
matters, you could have the benefit of different perspectives. Of course, there is the
danger that dividing their responsibilities would reduce the likelihood that either would
share your own government-wide perspective. Alternatively, you might shift assign-
ments within your staff from time to time. You would thus equip each of your senior
staff in diverse areas and thus put them in a position to advise you on difficult subjects.
By dividing or shifting responsibilities, you could get diverse analyses and diverse
advice within your own staff. And the staff would be better able to meet the demands
upon it. The workload in each area will vary greatly from time to time. Staffers of
broad competence and experience could give part of their time to their regular duties
and simultaneously move from one task to another as domestic or international crises
demand. Loads within the staff can be balanced more readily if each staff member
were competent in several areas.
There is, of course, some question of efficiency. Subdividing the national security
or the domestic welfare areas will necessitate additional coordination of work. To
shift assignments thrusts an adviser into the time-consuming task of learning anew
about an area already mastered by one adviser. Obviously, however, any staff arrange-
ment that could have saved Kennedy from the Bay of Pigs or Johnson from unsuccessful
escalation in Vietnam would have been far more efficient for the President and the
nation notwithstanding an "efficiency expert's" conventional notions. Still, you may
prefer to have a relatively small number of senior advisers, each with a relatively
broad jurisdiction. There is no guarantee that subdividing and overlapping jursidictions
would help at all or help any more than simpler remedies.
(d) Broadening your advisers' outlook. Subdividing one job into two (or more)
relatively clear pieces for two advisers permits each to carry some different respon-
sibility as well. Advisers shifted around among jobs will bring more diversified ex-
perience to each. Specialists can be given occasional "educational" assignments in
7
other spheres. A domestic man, for example, might coordinate a foreign policy speech;
a national security expert might clear an appointment to a regulatory agency. Such
devices could help give each adviser a greater awareness of your total responsibilities.
Ideally, your advisers' outlook should be as catholic as your own. A foreign relations
advisor, for example, should bring congressional or domestic political factors into his
thinking and recommendations before he comes to you. You want assurance that all
your responsibilities are reflected in the advice that comes to you. This is more likely
to occur the more diverse is each specialized adviser's exposure to your many diverse
responsibilities. Hopefully, such exposure would be deep enough to save each more or
less specialized adviser from the dangers of amateurism in the field he understands
less well. *
(e) Effective intra-staff communication can achieve many of the virtues discussed
above and with far less complexity: Issues realized to be tough or important should
not be discussed exclusively between you and your main adviser on that issue, but should
be discussed among the staff. Such intra-staff discussion can coordinate the work of
each, bring the full range of staff interests (that is, your interests) to bear, and subject
major proposals to the questions and challenges of fresh perspective or merely different
perspectives. The virtue is clear, but implementation is not easy.
The most obvious forum for facilitating such an interchange is the frequent staff
meeting over which you preside. ** A brief statement by each adviser on his immediate
* There is always the danger that an adviser admonished to ground his advice in
all the relevant factors will incorrectly appraise or give undue weight to that which he
understands less well. We know some academics, for example, who, in their zeal to
make their substantive recommendations realistic, give far more weight to supposed
political considerations than the professional politician would.
*
Peripheral or junior staff members may be too numerous for inclusion; if not,
they could often contribute in a valuable way, either directly at the meeting or indirectly
to their seniors after the meeting.
8
key concerns* would be useful for many purposes including internal coordination. But,
of course, time will be insufficient for full statements, and much less for full discus-
sion. And a staff member without full data or previous analysis may hesitate to chal-
lenge or even to question another in your presence. Nevertheless, the meeting at least
exposes all to current issues and thus creates the opportunity for later intra-staff dis-
cussion. Even so, your more senior advisers, overworked as they be, will not relish
challenges from their colleagues nor have the time necessary to inform them. They
will do so only if you make it happen. In staff meetings or otherwise, for example, you
might ask other staff members for their views on the "expert's" statement or problem.
This would induce staff members to discuss their important problems with their
colleagues outside the meeting. **
Staff meetings can serve anotherpurpose, if you wish it. By participating in the
discussion, you can permit your staff to gain a better insight into what's on your mind
and what moves or troubles you. The better they understand you, the better they can
assist you.
(f) Titles. We suggest that you give your staff unspecific titles. There is no
reason not to use the traditional titles-Special Counsel, Appointments Secretary, and
Press Secretary-but we would call an adviser simply "Special Assistant" and assign
him, say, to national security affairs rather than designating him "Special Assistant
for National Security Affairs." Specific titles have the disadvantage of tending to
freeze assignments and to confer exclusive jurisdictions. General rather than specific
titles lessen this problem. If you want to rank your staff, you can do SO without regard
*We include national security matters, notwithstanding concern for the proper
protection of classified information. If you want their advice, your staff would have
the requisite "need to know." Usually, discussions within your. staff should not be
restricted by undue concern for security. Persons not deserving your trust should not
be on your staff.
** Another vehicle for assuring careful and thoughtful participation by your staff
"in each other's jurisdiction" is the informal lunch or end-of-day conversation in which
you seek from the staff a probing exchange either on immediate action issues or on
evolving policy in important areas.
9
to titles which do not, in any event, communicate very much. But if you award the
Special Assistant title sparingly, there would be need for some secondary title-such
as Administrative Assistant or Deputy Special Assistant; Associate or Assistant Special
Counsel, for example, have frequently been used. In any event, distinctly junior
members of the staff can be given a lesser title.
5. Permanent or occasional staff. Your staff need not be SO large as to include
every competence required for White House work. You can get temporary staff assis-
tance by borrowing departmental personnel* or by enlisting outside experts, organizers,
or doers. In addition to consultants or task forces, you should consider using men out-
side your regular staff for "White House" jobs for which your regular staff lacks the
time or expertness-perhaps preparing a message for Congress, handling a delicate
organizational or personnel problem for you, sifting through complex and varied pro-
posals in some area, or advising you on some interdepartmental controversy not
readily solvable in the usual ways.
We recognize that such temporary assistants will not be used very often. You will
feel less comfortable with them than with your familiar advisers. The temporary as-
sistant not widely known to enjoy your confidence cannot easily do jobs requiring such
recognition. Nor can you always afford the time for orienting him to your advisers and
to the rest of the Government. Nevertheless, the utility and availability of temporary
assistants is worth remembering.
6. Staff V. Executive Office. Instead of attempting to build great depth and breadth
in your immediate staff, you can provide your White House with back-up resources in
the Budget Bureau and in the Council of Economic Advisers. These agencies have
competent professional staffs, Presidential rather than departmental outlook and loy-
alty, and flexible procedures that permit your staff to use their personnel without
channeling everything through the Director or Chairman. We do not pause on the many
* Officials borrowed from the departments will acquire and carry back to their
agencies a better understanding of and identification with presidential perspectives.
And they will be especially useful departmental contacts for your regular staff.
