Brookings: Experts - Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

President Obama’s Second Term: Staffing Challenges and Opportunities

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 00:00:00 -0500

Recent departures of White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew and Senior Adviser David Plouffe have drawn attention to a frequently overlooked aspect of the American presidency – the men and women who work most closely with the president in the Executive Office of the President, writes Kathryn Dunn Tenpas. Though Cabinet secretaries wield significant influence within the administration, no one can deny the influence of White House advisers, many of whom consult with the president on a broader range of issues and, most likely, more frequently than Cabinet members due to their closer proximity. Little is known, however, about the frequency with which these individuals come and go.

This report documents staff turnover rates amongst the president’s “A” team (the top tier of staff in the Executive Office of the President as designated by the National Journal) and compares the Obama team to those of Presidents Reagan, Clinton and Bush. By the end of the first term, 71 percent of President Obama’s “A” team had left their original positions—a rate comparable to his predecessors. As President Obama begins his second term, less than one third of his original team will be occupying their initial positions. To be sure, staff departures affect White House operations – loss of institutional memory, costs imposed when rehiring and orienting the new people, disappearance of networking contacts and relationships on the Hill and in the Washington community – to name a few. Complicating matters further, second terms are never easy as presidents tend to overplay their hand at the start and political capital diminishes rapidly as Congress increasingly perceives the president as a lame duck. This study provides original data documenting staff turnover rates and discusses President Obama’s staffing challenges and opportunities in his final term.

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Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

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What to Expect in the Second Term: Presidential Travel and the Rise of Legacy Building, 1957-2009

Emily Charnock, James A. McCann and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Mon, 10 Dec 2012 12:55:00 -0500

But for a glossy, twenty-page pamphlet released two weeks before election day, President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign offered up little in the way of specific plans for a second term. Our study of presidential travel from President Eisenhower through George W. Bush provides some hint of what’s in store during the next four years.

If President Obama follows in the footsteps of his predecessors, he will spend less time in swing states and more time abroad. To date, little attention has been dedicated to the study of the “public presidency” in the second-term, despite the fact that securing reelection represents an achievement capable of granting one entrance to our nation’s pantheon of “great” presidents.

In this paper, we provid an analysis of second-term presidential travel, which reveals a distinct uptick in international travel and the demise of the permanent campaign strategy. We suggest that such a change in priorities reflects an emphasis on legacy building.

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What to Expect in the Second Term: Presidential Travel and the Rise of Legacy Building, 1957-2009

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Emily Charnock
James A. McCann
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Image Source: © Stringer . / Reuters

The Politics of Presidential Appointments

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Event Information

November 12, 2008
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM EST

Saul/Zilkha Rooms
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20036

President-elect Barack Obama now faces the daunting challenge of shaping a new administration. On November 12, William Galston of the Brookings Institution moderated a discussion with David Lewis, author of The Politics of Presidential Appointments: Political Control and Bureaucratic Performance (Princeton University Press, 2008), and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Kathryn Dunn Tenpas to examine the basis on which presidents pick their political appointees and the impact of their choices on government performance.

This event is part of the “Governing Ideas” series, which is intended to broaden the discussion of governance issues through forums on timely and relevant books on history, culture, legal norms and practices, values and religion.

After the program, the panelists took audience questions.

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20081112_appointments

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David E. Lewis

Professor, Vanderbilt University

Shaping the 44th Presidency

Charles O. Jones and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 00:00:00 -0400

The Twenty-Second Amendment, as ratified in 1951, replaced a question mark with a period. Will the president seek a third term? He or she cannot. Once reelected, a president becomes the present that is tomorrow's past. The final two years of a president's term are especially notable given that the second midterm election is the last opportunity, however problematic, for gauging the president's status with voters. Heads begin to turn, focusing as much or more on "who's next" as "who's still there." As this happens, the new presidency begins to take shape.

Three presidencies—those of Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton—have experienced this inevitable look forward. Nixon, too, was reelected but resigned before the second midterm election. Of the other post-1951 presidencies, Truman and Johnson could have run for another term but chose not to; Carter and George H.W. Bush (Bush 41) sought reelection and were defeated, as was Ford for a full term. And now George W. Bush (Bush 43) is serving in that period when the present is forming the future.

This issue paper will compare Eisenhower, Reagan and Clinton before turning to Bush 43. The first three have several common characteristics that help to explain the type of presidency being formed in the last two years. As it enters its period of termination, the Bush 43 presidency scarcely resembles those of his predecessors and the differences are a cause for concern. The 44th president will inherit a diminished presidency in a system that appears now to be pitted against itself.