10
variations. We do urge you to open your White House with a small staff. You could
then draw upon the Executive Office for back-up work and upon temporary assistance
elsewhere when required. If these steps prove inadequate, you can expand your
immediate staff later. *
In particular, the Budget Bureau's top staff is exceptionally well-informed on the
size, location, and activities of our intelligence agencies. And beyond the usual ac-
counting functions, it can translate program changes into budget changes and otherwise
identify the long-run financial and program implications of immediate proposals. It
has long served to coordinate agency views on enacted legislation awaiting presidential
signature. It has long cleared and coordinated agency legislative proposals or agency
responses to congressional queries on pending bills. Beyond this, the Bureau is ca-
pable of serving you as a general adviser on government programs. It has the outlook
and resources to identify and help appraise alternatives to proposed programs, to
harmonize new proposals with each other and with existing programs, to identify and
help trim the unessential or weaker elements of a proposal and to appraise the financial
and organizational implications of new programs. And Budget may be the place to de-
velop some central capacity for program evaluation. The Executive Branch does not
now do enough to evaluate the effectiveness of its many programs. And the limited
evaluations that are undertaken are usually conducted by the operating agency with
certain vested interests in the program. We can sum this up with the conclusion that
effective use of the Bureau will improve your decision-making resources and enable
your staff to function more efficiently.
In addition, the Bureau may be your best source of information and advice on
governmental organization. The Bureau's capacities in this area, which have atrophied
in recent years, should be revived. Budget's abilities are primarily analytical: it can
isolate bottlenecks, overlapping programs, and waste; it can identify the best bureau-
cratic methods and agencies for handling various types of actions. But we understand
* We add as an appendix Richard Neustact's unpublished paper on Roosevelt's
White House and Budget Bureau. Although we would not paint the Roosevelt White
House in such appealing terms, the concise discussion is valuable for its suggestive
insights.
11
that its creative talents are less impressive; it is proably not now the best source for
{
extensive reorganization schemes to correct the difficulties it sees. Because the need
for careful thinking about reorganization is so clear, it seems prudent for you to press
Budget to improve its capacity here or to find the needed talents elsewhere.
12
II.
Staffing Needs
7. Tasks, not positions. We have not tried to write job descriptions for hypothet-
ical appointees because, as we have already argued, the best staff is one characterized
by fluidity, flexibility, and multi-competence rather than permanence, exclusive assign-
ments, or undue specialization. The point is worth reiterating here because there are
several forces promoting rigidity and inhibiting your ability to use your staff as you
might wish. The departments may automatically call upon your staff in the mode of
the Johnson Administration and thus effectively assign work to your staff without your
conscious choice. That fourteen White House positions are statutorily defined and as-
signed varying salaries might imply assignments, hierarchies, or relationships not
necessarily consistent with your needs. Furthermore, members of your campaign
and transition staffs carried over into your White House may automatically carry for-
ward their prior roles and relationships notwithstanding your vastly different require-
ments. You must anticipate and adjust for these institutional factors if your staff
operation is to be determined by our needs not by custom or bureaucratic inertia.
We cannot tell you your needs. Much will depend on how you organize the rest of
the Government. And, of course, much depends on the particular men you appoint.
The tasks can be divided in various ways; each does not necessarily require one full-
time man. Some may require more. Others may be full-time for one man but divided
among several men. In general, each task listed is one that has to be performed, but
how it is to be performed is a question only you can answer.
We list the major tasks that have to be performed in your White House, with
minimum comment unless there are problems. We proceed not in the order of
importance but according to ease of definition.
8. Appointments. Keeping your calendar is the task. He should also have time
for other tasks. The title of "Secretary" is traditional.
9. Press relations. Your Press Secretary is your spokesman to and liaison with
the press. He will also be one of your advisers on public relations.
13
10. Congressional liaison. Eisenhower and Kennedy had a substantial congres-
sional relations staff to lobby for administration measures, to help formulate adminis-
tration strategy for winning its desires from Congress, and to advise in administration
policy-making on what Congress is or is not likely to do. Secondly, this staff serves
legislators-both leaders and others-as a conduit to the President and thereby acquires
congressional intelligence while maintaining goodwill without unduly burdening the Pres-
ident personally. Related to the goodwill operation, both Eisenhower and Kennedy had
one or two men whose primary role was to accommodate legislators of both parties in
non-policy matters (e.g., arranging the "special" White House tour for constituents). *
11. Personnel advice. (a) In the personnel area, you have three distinct needs:
(1) recruitment of and advice on presidential appointments to significant policy posi-
tions, including those in the judiciary and regulatory commissions; (2) processing of
other presidential appointments to such positions as postmasters, sinecures, or honor-
ific posts without content or pay; and (3) advice on government personnel policy affecting
the career services. Although the second and third functions must not be combined in
one man, many other combinations are possible. We turn now to the problem as it will
appear after the initial appointments of November 1968 through about April 1969. How
can you approach these matters over the remainder of your term?
* There are at least two disadvantages to having a congressional liaison staff in
the White House, First, legislators will try to obtain special services from your staff
and to use it to put pressure on you. The very existence of the staff will generate in
the White House a substantial volume of time-consuming correspondence that, absent
the staff, would be handled in the departments. Secondly, the departments will see the
staff as a crutch relieving them of the responsibility or need to do their own lobbying
(etc.). These disadvantages are real but they can be lessened, though not overcome,
if your staff resolves at the outset to use the departmental machinery as much as
possible and to avoid servicing legislators except insofar as necessary for your
objectives.
14
(b) Although the best approach to making significant appointments is not entirely
clear to us, we note five points bearing on the solution. First, it is never wise to depend
exclusively on one source-regardless of his quality-for personnel recommendations.
Second, personnel recommendations should be exposed to the criticism, comments, or
counter-suggestions of your principal staff. Affirmative encouragement from you is
needed to overcome your advisers' natural hesitation to "intrude" on the "jurisdiction"
of other advisers. Third, however diverse the advice, you could give one man respon-
sibility for receiving names, sifting out the best by preliminary screening, and simply
"remembering" promising names otherwise lost. Fourth, to be useful, this "remem-
bering" must be highly selective. The job must therefore be done by (or under the
supervision of) a man willing to evaluate and reject and whose judgments are valued
{
by you and your other close advisers. The potential appointee files maintained by
Mr. Macy for President Johnson may be too mechanical, massive, and unselective for
this purpose. The process must be attuned to you and to your desires. Fifth, we ques-
tion whether 2 person of the highest quality would take this as a full-time job. We sug-
gest that a trusted senior adviser with other responsibilities undertake this task with
the aid of a junior staff member who would not only gather information and help in the
sifting process but who would also be readily available to consult with departmental
officials.