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Charles O. Jones
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

The Veto-Free Presidency: George W. Bush (2001-Present)

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 00:00:00 -0400

The power of the presidential veto is a formidable one, enabling executives to play a critical role in lawmaking, and providing an important check on the Congress. Despite the fact that President Bush is an assertive president, particularly in the realm of foreign policy, he has yet to veto a single bill after more than five years in office. This is extremely unusual—the last such president was Thomas Jefferson. While the first two years of the Bush administration represented a period of narrowly divided government, Republicans subsequently have controlled the House, Senate, and White House. Even so, President Bush's record is unique. Beginning with President Truman, there were 24 years of unified government in which presidents cast vetoes, on average, two times per year. President Bush has instead only threatened to veto bills on numerous occasions. A look at the Bush presidency in the historical context of post-WWII presidents who similarly governed during periods of unified government, with an emphasis on personalities, political institutions, and key events that have helped shape the veto-less presidency, may shed light on President Bush's veto-free record.

Not since Thomas Jefferson has a two-term president refrained entirely from exercising the veto. With each passing day, President George W. Bush moves closer to a precedent set only by Jefferson. Perhaps the most unique feature of the Bush administration is its protracted period of unified party control of the government, a stark contrast to the divided governments of George H. W. Bush and Ronald Reagan.

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West Wing Shuffle

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 00:00:00 -0500

The White House finally got an infusion of new blood last week when President Bush tapped budget director Joshua B. Bolten to replace Andrew H. Card Jr. as his chief of staff. About time, right? Well, actually, wrong.

The faces in the inner circle around Bush haven't changed much in the last five years, though they've played some musical chairs.

Take Bolten himself—he was a top adviser from the beginning, and is now merely moving into his third job. But while the president remains surrounded by a small group of diehard loyalists who never jump ship, his White House on the whole, like Bill Clinton's and Ronald Reagan's before it, has had constant turnover. Sure, Karl Rove still has pretty much the same job, but more than 80 percent of Bush's "A-Team"—the 64 key staffers identified by National Journal in June 2001—have moved to another position or left the administration altogether.

Extraordinarily high turnover is in fact the norm for the modern president, especially two-termers. But that isn't necessarily a good thing. Too much turnover comes with costs—the loss of institutional memory, policy expertise and longterm relationships with other political players and institutions. And for a second-term president in troubled waters, that means that fresh blood might just help keep the sharks circling.

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Publication: The Washington Post

President Bush's 2004 Campaign Travel

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 00:00:00 -0400

Where and when presidents choose to travel are two highly strategic questions. While some events necessitate a presidential visit (e.g., natural disasters), other travel is purely discretionary. Where a president chooses to make a post-State of the Union trip, promote a policy or unveil a new federal program may well be selected on the basis of a locale's support or interest in a particular presidential initiative. However, a far more strategic rationale was revealed in a previous Brookings analysis. (See www.brookings.edu/comm/events/20040329tenpas.pdf) This study revealed the integral role of electoral considerations and was supported by the disproportionate share of time presidents spent in swing states (the 16 states in which the presidential election winner won by less than 6% points in 1992 and 2000). Not surprisingly, over the course of a president's first term, the percentage of time spent in these swing states significantly increases.

In an effort to place the Bush data in context, we compared his travel during the first three years of his administration to that of his predecessor, President Clinton. The comparison revealed that President Bush has both out-traveled and out-targeted his predecessor. In a continuing study of presidential travel, new data examine the fourth year of the president's term, a point at which the campaign is in full swing. Our data reinforce our earlier findings. From January 1 through May 31, 2004, the President racked up 75 visits within 29 states. Of these 75 visits, 56% have been to swing states. By this point in the Clinton administration, President Clinton had made 58 visits in 25 states. Of these visits, 47% were to swing states.

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Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Permanent Campaign Brushes Aside Tradition

Anthony Corrado and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Tue, 30 Mar 2004 00:00:00 -0500

The presidential general election is already in full swing. Although President Bush initially sought the safe haven of the Rose Garden, he abandoned his claims that there would be "plenty of time for politics" on Feb. 23 when he kicked off his bid for re-election with a speech to the National Governors' Association.

But make no mistake about when this campaign began. The White House has kept its eye on the ball since Day One, conducting a "permanent campaign" even better than the one mounted by President Clinton and his staff during their first term in office.

What is unusual about the Bush team, despite their public disavowals of electoral motives, is that they have brought the permanent campaign to new heights.

A review of Bush's domestic travel over the first three years illustrates their keen attention to politics. For starters, he has traveled more extensively than any of his predecessors, taking 416 domestic trips during his first three years.