Routine Presidential appointments must also be handled at the White House for two
reasons. There is no other satisfactory location. And the political troubles of choosing
one name rather than another might as well be made by your staff with your interests
and outlook. The task requires charm, finesse, and infinite attention to the details of
political debit-credit balancing, clearances and checks. Although your man must be of
sufficient standing to absorb the political heat from the national committee and else-
where, the usual work need not be done by a senior adviser.* Nor should it be handled
* This job could compromise an adviser's other responsibilities. Kennedy's first
assignment for O'Brien included both patronage and congressional relations. Later
abandoned, this combination would have interfered with the liaison job which is full-time
and which cannot afford the ill-will of rejecting legislators' nominees.
15
by the same junior staff member discussed in (b). One man with both jobs might be
tempted to shade his judgments of quality in order to relieve the pressure of the many
politicians "on his back."
(c) Advice on the general issues of personnel management within the Executive
Branch is not so urgent as to require personal White House Staff. It could be sought
from the Civil Service Commission or from the Budget Bureau. At least as a pro-
visional measure, we suggest that you charge the Budget Bureau with responsibility to
advise you-through your general program and policy staff-on personnel management.
We do not envisage the Budget Bureau as a competitor of the Civil Service Commission
but as the home of a larger task. It would oversee personnel policy for the civil,
military, and foreign services (and any other personnel systems). Admittedly, Budget.
does not now have the capacity to undertake this assignment. But since the task is
important and Budget its most obvious locus, it seems wise to charge Budget with this
responsibility and to expand its capacity to carry it out.
12. "Staff Secretary (a) As visualized by the original Hoover Commission and as
performed by General Goodpaster (as one of his jobs) for President Eisenhower, the
Staff Secretary was an important focal point for much White House staff work. On the
President's behalf he kept track of documents requiring action, of assignments re-
quiring execution, of decisions reached in Cabinet meetings, legislative leaders' meet-
ings, and elsewhere. He facilitated the work of everybody else. He was not a competi-
tor but a watcher of others' doings-keeping lines straight, untangling snarls, watching
deadlines, checking on performance. As such, the Staff Secretary associated very
closely with the White House Executive Clerk, Bill Hopkins, and acted for the President
as a supervisor of the Clerk and of White House logistical and administrative services
generally. With the assistance of Hopkins and another, Goodpaster was not overly
burdened by the paper-processions and administrative service aspects of this job.*
* This paragraph is taken almost verbatim from Richard Neustadt's unpublished
memorandum of December 23, 1960.
16
(b) The exact character and time demands of this job cannot be defined precisely.
Although General Goodpaster was not burdened with cabinet secretariat duties, he gave
most of his time to national security matters. The point is that this cluster of functions
might be a full-time job for one man or, with appropriate assistance, a part-time
responsibility for a staff member with other functions.
(c) The Cabinet Secretary was a separate position in both the Eisenhower and
Kennedy White House. The title is 2 nice one with some prestige and might be useful
for that purpose.* But we note emphatically these two points: First, no matter how
you plan to use your "Cabinet" as a collective body, you will not need a full time Cabinet
Secretary. You need 2 cabinet secretariat even less. Second, the position once created
tends to generate needless work unless you clearly load any Cabinet Secretary with
other demanding duties.
13. Scientific advice. (a) For advice in scientific and technical matters, you can
draw upon the President's Science Advisory Committee and your Special Assistant for
Science and Technology. The former is composed of seventeen non-governmental
members-many of whom devote considerable time to committee work. Although posi-
tions on the Committee are filled by Presidential appointment, we recommend that
you continue the practice of treating this body as a regular, professional, and continuing
organization whose membership does not automatically change with the Administration.
At any rate, the terms of about one-third of the members expire in the coming January-
February; you can thus alter the Committee's composition or outlook as you think best.
(b) You should continue the practice of appointing a distinguished scientist to your
staff. To decide the kind of adviser you want, consider Eisenhower's Kistiakowsky and
Kennedy's Wiesner. Kistiakowsky tried to be an objective consultant who did not take
sides in controversies and who limited himself to enumerating for Eisenhower the argu-
ments for and against all sides. Wiesner was an advocate who argued vigorously for the
programs and policies he favored. While this distinction is not peculiar to advice in the
scientific realm, a Chief Executive might well need a more neutral adviser in these
also
unfamiliar technical areas.
* Our memorandum on national security apparatus suggests one use for this title.
17
Whichever model you follow, we note the reasons for appointing a Science Adviser,
for they bear on the kind of man you need: the Eisenhower-Kennedy-experiences sug-
gest that such a man can help you in several ways.
(c) First, he can help you and your other advisers analyze and understand complex
technical questions in the weapons, space, disarmament, drug, mining, agricultural,
and other fields.* At the very least, he is an independent source of expertness that is
not confined by special departmental interests. This fact together with your confidence
can permit him, when you wish it, to "arbitrate" technical departmental disputes. For
example, the 1959 controversy between Agriculture and HEW over tolerable safe levels
in using certain insecticides could only be settled satisfactorily-both on the merits
and in terms of public confidence about safety-with the aid of distinguished outside
experts assembled by the Science Adviser. This illustration makes the further point
that a respected Science Adviser gives you efficient access to many other scientists.
Thus, you get not only the special knowledge of your appointee but also a means for
tapping the best of the American scientific community.
(d) Second, an adviser like Kistiakowsky or Wiesner is not only a distinguished
scientist; he is also a distinguished thinker whose insights, perceptions, reactions, and
judgments can illuminate non-scientific issues when you and your senior advisers
choose to consult with him. This is not to say that you must accept his advice; nor that
you should formally give him a general charter. We do, however, suggest that if you
treat him as a general member of your senior staff, your principal program-policy
adivsers are likely to discuss a broad range of matters with him to the extent that it
proves useful in fact. (Regardless of his political or partisan orthodoxy, a first-rate
appointee will have trustworthy discretion.)
(e) Third, in recruiting other scientific talent for the Government, the right Adviser
can assist you in two ways. He should be a valuable source of names and appraisals.
$
* An Adviser drawn from the academic community, 2S prior appointees have been,
would also have expertness on some aspects of higher education. On occasion, this
expertness can also be valuable to your White House.
18
In addition, he can help attract others into your Administration. Even when he does not
personally seek to persuade another to serve, his very presence in the White House
assures the "scientific community" of your respect for them and helps gain their re-
spect for your Administration.
(f) Fourth, your Adviser would, of course, qualify as a genuine "intellectual."
In addition, however, your two predecessors had resident academics in the White House,
presumably in the hope of generating a sympathetic chronicle and a bridge to "intellec-
tuals" at large. The first function is unsure (compare Schlesinger with Goldman), and
the second silly. You reach "intellectuals" not by having a special communicator for
that purpose, but by the actions and statements of your Administration. Of course,
academics should not be neglected in your operating and staff appointments throughout
the government. They frequently make good "communicators" in addition to doing a
concrete government job. And their use in task forces (etc.) is both an effective and
easy way to impress "intellectuals" and useful on the merits.
14. "A man for minorities"? These words embrace two interrelated ideas.