To place this in a more meaningful context, Bush out-traveled President Clinton (302 domestic trips) who, by many accounts, was thought to be the most political of presidents.

More interestingly, Bush has spent the bulk of his time in swing general election states — the 16 states that were each decided in 2000 by the narrowest of margins — 6 percent of the vote or less.

In his first year, 36 percent of Bush's domestic travel consisted of visits to swing states; in year two, 45 percent; in year three, 39 percent.

By comparison, Clinton focused his travel in swing states 28 percent of the time in year one, 33 percent in year two and 39 percent in the third year.

It's important to note, however, that one of Clinton's swing states was Virginia, a state presidents often visit frequently because of its proximity to Washington.

If you substituted the next most competitive state, Tennessee, for Virginia, Clinton's travel to swing states would drop to 22 percent in year one, 27 percent in year two, and 31 percent in year three.

In short, Bush has out-traveled and out-targeted Clinton.

Political travel as a measure of campaigning is but one means of looking at Bush's re-election-related activity. Another example can be found in fund-raising.

The Bush-Cheney '04 Committee began raising money in May 2003 and may rake in $200 million before the end of this summer.

This success partially reflects Bush's efforts to raise money for Republican candidates and party committees. For example, in his first two years in office, Bush shattered all records for money raised by a sitting president.

One post-midterm-election account reported that Bush brought in more than $144 million from 67 receptions in 34 states and the District of Columbia. This politicking helped his party and, at the same time, expanded his own base of financial support.

Bush is merely following the examples set by his Democratic and Republican predecessors.

Beginning with the Nixon administration, the White House initiated what has become an ongoing accumulation of outreach offices designed to enhance the president's electoral prospects (e.g., the Office of Communications, Political Affairs, Public Liaison, Intergovernmental Affairs, and most recently, the Office of Strategic Initiatives - a Bush invention).

Along with a host of unexpected duties that crop up on a daily basis in the West Wing, these entities keep their political antennae attuned to key constituencies and developments that may affect the president's electoral prospects.

In addition, the hiring of pollsters and political consultants to advise the president on an ongoing basis has only accentuated the White House focus on politics, resulting in the now familiar phrase, "the permanent campaign."

So while many observers lamented the start of a Democratic nomination process that began early in 2003, they would be wise to acknowledge that the president's campaign began even earlier, January 2001.

A lesson learned by Republicans and Democrats alike is the importance of the permanent campaign. It has all but displaced the old Rose Garden Strategy.

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Publication: The Arizona Daily Star

Bush v. Kerry: The Long Battle Begins

Mon, 29 Mar 2004 10:00:00 -0500

Event Information

March 29, 2004
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

The 2004 presidential election is shaping up to be a hotly contested race. With more than seven months still to go before the general election, President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) have launched aggressive attacks on each other and both campaigns are already spending millions of dollars to get their messages out to voters.

Brookings will convene a panel of presidential and election experts to give a progress report on the November election. Analysts with expertise in economics, foreign policy, campaign finance, advertising, and the presidency will offer their perspectives on how these issues will affect the unusually long general election campaign.

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20040329tenpas

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Peter R. Orszag

Joseph A. Pechman Senior Fellow, Economic Studies, Brookings

Need Facts to Promote Faith-based Initiatives

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Wed, 08 Oct 2003 00:00:00 -0400

Last week, the White House unveiled new regulations as part of the "faith-based initiative's effort to spread compassion in our country and make sure that the most effective programs are funded."

On the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the House of Representatives passed the "Charitable Giving Act of 2003" complete with a "Sense of Congress" statement claiming that "faith-based organizations are often more successful in dealing with difficult societal problems than government and non-sectarian organizations."

It's also worth mentioning that there are more than $65 billion in grant funds available to faith-based and community organizations, spread across six federal departments and more than 30 government agencies, not to mention the ad-hoc participation of a variety of other federal entities (Homeland Security, FEMA, Veterans Administration).

Like it or not, the train has left the station on the faith-based initiative. The problem for proponents and opponents alike is that little is known about the implementation of this far-reaching program.

For instance, how effective has the administration been in terms of channeling federal dollars to these organizations?

The White House itself does not even know how many faith-based organizations have applied for funding, how many have been successful or how much money these groups have been awarded.

What about quality? Do faith-based organizations provide better services? How do they compare to government providers?

The central problem is that we are never going to know the answers to any of these questions unless a rigorous data-collection operation is put in place. Sure, there are social scientists conducting important research. But as Congress gears up for numerous reauthorizations, there is no systematic or comprehensive effort to track the federal dollars earmarked for the programs.