(a) Past Presidents have sometimes had a contact point for organized "minority"
groups of, say, Negroes, Lithuanians, or women. He or she received communications
and thus took the heat from such groups, advised policy-makers on the probable group
reactions to Administration measures, composed and dispatched Presidential greeting
on appropriate occasions, and frequently served as Administration spokesman to such
groups. We are not persuaded that you need this service, but ve are not competent to
advise on this question.
(b) Some past Administrations have felt the need to include on the White House
staff a Negro or a woman in order to negate any appearance of discrimination, to
symbolize the opposite, and also to serve the "contact man" functions. But mere
symbolism may not work. No likely appointment will please militants. And there may
be no credit at all for a transparent symbol. Even worse, the appointee without a
genuine task of substance is a potential source of dissatisfaction that could later hurt
you. A Negro, a woman, or hyphenated American could obviously fill any staff need
real enough to be filled by a "WASP."
19
15. National security apparatus. The extent and depth of your personal national
security staff depends upon the effectiveness of the departments and, in particular, upon
whether you can improve State's responsiveness to your needs. At the least, however,
you will need one or more special assistants to advise you on these matters and to
serve as your staff channel from and to State, Defense, CIA, and related agencies.*
16. Policy and program assistance; troubleshooting; speechwriting. (a) This final
catch-all category is at the core of your White House, especially on the domestic side.
Although we can list some of the components separately, the blanket category reflects
five facts. First, several men are required for these jobs. Second, each man will do
some of each task. As we shall shortly show, no strict separation of function or sub-
ject matter is possible. Third, the efforts of these men must somehow be coordinated.
Fourth, the ways of allocating tasks are infinite. Your allocation must take account of
the particular talents of the people you want in your White House as well as your own
preferences in staff organization. Fifth and as usual, what you need in the White House
depends upon what you've got in the departments and the Budget Bureau.
(b) This core operation can be defined by subject matter and by function. The
subjects of White House concern are easily described: everything. You can be con-
fronted with every matter that is or might be within government competence and, in your
role of moral leadership, with many non-governmental matters. The range of major
domestic issues likely to confront you in 1969-from "black power", air pollution, tax
policy, welfare systems, to criminal procedure, to name a few-hints at the varied
competences your staff will need.
* Staffing needs in this area are discussed in detail in our memorandum on national
security apparatus.
20
(c) Cutting across subject matter lines are your functions which require staff as-
intence. Catside 1: the national security WAR. TOL 1960 assistance (1. dei with 1. BELLIEL
he following matters:
-Signing or vetoing legislation
-Preparing the federal budget, Economic
Report, State of the Union message, other
Congressional messages, speeches (to in-
form, placate, or inspire), and correspondence
-Formulating a legislative program, getting
it enacted; resisting undesirable legislation
-Formally approving or disapproving certain
formal recommendations from independent
agencies or executive departments. For
this and other tasks, you need legal advice.
-Answering diverse questions on public
(press conferences) or private (visits and
letters) occasions
-Responding appropriately to congressional
investigations or requests or to congres-
sional or private criticisms or complaints
-Leading and managing the Executive Branch
by
--Inspiring them, instructing them,
and otherwise overcoming the
inertia of particular agencies or
people
--Settling the questions that need
to be settled if the government
is to move forward
--Unsnarling action-stopping tangles
--Resolving interdepartmental
controversies
-Appointing, organizing and directing task
forces and handling their reports*
-Forestalling or correcting scandals, faux
pas, etc.
21
(d) This combination of tasks and subject matters has been handled in several ways.
'or President Eisenhower, Adams was Chief of Staff and thus the coordinator of all
hese operations (and some other operations already mentioned). Kennedy had no an-
ounced staff chief, but Screnson was de facto chief on the domestic side for program,
olicy, government operation, and speech-message writing. Under Eisenhower, this
hass of functions occupied about six men full-time and had the part time efforts of
hree or four congressional liaison specialists and several others whose main duties were
hose of paragraphs 8-14. Under Johnson, several senior staff men have developed
ersonal staffs of younger general-purpose men without access to the President and
wo do not seem to participate even indirectly in the general run of Presidential
usiness.
(e) These tasks are manageable if you can keep your staff exceedingly small and
illy coordinated internally. Whether you can do this depends upon your approach to
he general issues discussed at the outset and in the next part.
* This cannot be done in the departments when the subject matter cuts across agency
nes, when departmental inertia or resistance must be overcome, or when effective
ecruitment requires White House prestige.
22
III
Staff Role Relative to that
of Other Agencies
17. Major issues won't stay in the departments. Most past Presidents hoped that
agency heads would implement and create on their own and thus relieve the White House
of all issues except questions of major policy. But many problems simply won't stay
at the departmental level. Many details of policy have become White House concerns
and will continue to do so for seven reasons.
(a) First, even excellent agency heads-and not all of them will turn out well-will
not do what you would want if you had the opportunity to consider the matter. They will
sometimes suffer from inertia. More often, there will be a failure of imagination
within the agency. Even more frequently, the agency's judgment will be infected by the
parochial outlook of its constituency (including, of course, its appropriations and sub-
stantive congressional committees and its "clients" and other special interest groups
concerned with it).
(b) Second, many of the hardest domestic welfare-urban-labor-education problems
require new thinking and planning that cuts across existing departmental lines. The
departments often tend to define problems according to their capacity to deal with
them-education grants by HEW, transportation to jobs by DOT, housing by HUD,
etc.-and not according to the broader presidential perspective. In addition, the re-
sources for imaginative thinking are few indeed. The resulting dispersal of respon-
sibility and resources means that many important jobs simply won't be done at the
departmental level.
(c) Third, overlapping responsibilities inevitably generate interagency conflicts—
both in planning policy and in implementing it-which the relevant secretaries are
23
mable or unwilling to resolve.*
Resolution will often depond upon While Hound
mediation, arbitration, or command.
(d) Fourth, the several agencies are always competing for limited budget re-
sources. With the aid of staff and Budget, you must make the allocation. And to
decide upon the priority you wish to give a department's proposal, you must appraise
that proposal and its constituent parts in the light of its objectives, probable success,
ind alternative approaches. There is no other way.**
(e) Fifth, even apart from budgetary decisions, your speeches, your messages,
your letters, and your press conferences will inevitably require you to address your-
self in some depth to various matters of policy. Furthermore, the Administration's
legislative program and major messages carry your name and determine your reputa-
both now and later. Even if you were prepared to endorse a Secretary's proposal
out of confidence in him, you cannot escape careful consideration of each major proposal.
You cannot afford to overlook the institutional biases that will affect every agency's
proposals. You must not only resolve interagency policy differences, but you will also
vant assurance that your Administration's proposals and arguments are reasonably
consistent in logic and outlook. More than that, you also face a question of priorities.
Public support cannot always be generated for many different proposals simultaneously.