That's why it's the perfect time to ask Congress to establish a centralized data collection system that requires agencies to report the number of faith-based and community organizations receiving money, how much they receive, what services they perform and how they stack up after an independent evaluation.

Of course, it won't be easy. The Pew-funded Roundtable on Religion and Social Welfare Policy identifies a number of complicating factors: the presence of voucher programs, the difficulty in defining "faith-based" organizations, the involvement of intermediaries (who ultimately determine which faith-based groups get funding), and formula grants (that allow state and local government agencies to identify grant recipients).

But with rigorous requirements mandated by Congress, every effort should be made to collect detailed data. This information is vital to ensuring an informed debate on faith-based initiatives and creating the public confidence vital to their long-term success.

As John DiIulio, the first director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, noted in the initial administration report on the faith-based initiative, "Few federal funding programs have undergone a thorough evaluation."

This was true in 2001 and remains true today. Congress frequently passes "good government" legislation that requires greater transparency and accountability in an effort to enhance its oversight role. Let's put members of Congress and the president alike in a position to proclaim the virtues of the faith-based initiative, but let these claims be rooted in fact, not hope.

Authors

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Publication: St. Paul Pioneer Press

Words vs. Deeds: President George W. Bush and polling

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Sun, 01 Jun 2003 00:00:00 -0400

President George W. Bush pledged repeatedly throughout his presidential campaign that his administration would have no use for polls and focus groups: "I really don't care what polls and focus groups say. What I care about is doing what I think is right." Shackled by that promise, President Bush and his staff have shrouded his polling apparatus, minimizing the relevance of polls and denying their impact. But public records available from the Federal Election Commission, documents from presidential libraries, and interviews with key players paint a fairly clear picture of the Bush polling operation. The picture, which turns out to be a familiar one, calls into question the administration's purported "anti-polling" ethos and shows an administration closely in keeping with historical precedent.

President Bush in Historical Context

Every president since Richard Nixon has hired professional pollsters to take, periodically, the pulse of the electorate. Earlier presidents clearly had relationships with pollsters, who obligingly tacked questions onto their existing polls for the benefit of the administration. But polling was not under White House control. Nixon's use of pollsters marked a turning point in the history of presidential polling because it signaled the birth of White House-commissioned polls. No longer tethered to the timetables and agendas of pollsters like Lou Harris and George Gallup, presidents began to direct both the timing and the substance of their polls. Nor were polls limited to the campaign season; presidents and their staff could test the popularity of various programs and policy initiatives on their own schedule. Scholars, noting that the transfer of campaign tactics to governing was blurring the distinction between the two, began describing the result as the "permanent campaign."

Rapid advances in technology played a big part in the new ways presidents used polling. By the time Nixon took office, computers, though costly, had become sophisticated enough to process vast quantities of data. Not only were telephones ubiquitous enough to make their use in polling methodologically feasible, but the advent of random digit dialing increased the efficiency and validity of telephone polling. In short, the "science" of polling became more mature, enabling presidents not only to learn about their past performance but to gain "prospective" intelligence. Today, testing key phrases in a speech or catchphrases designed to sell a policy or program has become so commonplace that presidential speeches and public pronouncements endure many rounds of focus group testing before being judged ready for primetime. Innovative techniques like the mall intercept (interviewing shoppers at a mall storefront), tracking polls, overnight polling, dial meters, and focus groups are part of any professional pollster's repertoire. And new Internet focus groups are being used, by the Bush pollsters among others, as a more timely, less expensive way to conduct focus groups. Though still in its nascent stages, Internet polling is thought to be the next generation of survey research, significantly lowering costs while increasing the speed with which polls can be conducted.

The names of many past presidential pollsters are familiar, if not exactly household names. Robert Teeter did polling for Presidents Nixon, Ford, and George H.W. Bush; Patrick Caddell for President Carter; Richard Wirthlin for President Reagan; and Stanley Greenberg (1993-94) and Mark Penn (1995-2000) for President Clinton. Most began as pollsters for the campaign and were "promoted" to presidential pollsters, taking on a higher profile in the process. Indeed, the unprecedented visibility and perceived influence of Clinton's pollsters created much advance interest in President George W. Bush's prospective pollsters. But Bush's determination to be the "anti-Clinton" and his repeated campaign promises to give polls and focus groups no role in his administration led him to relegate his pollsters to near anonymity. Still, their low profile, particularly compared with that of Clinton's pollsters, has not kept them from performing essential polling for the White House.

By the Numbers

The Republican and Democratic National Committees subsidize presidential political expenses such as polling and political travel and routinely report those expenses to the Federal Election Commission. Table 1 sets out polling expenditures only for designated presidential pollsters during the first two years of the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II administrations. The pollsters for the second Bush administration come in well behind those of Presidents Reagan and Clinton and only slightly ahead of the first Bush administration. Though the parties spent extraordinary amounts on both Reagan and Clinton, Reagan's administration was popularly perceived as being driven by deeply rooted philosophical principles while Clinton's was seen as merely pandering—suggesting that polling does not always taint a president's reputation.

When the party of the president is in power, the national committee becomes a veritable White House annex staffed with loyalists eager to secure the president's reelection. Toward that end, no amount of polling is too much, particularly when the polling can also inform broader party strategy and statewide campaigns. A look at Republican National Committee spending on polling more generally (not just designated presidential pollsters) reveals that it spent roughly $3.1 million during the first two years of the current Bush administration. And even that figure understates the polling available to the White House because it does not include polling conducted on behalf of the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which totals some $6.5 million—more than double what the RNC spent on polling. Though neither of those organizations is responsible for subsidizing White House polling, Bush's presidential pollsters, Jan van Lohuizen (Voter/Consumer Research) and Fred Steeper (Market Strategies), have done work for these committees totaling more than $800,000—a sum that if added to presidential polling would bump up the Bush total to $2.5 million, more than $1 million more than Bush I. And Karl Rove's extraordinary sway makes it unlikely that any request by him for statewide polls that might be of interest to the president would be denied either by the president's pollsters or by any pollsters doing work for the RNC. In addition, the RNC spent $2.7 million on "political consulting." And although the FEC reports do not detail the various projects, the reports include work by former White House adviser Karen Hughes and a broad range of Republican consulting firms.

As interesting as the total amount of RNC spending on polling is its timing (figure 1). Rather than being more or less consistent monthly, spending peaks in ways that seem hard to explain. Though noteworthy events—the September 11 attacks and the midterm elections—may account for two of the peaks, Matthew Dowd, senior adviser at the RNC, has indicated that events do not necessarily drive polling. And while pollsters may be interested in gauging the impact of unexpected events or new developments, their billing is not systematic in a way that could support the event-driven explanation. Nevertheless, a statistical regression analysis reveals a general trend upward, roughly an average increase of $4,000 a month, suggesting that, over time, there are forces driving the RNC to spend more money on polling. Short of obtaining White House-commissioned polls, it is impossible to define the precise role that events play in polling. Regardless, the variation in spending reflects the idiosyncratic usage of polling within the Bush administration.

Table 1. National Party Presidential Polling Expenditures (in 2002 Dollars)
Administration	First year	Second year	Total
Reagan— Richard Wirthlin	$1,635,000	$2,531,000	4.1 million
Bush I— Robert Teeter	831,683	470,811	1.3 million
Clinton— Stanley Greenberg	2,433,000	2,415,000	4.8 million
Bush II— Jan van Lohuizen and Fred Steeper	715,771	947,422	1.7 million
*Data for the current administration obtained on-line from fec.gov with the assistance of Elizabeth Redman and Larissa Davis of the Brookings Institution, April 2003. All other data obtained by author.

Why Poll?

Presidential documents and interviews with White House staff and pollsters from past administrations suggest that presidents use polling for two primary reasons. The first is tactical. Given the limited resources available to them, new presidents must determine the best way to sell their agenda, minimizing costs and maximizing their influence. Campaign professionals, armed with state-of-the-art public opinion technology and an "outside the Beltway" perspective on pressing issues and problems, provide a service that the modern White House is unequipped to offer. The second reason, rooted in democratic theory, is a president's desire to represent his constituents by acting in consonance with a majority of the public. Although the Bush administration is willing to admit it uses polls to help package and sell its policies to the public, it regards as heresy any suggestion that it follows the polls (even the Clinton administration denied that it used polls for this purpose).

Regardless, presidential pollsters from all administrations since Nixon's have been known to poll on foreign and domestic issues alike. Nixon polled about Vietnam and about admitting China to the United Nations. Carter surveyed American attitudes toward Israel and the Iran hostage crisis. Reagan tracked polls on the Iran-Contra affair and the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon. During President George H.W. Bush's administration, pollsters Robert Teeter and Fred Steeper conducted polls and focus groups both before and during the Gulf War. Examples of polling on domestic policy—busing, agriculture, government regulation, bilingual education, health care policy, energy, and the budget—abound. Presidential pollsters provide additional data before midterm elections and become pivotal during the president's reelection campaign. Typically, the fourth year of the president's term generates the highest spending on polling. Speech content is another area where pollsters can provide useful advice. Finally, all presidential pollsters need to collect national tracking polls on a regular basis to provide an internal baseline to compare against other polls. In short, presidential polling is a staple of the modern presidency.