Serious legislative activity cannot be expected simultaneously on every proposal. And,
of course, you must take care not to alienate unduly with one proposal someone whose
aid you need at the very same time for another proposal. Again, therefore, you cannot
*
Each Secretary may never learn of the conflict which his subordinates are un-
willing to settle. Even if he does learn of it, he may be persuaded by his staff in the
light of his agency's institutional interests. And even if he is not fully persuaded, he
may hesitate to "surrender" and thus lose the needed respect of his subordinates.
Finally, the secretary may feel an obligation to "protect" the office and to pass it
"undiminished" to his successor. (Presidents usually feel that impulse-with, of course,
greater justification by reference to the Constitutional allocation of powers.)
We reject without argument the possibility of deferring the allocation to Congress
in the first instance. We similarly reject historical formulas, arbitrary percentages,
or interagency log-rolling as a means for allocating resources within the Executive
Branch.
24
leave the agencies to formulate your legislative program without close involvement
at the top.
(f) Sixth, "leaving the details and minor issues to the departments" is both man-
datory and customary. But such formulae leave much to the White House because the
general formulations of grand policy-the kind that are easily enunciated-are seldom
helpful. Before concrete application, many general formulations simply lack intelligible
content. Indeed, general policy is less the father of decision than the result of concrete
steps. In short, the major questions that cannot be resolved elsewhere are enough to
require a substantial White House apparatus.
(g) Seventh and unhappily, you will be pressed to resolve or react to "flaps" that
are intrinsically trivial or that could be handled just as well (that is, with no greater
risk of failure) by a Cabinet member. A legislator will write you and expect a White
House reply. The media will seek a reaction. The press conference seems to demand
it. We believe that you could refer many such matters to the departments with the
sympathetic understanding of the public and even of the immediately affected groups
if you insist that the department head sees that such questions and complaints are
handled with finesse and concern and not in the usual bureaucratic way.
(h) The moral: your staff will, inevitably and at the minimum, bear heavy burdens
and serious responsibilities. You thus require men of great talents efficiently organized.
Later we amplify our comments about organization. Next, how ver, we note that cur-
rent staff systems may not be capable of bearing the additional loads being placed upon
them.
18. Overloading the staff. We understand that President Johnson's staff has been
subject to enormous strains. Although some can be attributed to personality factors,
many stem from operational necessities and organizational shortcomings. We note
some of these strains and ask whether your staff is likely to bear similar loads.
(a) The volume of federal domestic programs has increased over the last decade.
White House business in the area has increased accordingly. This is not a transient
phenomenon.
25
(b) International affairs have consumed a very large share of President Johnson's
time, Consequently, domestic aides worked with ill-defined parameters but could not
settle anything in a way that would foreclose the President's options. You will probably
not be equally preoccupied for so sustained a period with a single international issue.
But there will continue to be a succession of complex international and national security
problems clamoring for White House attention.
(c) The staff is peculiarly subject to assignments from the President who naturally
gives problems, questions and various tasks to the men he sees constantly, trusts, and
feels comfortable with. This always happens, but you can be sensitive to your staff's
load and time for completion. You can encourage them to use the departments and out-
siders for tasks that need not be done immediately in the White House.
(d) The staff has played a key and comprehensive role in policy-program formu-
lation, almost to the exclusion of the departments. The White House appointed and
supervised numerous task forces and received and processed the resulting product,
even in areas where departmental jurisdiction was clear. We are left with the impres-
sion that the White House has been unresponsive to departmental initiatives and has
attempted to run the government single-handedly. You need not do the same-at least
not on the same scale. But the underlying problem is not transient.
(e) Your staff will have to take the lead in planning policy and supervising its
implementation wherever the departmental mechanism fails to do so adequately. And
the unfortunate fact is that departmental mechanisms often are inadequate. The ability
of the federal government to respond to urban-welfare-employment-enyironment
problems is compromised by inherent complexity, overwhelming magnitude, elusive
answers, and the diffusion of federal responsibility and power among many departments
and agencies. This means that you must either (1) get such problems approached
more effectively outside the White House or (2) organize your staff to handle them.
* Even if some federal responsibilities could be transferred to the states, the
techniques of transfer need close attention and much will remain of federal interest
in any event.
26
19. Equipping your staff for comprehensive policy formulation. As one answer
to deficiencies elsewhere in the executive establishment, you could create high-level
program staffs in the White House or elsewhere in the Executive Office. Let us make
clear that we are not organizational experts. We do no more thanto suggest that you ask
your experts to consider the idea of a creative central staff for program planning to
focus not on all areas simultaneously but on selected areas of greatest substantive dif-
ficulty or departmental deficiency. There are several general approaches.
(a) You could supplement your general purpose staff with program advisers who
would be your in-house experts in various substantive fields. They could be senior
staff members with the usual combination of substantive and troubleshooting respon-
sibilities. (They might in turn need junior staff to assist them, but such additions need
not themselves be part of the White House Office.) In effect, this would add several
senior advisers with special substantive responsibilities in particular fields. A few
such men could be helpful without altering the basic character of the staff. And this
could help to relieve the impossible weight of program planning from your Adams-
Sorenson-Califano. But this would not be enough to organize, plan, and oversee the new
era of welfare-urban-etc. work.
(b) A broader and deeper White House staff is conceivable with personal staff much
like the present, section chiefs who may be major advisers to you and your top staff,
and many high-caliber planners, thinkers, and overseers of operations.
(c) The last approach add depth and creativity at the center of the Executive
Branch. It would be central enough to be free of the departments' fortuitous and often
irrelevant jurisdictional lines, small enough to be manageable, free-wheeling enough to
be unencumbered by bureaucratic inertia and departmental special interests, and elite
enough to attract exceptional talent. It would operate at a level where new ideas are
welcomed and where official blessing counts. Of course, such scarce creative talents
should be located not at the center but in the operating departments. But present de-
partmental organization offers no adequate home for such activity. And until effective
reorganization is achieved, the work must be done somewhere. Better that it be done
at the center than not at all.
27
(d) Such a central staff would, of course, transform the White House into a larger
and more cumbersome apparatus without the flexibility, spirit, and intimacy of more
traditional arrangements. Furthermore, if the new staff were successful, it should have
a more permanent institutional character than that traditionally enjoyed by White House
personnel. And the fact is that White House location is unnecessary. The Executive
Office of the President is the perfect home for institutional staffs peculiarly designed
to serve the President such as the Budget Bureau, Council of Economic Advisers,
National Security Council Staff, and special Cabinet groups. Like the other Executive
Office components, it would be institutional, professional, and President-oriented. Like
the NSC staff, it would be in close communion with the departments, coordinating their
planning efforts, not "above" the departments though capable of advising those who are,
and free to draw aid from the departments and to be drawn upon. To make it a division
within the Budget Bureau might submerge it beneath a Director who is already too busy,
might unduly routinize it, and might dampen the freely creative advisory quality that
makes the concept appealing.