Consumer of Polls: The Bush Political Machine

The way one political insider explained President Bush's attitude toward polling reinforced the president's campaign mantra: "One of the worst arguments a White House adviser can make to the president is to say that "the polls show X.'" But despite the president's disdain for public opinion polls, he has created a formidable White House political operation that focuses closely on them. The Office of Strategic Initiatives monitors and analyzes the results of numerous public surveys by major networks and news organizations as well as the findings of privately commissioned polls. And access to state surveys and other polls conducted by GOP pollsters informs their analyses. Why does the nature of the White House political operation matter? Because no amount of polling is worthwhile unless it is properly analyzed and incorporated into White House policy and political discussions.

President Bush's chief political confidant, Karl Rove, is considered by Republicans and Democrats alike to be an extraordinarily shrewd presidential adviser. On entering the White House in 2001, Bush established the first White House Office of Strategic Initiatives and appointed Rove its director—giving him a perch from which to survey the political landscape with the aim of expanding the president's electoral coalition in 2004. Unlike Bush's father, who placed his chief political adviser, Lee Atwater, at the helm of the RNC, George W. Bush understands the importance of proximity. Though the president deliberately distances himself from pollster Jan van Lohuizen (political insiders claim the two rarely meet), his close relationship with Rove virtually ensures a key role for polling in presidential policymaking.

Assisting Rove as chief political adviser is Matthew Dowd, the RNC senior adviser who coordinates the pollsters and analyzes the political pulse with the help of van Lohuizen, who conducts focus groups as well as national surveys. And Fred Steeper, 1992 campaign pollster for Bush's father, is assigned a variety of special projects that address specific research questions, some of which involve focus groups. Combining the less "scientific" focus groups with polling enables the political shop to determine what people are thinking and then test those attitudes rigorously through national surveys. Unlike survey research, the focus group allows researchers to present text from a speech or a segment of a television ad and gauge the intensity of emotions, observe body language, and probe more deeply on key issues. The focus group alone may not be especially helpful, but combined with survey research, it can create a more refined questionnaire that zeroes in on previously tested issues and preferences. Similarly, the focus group technique can be applied after a national survey to probe specific questions and issues. The Steeper-van Lohuizen team clearly enhances the value of survey research while the Rove-Dowd-van Lohuizen/Steeper chain of command ensures that the pollsters stay well outside the political circle—and away from the eyes of the White House press corps.

The final part of this well-oiled political machine is the White House Office of Political Affairs director and recipient of polling data, Ken Mehlman. Since the Reagan administration, this office has become a standard component of all White House political operations, but its influence depends largely on the president and his chief aides. The first President Bush downplayed the office, and it experienced high turnover during the first term of the Clinton administration. But in today's White House, Ken Mehlman's job is deemed an important one—though unlike Karl Rove's macropolitical strategy, Mehlman tends to the care and feeding of state and local partisans in hopes of paving the way for victory in 2004.

White House Polling in Perspective: Perception Is Everything

President Bush's use of polling is by no means pathbreaking, nor is the amount of polling particularly astounding. What is unusual about the Bush team's polling operation is the chasm between its words and actions. Never before has a White House engaged in such anti-polling rhetoric or built up such a buffer between the pollsters and the president. The placement of longtime Bush loyalist Dowd at the RNC to coordinate the polling means that the pollsters do not have contact with the White House. Such unusual behavior reflects a broader tension between a determined attempt to avoid the mistakes of Bush the elder—especially the failure after the Persian Gulf War to consider the implications of a stagnant economy for the 1992 reelection campaign—and a continuous effort to shed the vestiges of the Clinton administration. The Bush team fully understands the value of polling, but the perceived overuse of polling within the Clinton administration has led to serious overcompensation, which in turn has bred secrecy and denial. All presidents are subjected to the pressures of the "permanent campaign" Information is integral to any successful presidency. Polling is part of a broader game of politics and policymaking. No one can dictate how presidents use polls, but denying the role of polls in the policy process is fruitless.

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Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Campaigning to Govern: Presidents Seeking Reelection

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Tue, 01 Apr 2003 00:00:00 -0500

In the presidential election of 1904, President Theodore Roosevelt refrained from campaigning as it was considered "undignified to campaign from the White House"(Troy 1991, 212 emphasis added). This fear of losing one's "dignity" had gone by the wayside when President Woodrow Wilson actively campaigned for his 1916 reelection. Since then, there's been no turning back. Dramatic advancements in telecommunications have made presidents ubiquitous--campaigning on daytime talk shows, MTV, and internet sites have become de rigeur. These days, the notion of presidents campaigning for reelection is commonplace. In fact, when presidents claim that they are avoiding the campaign trail to take care of government business, journalists and observers scoff in disbelief.