20. Alternatives to staff. Outside the scope of this memorandum, but necessary
to round out the above discussion is brief mention of two other approaches to the defi-
ciencies of organization and planning in the domestic welfare area.
(a) You could reorganize all the relevant agencies into a super-department. The
kinds of program planning staff just discussed would serve the super-Secretary. He
would, of course, be very powerful. But like the Secretary of Defense, he would remain
subject to your control and would not relieve you of responsibility. The general concept
is appealing, but we do not venture into the detail that would give it meaning: which
departments (or parts of departments) belong in the super-department; how should it
be organized internally; is it politically feasible?
(b) Until you could plan it and persuade Congress to create a super-department,
you could create a Czar or Special Assistant who would be a de facto super-Secretary
but without statutory authority or a department. His position would depend entirely upon
your confidence in him and your insistence that the relevant Secretaries report to you
only through him (as is true of the Secretaries of military departments). He would need
28
the kind of program staff already discussed. With such a staff, it could be done if you
made your intention clear at the time you appointed the relevant Secretaries and if you
could find the right man of brilliance, imagination, analytic depth, discretion, judgment,
and personal finesse.
21. Staff-departmental relations generally. An additional and distinct aspect of
staff-departmental relations deserves mention: Some Secretaries will feel entitled to
unqualified access to you without prior staff work by your office. They resent the
"competitive" advice you receive from your own staff, and blame your staff whenever
you react unenthusiastically to their proposals. They see themselves suffering at the
hands of Congress and pressure groups on your behalf while your comfortable, behind
the scenes, unpressured staff coollynit-picks departmental proposals and performances.
They see themselves as operating at your level but obstructed by naive and youngish
men who are "inferior" and "mere staff" without the Secretary's prominence, prestige,
prequisites, and public exposure.
Not all cabinet members will feel this way. Department heads and especially sub-
cabinet officials will see the presidential assistant as both 2 critic and as a helpful ally
in the governmental process. In doing his job for the President, the assistant makes
sure that no agency's interests and arguments are overlooked. He points out flaws in
agency proposals before submission to the President and thus gives the agency the
opportunity for revision if it wishes. The assistant can present an agency matter to the
President with a dispatch that the Secretary could not always achieve personally. By
faithfully reporting precidential reactions, he can permit the Secretary to estimate
whether 2 direct approach is likely to change the President's reaction., In many cir-
cumstances, a Secretary can feel that calling an assistant is an almost perfect sub-
stitute for calling the President-perhaps better because the assistant will have more
time to listen and to explore.
Nevertheless, in many important respects, roles are antagonistic. The staffer's
job is to find the flaws in a department's proposal or performance; to find the opposing
or qualifying considerations neglected or insufficiently weighted in the department;
to make sure that other executive agencies have the opportunity to consider, appraise,
29
and perhaps oppose; to press the departments to do better; and otherwise to serve you
and not the narrower and sometimes different interests of the departments. Some
Secretaries will not cooperate fully with your staff and will find ways of urging you to
say that your staff doesn't speak for you, that you look to the department heads and
not staff for major advice, etc. We do not pause on illustrations and variations, but
simply make two points: First, of course you should restrain staff members who are
unduly insistent, demanding, arrogant, or disrespectful of your departmental appointees.
Second, you must be wary lest you impair your staff's willingness or ability to probe
and contest the departments.
30
IV
Addendum
22. Forging the new team. Your staff and departmental appointees cannot over-
night come to know and understand each other and to work together as a functioning
team. In fact, once the Administration takes office, everyone will be so preoccupied
with his own duties as to have little time for getting to know others. Your appointees
should begin to get acquainted before January 20th. At the very least, they should begin
meeting together, both on a departmental and an inter-departmental basis. You might
want to encourage the top officials of the domestic welfare agencies to meet together
with each other and with relevant men from your staff. A similar gathering on the
international side would be helpful. If time permits, you and some of your chief appoin-
tees might spend 2 few days together, with all of you getting to know one another, as did
President Eisenhower and those who accompanied him on the Helena in 1952. The
object: to begin creating a team before your Administration is actually confronted with
operating responsibilities.
23. Healing national divisions. At the risk of seeming presumptuous, we offer a
final comment on the transition generally: a visit with the defeated candidate, appoint-
ment of a prominent Democrat with whom you could work, and similar actions are ob-
viously desirable (if otherwise consistent with your plans). The first overtures towards
congressional leaders must also be made, especially if either house remains under
Democratic control. More generally, there will be great demand for "news" from the
President-elect. He will be overcovered. He can use this fact to make every action or
appointment the occasion for a statement that will placate those who might have been
disappointed by his election. This is the time to try to disarm one's critics, at least
to the point where there they might be willing to "give the man a chance." It is possible-
we are not sure-that such a response will be generated not by general statements of
goodwill and general appeals for unity, but by specific statements of concern about urban
problems and the Negro, compassion for those who are forced to rely on the welfare
system, etc. This is, in short, a time to heal the past as you prepare for the future.
31
APPENDIX I
RCOSEVELT'S APPROACH TO STAFFING
THE WHITE HOUSE
Reorganization Plan I of 1939, which created a "White House Office" and distin-
guished it from the rest of the "Executive Office of the President," marks the start of
modern presidential staffing. What Roosevelt did, in practice, with the institutions then
established shows him at his most relevant for the contemporary Presidency. Rela-
tively speaking, in terms of presidential organization, the immediate pre-war years
have more kinship with 1961 than do the crisis years of the depression (or the years
after Pearl Harbor, for that matter).
Roosevelt did not theorize about "operating principles," but he evidently had some,
for his practice was remarkably consistent in essentials. His "principles" can be de-
duced from what he did and from the memories of men around him, as follows:
1. White House staff 2S personal staff: The White House was his house, his home
as well as office. No one was to work there who was not essential for the conduct of
his own work, day by day. "This is the White House calling" was to mean him, or some-
body acting intimately and immediately for him. The things he personally did not do
from week to week, the troubleshooting and intelligence he did not need first-hand,
were to be staffed outside the White House. The aides he did not have to see from day
to day were to be housed in ther offices than his. This is the origin of the distinction
which developed in his time between "personal" and "institutional" staff. The Executive
Office was conceived to be the place for "institutional" staff; the place, in other words,
for everybody else,
2. Fixed Assignments to Activities not Program Areas: Roosevelt had 2 strong
sense of a cardinal fact in government: That Presidents don't act on policies, programs,
or personnel in the abstract; they act in the concrete as they meet deadlines set by due
dates-or the urgency-of documents awaiting signature, vacant posts awaiting appointees,
officials seeking interviews, newsmen seeking answers, audiences waiting for 2 speech,
32
intelligence reports requiring a response, etc., etc. He also had a strong sense of an-
other fact in government: That persons close to Presidents are under constant pressure-
and temptation-to go into business for themselves, the more so as the word gets out
that they deal regularly with some portion of his business.
Accordingly, he gave a minimum of fixed assignments to the members of his per-
sonal staff. Those he did give out were usually in terms of helping him to handle some
specific and recurrent stream of action-forcing deadlines he himself could not escape.
Thus, before the war, he had one aide regularly assigned to help him with his per-
sonal press relations and with those deadline-makes, his press conferences: The Press
Secretary. Another aide was regularly assigned to schedule his appointments and to
guard his door: The Appointments Secretary. Early in the war he drew together several
scattered tasks and put them regularly in the hands of Samuel Rosenman as "Special
Counsel." (The title was invented for the man; Rosenman, a lawyer and a judge, had
held a similar title and done comparable work for FDR in Albany.): pulling together
drafts of presidential messages, speeches, and policy statements, reviewing proposed
Executive Orders, Administration bill drafts, and action on enrolled bills-in short,
assisting with the preparation of all public documents through which Roosevelt defined
and pressed his program.
These fixed assignments, and others like them in the Roosevelt staff, were activity
assignments, not programmatic ones. They were organized around recurrent presiden-
tial obligations, not functional subject-matters. They were d' fferentiated by particular
sorts of actions, not by particular program areas. This had three consequences:
a. The men on such assignments were compelled to be generalists, jacks-of-all-
trades, with a perspective almost as unspecialized as the President's own, cutting across
every program area, every government agency, and every facet of his work, personal,
political, legislative, administrative, ceremonial.
b. Each assignment was distinct from others but bore a close relationship to others,
since the assigned activities, themselves, were interlinked at many points. Naturally,
the work of the Press Secretary and the Special Counsel overlapped, while both had
33
reason for concern and for involvement, often enough, with the work of the Appointments
Secretary-and so forth. These men knew what their jobs were but they could not do
them without watching, checking, jostling one another. Roosevelt like it SO.
C. Since each man was a "generalist" in program terms, he could be used for ad
hoc special checks and inquiries depending on the President's needs of the moment. So
far as their regular work allowed, the fixed-assignment men were also general-utility
troubleshooters. No one was supposed to be too specialized for that.
3. Deliberate gaps in activity assignments. There were some spheres of recur-
rent action, of activities incumbent on the President, where Roosevelt evidently thought
it wise to have no staff with fixed, identified assignments. One was the sphere of his
continuing relations with the leaders and Members of Congress. Another was the sphere
of his own choices for the chief appointive offices in his Administration. A third was
the sphere of his direct relations with Department Heads, both individually and as a
Cabinet. Every Roosevelt aide on fixed assignment was involved to some degree in all
three spheres. These and other aides were always liable to be used, ad hoc, on concrete
problems in these spheres. But no one save the President was licensed to concern him-
self exclusively, or continuously, with FDR's Congressional relations, political appoint-
ments, or Cabinet-level contacts.
4. General-Purpose Aides on Irregular Assignments. After 1939 and on into the
war years, FDR had several "Administrative Assistants" on his personal staff, all of
them conceived as "generalists," whom he could use, ad hoc, as chore-boys, trouble-
shooters, checker-uppers, intelligence operatives, and as magnets for ideas, gripes,
gossip in the Administration, on the Hill, and with groups outside government. These
men were also used, as need arose, to backstop and assist the aides who did have fixed
assignments.
FDR intended his Administrative Assistants to be eyes and ears and manpower
for him, with no fixed contacts, clients, or involvements of their own to interfere when
he had need to redeploy them. Naturally, these general-purpose aides gained know-how
in particular subject-matter areas, and the longer they worked on given ad hoc jobs the
34
more they tended to become functional "specialists." One of them, David Niles, got
SO involved in dealings with minority groups that Truman kept him on with this as his
fixed specialty. Roosevelt's usual response to such a situation would have been to shake
up before the specialization grew into a fixed assignment.
Roosevelt never wanted in his House more general-purpose men for ad hoc mis-
sions than he personally could supervise, direct, assign and reassign. During the war,
however, as his needs and interests changed, his White House staff inevitably tended to
become a two-level operation, with some aides quite remote from his immediate con-
cerns or daily supervision. How he might have met this tendency, after the war, we
have no means of knowing.
5. Ad hoc staff work by outsiders. It never seems to have occurred to FDR that
his only sources of such ad hoc personal assistance were the aides in his own office.
He also used Executive Office aides, personal friends, idea-men or technicians down
in the bureaucracy, old Navy hands, old New York hands, experts from private life,
Cabinet Officers, Little Cabinet Officers, diplomats, relatives-especially his wife-
as supplementary eyes and ears and manpower. He often used these "outsiders" to
check or duplicate the work of White House staff, or to probe into spheres where White
House aides should not be seen, or to look into things he guessed his staff would be
against.
He disliked to be tied to any single source of information or advice on anything.
Even if the source should be a trusted aide, he preferred, when and where he could, to
have alternative sources.
6. FDR as "chief of staff." In Roosevelt's White House there was no place for a
Sherman Adams. Roosevelt made and shifted the assignments; he was the recipient of
staff-work; he presided at the morning staff meetings; he audited the service he was
getting; he coordinated A's report with B's (or if he did not, they went uncoordinated
and he sometimes paid a price for that). Before the war, reportedly, he planned to keep
one of his Administrative Assistants on tap "in the office," to "mind the shop" and be
L sort of checker-upper on the the others. But he never seems to have put this intention
35
into practice. From time to time he did lean on one aide above all others in a given
area. In wartime, for example, Harry Hopkins was distinctly primus inter pares on a
range of vital matters for a period of time. But Hopkins' range was never as wide as
the President's. And Hopkins' primacy was not fixed, codified, or enduring. It depended
wholly on their personal relationship and Roosevelt's will. In certain periods their in-
timacy waxed; it also waned.
7. Wartime Innovations. From 1941 to 1943 Roosevelt brought new staff into the
White House. Superficially, the new men and their new assignments made the place look
different. But as he dealt with wartime staff, he operated very much as he had done be-
fore. He let his prewar pattern bend; despite appearances, he did not let it break.
The principal new arrivals were Rosenman, Hopkins, Leahy, 2 "Maproom," and
Byrnes. Rosenman, as Counsel, has already been mentioned. Hopkins evolved into a
sort of super administrative assistant, working on assignments without fixed boundaries
in the conduct of the wartime Grand Alliance, and collaborating with Rosenman on major
speeches. Leahy, as Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief, became an active chan-
nel to and from the services, and kept an eye upon the White House Maproom. This was
a reporting and communications center, staffed by military personnel, in direct touch
with the services, with war fronts, with intelligence sources, and with allied governments.
As for Byrnes, he left the Supreme Court to be a "deputy" for Roosevelt in resolving
quarrels among the agencies concerned with war production and the war economy.
Byrnes' assignment was relatively fixed, but limited, temporas y, and entirely at the
pleasure of the President, dependent on their personal relationship. In, 1944, when
Congress turned his job into a separate, statutory office (OWMR), Byrnes hastened to
resign.