This article originally appeared in the April 2003 issue of PS: Political Science and Politics. Reprinted by permission of the American Political Science Association.

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Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Publication: Political Science & Politics

The Contemporary Presidency: The Bush White House: First Appraisals

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Stephen Hess — Sun, 01 Sep 2002 00:00:00 -0400

When the disputed election of 2000 ended with the Supreme Court's decision on December 12, it effectively shortened the presidential transition to less than fifty days and complicated the incoming administration's personnel problems. Chief among George W. Bush's immediate hiring decisions was the choice of senior White House staff, those advisers with whom he would have the most day-to-day contact. Selecting an ideal White House staff is confounded by a host of factors: satisfying the president-elect's personal preferences, honoring political obligations, finding experts with the appropriate ideological hue, and achieving diversity goals. While these were Bush's initial goals, the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, required instant adjustments that resulted in structural, procedural, and staff changes.

This article examines Bush's first crack at assembling his White House and assesses its early performance as well as the staff and structural changes made in the wake of the terrorist attacks. In an effort to gain perspective on the Bush record, we compare his staff to the initial staffs of his three immediate predecessors—Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan. More specifically, we examine appointments to the Executive Office of the President (EOP), including such senior staff members as the national security adviser and the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The conventional wisdom was that President Bush hired an older, wiser set of advisers than President Clinton, who had rewarded "the kids"—hard-working, youthful campaign staffers (Stephanopoulos 1999, 148; Houston 1993, 22). Furthermore, while Clinton worked hard to assemble a team that "looked like America," Bush hired establishment Republicans, particularly those with a conservative bent. However, staff biographies published in the National Journal reveal remarkable similarity between the two administrations. Adding Presidents George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan into the comparison provides a long-term look at presidents' initial staffing, revealing additional similarities as well as important differences.

This article identifies the unique features of President Bush's staffing organization as well as recent additions. Part two will discuss presidents' first attempts to staff the White House from 1981 through 2001 and demonstrates key demographic characteristics and concludes with an evaluative discussion of the Bush operation.

Inaugural Innovations

Although President Bush's staff possessed qualities similar to those of his predecessors, he imposed his own ideas about running a White House by making structural changes within the EOP, reflecting his administration's priorities, goals, and general approach to governing. He began his term by adding two new units: the Office of Strategic Initiatives (OSI) and the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (OFBCI). He bolstered the Office of the Vice President, and his cabinet was given both standard and untraditional functions (Nakashima and Milbank 2001, A1). The events of September 11, 2001, additionally imposed various structural and procedural changes that affected cabinet and White House staff Each innovation represented a break with the Clinton presidency, although in some cases, there were roots in prior administrations.

The OSI, led by Bush confidant Karl Rove, was designed to think ahead and devise long-term political strategy. "It is an effort to solve the problem that consistently dogs White House staffs: the pressure to respond to unexpected events and to react to daily news cycles, which causes presidential advisers to lose sight of the big picture" (Milbank 2001a, A1). The equivalent during the Reagan administration could have been the Office of Planning and Evaluation, led by Richard Beal, a colleague of pollster Richard Wirthlin. It is hardly unusual for presidents to create offices designed to ensure their political longevity. For instance, Reagan's Office of Political Affairs, initially led by Lyn Nofziger, was charged with maintaining and expanding his electoral coalition but was not afforded the opportunity to devise long-term strategy.

The unique feature of the OSI was that the president's leading political adviser was in charge. George H.W. Bush relied on the strategic advice of Lee Atwater but did not provide him with a White House perch. Atwater resided at the Republican National Committee until health problems forced him to resign. After Atwater's death, the absence of political insight and strategy became a serious weakness in the administration and the reelection campaign. President Clinton used outside consultants James Carville, Paul Begala, Mandy Grunwald, and pollster Stanley Greenberg until the disastrous 1994 midterm elections. Subsequently, Dick Morris provided strategic input while running a consulting firm in which he offered advice to politicians of all stripes. The Bush administration clearly took a different approach by thoroughly integrating Rove into the White House chain of command. Though Rove was a polemic figure in the early days of the administration, if his office has the capacity to create a successful long-term governing strategy, particularly in the aftermath of September 11, it will have been a sensible organizational solution to a persistent presidential problem. Prospects for success, however, are dim. According to one aide in the post-terrorism crisis period, "You can't predict events more than 72 hours out at most...We pretty much have a game plan for next week, but that could change" (Milbank and Graham 2001, A4). Clearly, these events have and will continue to pose great challenges for Rove and his new office.