The thing to note about these wartime aides is that none of them had irreversible
assignments, or exclusive jurisdictions, cr control over each other, or command over
remaining members of the peacetime staff. Regarding all of them, and as he dealt with
each of them, Rcosevelt remained his own "chief of staff." And he continued to employ
outsiders for assistance. Winston Churchill, among others, now became an alternative
source.
36
8. Reliance on others than staff for ideas. Wartime changes gave the White House
staff much more involvement in, and more facilities for, program development than had
been the case in 1939. But Roosevelt never seems to have conceived his personal staff-
not even when enlarged by Rosenman, Hopkins, Byrnes-as the sole or even the main
source of policy innovators and idea men. Ideas and innovations were supposed to flow
from inside the Departments, from the Hill, and from outside of government. His staff
was meant to save them from suppression, give them air and check them out, not think
them up. White House aides were certainly encouraged to have "happy thoughts," but
they were not relied upon to be the chief producers. The same thing, incidentally, can
be said of Budget aides.
9. Operations to the operators. FDR was always loath to let into his House routine
activities, except where he chose otherwise for the time being. This seems to be one
of the reasons (not the only one) why he never had "legislative liaison" assistants con-
tinuously working at the White House. Reportedly, he foresaw what has come to be the
case in Eisenhower's time, that if the White House were routinely in the liaisoning busi-
ness, Congressmen and agencies alike would turn to his assistants for all sorts of rou-
tine services and help. "It is all your trouble, not mine," he once informed his Cabinet
officers, with reference to the bills that they were sponsoring. This was his attitude
toward departmental operations generally, always excepting those things that he wanted
for his own, or felt he had to grab because of personalities and circumstances.
10. Avoidance of coordination by committee. After experimenting elaborately in
his first term, Roosevelt lost taste for interagency committees. Thereafter, he never
seems to have regarded any of them-from the Cabinet down-as a vehicle for doing
anything that could be done by operating agencies or by a staff. This left small scope
for such committees at his level. He used the Cabinet as a sounding board, sometimes,
and sometimes as a means to put his thinking, or his "magic" on display. Otherwise,
his emphasis was on staffs and on operating agencies, taken one by one or in an ad hoc
group.
11. The Budget Bureau as a back-up staff, For routine, or preliminary, or depth
staff-work that his White House aides could not take on, Roosevelt usually looked to the
37
Budget Bureau (or, alternatively, to a man or group he trusted in the operating agencies).
In many ways, the modern Bureau was his personal creation; in most ways it has never
been as near to full effectiveness as in his time.
38
APPENDIX II
ROOSEVELT'S APPROACH TO
THE BUDGET BUREAU
In Roosevelt's time, the Executive Office of the President was little else except
the Bureau of the Budget. Thisdagency had been in existence since 1921, housed in
Treasury but reporting to the President as his source of staff assistance in preparing
the Executive budget. Under the Republicans, budgeting had been regarded very largely
as 2 negative endeavor to squeeze departmental estimates. The Bureau had been staffed
accordingly. Its career staff was small, dull, conscientious, unimaginative. But by
1936, FDR's experience had made him sympathetic to the point of view expressed by
his Committee on Administrative Management: That the budget process-as a stream
of actions with deadlines attached-gave him unequalled opportunities to get his hands
on key decisions about operating levels and forward plans in every part of the Executive
Branch.
Accordingly, he set to work to revamp and restaff the Budget Bureau. In 1937 he
made it the custodian of another action-forcing process: routine coordination in his
name of agency draft bills, reports on pending bills, recommendations on enrolled bills,
and proposed Executive Orders. This is the so-called "legislative clearance function,"
involving both the substance and financing of proposals, which the Bureau has continued
ever since and which, since Rosenman's time, has been linked closely to the White House
Special Counsel.
In 1939 Roosevelt moved the Bureau from Treasury into his Executive Office. At
the same time, he appointed a new Budget Director, Harold Smith, and backed a ten-
fold increase in the Bureau's career staff. In the five years after 1937, the staff was
built from 40 to 400, roughly its present size. Smith's emphasis in staffing was three-
fold. First, he enlarged the number, raised the caliber and cut the paper-work of bud-
get analysts, the men who did detailed reviews of departmental budgets. Second, he
brought in a separate group of organization and procedures men to look at departmental
39
work in terms of managerial effectiveness, not sheer economy. Third, he began rather
covertly to build another staff group with a still different perspective: program-oriented
men, economists for the most part, to review departmental work in terms of policy
effectiveness and to provide him special studies on short notice.
From Smith and from the staff that Smith was building, FDR sought service of three
sorts: First, he wanted cool, detached appraisals of the financial, managerial, and pro-
gram rationality in departmental budget plans and legislative programs. Second, he
wanted comparable appraisals of the bright ideas originating in his own mind, or the
minds of his political and personal associates. Third, he wanted the White House back-
stopped by preliminary and subsidiary staff-work of the sort his own aides could not
undertake without forfeiting their availability and flexibility as a small group of general-
ists on his immediate business.
All sorts of things now thought to call for special staffs or secretariats, or inter-
agency committees, were once sought from the Budget staff or from an ad hoc working
group drawn out of the departments by some specialist inside that staff. The oldest
"secretariat" now operating in the Presidency is the Bureau's Office of Legislative
Reference which handles the clearance function. The precursors of Eisenhower's pub-
lic works inventories, aviation surveys, foreign aid reviews, and the like, were staff
studies undertaken by the Bureau in the 1940's.
With such things sought from him, Smith saw himself as the prospective "chief" of
a general-utility "institutional" staff, mainly a career group, quite distinct from per-
sonal aides, but tackling in depth, at another level, a range of concerns 2S wide as theirs.
He tried to build and operate his Bureau accordingly, not as a "budget" staff but as a
presidential staff which was organized around the budget process for the sake both of
convenience and of opportunity.
In Smith's first years, he frequently came close to giving Roosevelt what the latter
wanted. The coming of the war, however, interrupted Bureau staffing, drained away
much of its new-found strength and eclipsed budgeting (along with legislation) as sources
of key presidential actions. The course of battle, and of war production, and of prices
40
now became the crucial sources and the Bureau proved a far from ideal place for general-
purpose staff work oriented toward those action-forcing processes.
As the war drew toward a close, Smith seems to have been planning a new effort to
refurbish and expand his Bureau's peacetime capabilities. He hoped to make its pro-
gram orientation more than match its budgetary focus by having Roosevelt call on him
for necessary staff work under the Full Employment Bill. But Roosevelt died, and the
Employment Act as subsequently passed created a new presidential agency, the Council
of Economic Advisers. The thing Smith needed most to realize his aims and meet
Roosevelt's wants was a first-rate, well-established group of program aides, oriented
toward the substance of policy, rather than its organization or its cost. But the group
he had begun to build by 1945 gradually dispersed in the years after CEA's creation.
Its successor has yet to be built.
41