The White House OFBCI, established by executive order, was meant to demonstrate President Bush's commitment to "compassionate conservatism" by reaching out to faith-based and community organizations in an effort to help the needy. The initial legislative initiative endorsed by the administration, H.R. 7, primarily sought to ease government restrictions on religious organizations so that faith-based groups could more easily provide government services such as day care and alcohol rehabilitation. Numerous presidents have created offices solely for the sake of pursuing a single policy (Clinton for the Y2K problem, for example). But the establishment of such an office by means of an executive order is unusual and perhaps unwise since it can only be eliminated by issuing another executive order. Special White House offices create unreasonable expectations for constituencies that previously lacked a White House contact. Such expectations also create problems for an overburdened White House staff.

Aside from structural innovations, President Bush expanded the influence of some positions, most notably the vice presidency. The stature of vice presidents has risen markedly since Jimmy Carter selected Walter Mondale in 1976, and Al Gore was clearly the most engaged vice president of the twentieth century. But Cheney's vast Washington experience, as well as his formidable role in the transition, has catapulted the vice presidency to new heights. According to one report, "Hardly anyone would minimize the enormous role Cheney plays in running George W. Bush's administration" (Barnes 2001, 814). The vice president's initial activities included devising energy policy, diplomacy, and congressional lobbying. In the aftermath of September 11, while intermittently placed in an "undisclosed location" for security reasons, the vice president continued to play an integral role in the administration. In fact, Cheney created the initial plan to set up the Office of Homeland Security. At the same time, his aides closely coordinated and collaborated with the president's staff. His chief of staff attended "most of the A-level meetings" at the White House, and two of his aides—Mary Matalin and Lewis Libby—also were titled assistant to the president (Barnes, 2001).

President Bush's reputation as one who likes to delegate authority, along with the impressive resumes of some cabinet members, led observers to expect the cabinet to play an enhanced role in the administration. According to one early forecast,

With their golden resumes, long years of public service, strong personalities and close ties to Mr. Bush, Vice President-elect Cheney, and the Republican establishment-in-waiting, the men and women of the emerging Cabinet can be expected to exert just as much influence over the administration as the staff in the White House exerts, if not more. (Kahn, 2000, 1)

The supposition was that these department heads would need little direction from the White House, particularly on day-to-day matters. But students of American politics remembered Jimmy Carter's failed attempt to form a "cabinet government" and how his White House staff rejected this approach in favor of centralizing control, maintaining the authority to rein in cabinet members when necessary.

Though this centripetal force is quite powerful, the September 11 attacks will likely preclude the marginalization of key cabinet members in the Bush administration. Just days before the September 11 attack, Time magazine published an article declaring Secretary of State Colin Powell the "odd man out." Then the events on that fateful day enhanced and strengthened not only the role of Secretary Powell but a number of other cabinet secretaries as well (particularly Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld). Indeed, any department with important homeland security concerns instantly moved up a notch on the power ladder in Washington. Just as scholars have noted the presence of an "inner" and "outer" cabinet in which the original departments (State, War, Treasury, and Justice) dominate the president's time and attention, the events of September 11 have created a somewhat expanded inner cabinet. So while some observers anticipated the possibility of a more active cabinet, the tendency for certain members (given their prior relationship with the president or the relevance of their department) to exert more influence than others resulted in a variation on the inner and outer cabinet model. The foremost cabinet innovation to deal with terrorism, the "war cabinet," is a body "composed of top national security officials from the White House, CIA, State Department, and Pentagon [and] has become the main decision-making body determining how the United States will frame its response to the Sept. 11 attacks" (Allen and Sipress 2001, A3).

After 9/11, Bush's organizational challenge was how to respond to the urgent need for homeland security. He had to choose between two basic approaches: the department model, a single operating agency with overall responsibility for preventing, protecting against, and responding to terrorist attacks; or the National Security Council (NSC) model, a White House office responsible for coordinating the various operating agencies and getting them to work as a team. Bush opted for the NSC model and chose a good friend, Governor Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania, to be his homeland security adviser. But with no authority over the operating units, Ridge's chances of success, observers calculated, would depend importantly on his perceived clout with the president and his personal leadership skills. At the same time, many in Congress were pushing a bill to create a new cabinet department whose secretary would be confirmed by the Senate and who would be expected to testify before congressional committees. (4) The most important test of whether the NSC model under Ridge's leadership was effective came in December, when he proposed to the president a new agency merging those parts of government with responsibilities for protecting U.S. borders, such as the Coast Guard and the Customs Service. What happened next, according to the Washington Post, was that the proposal was leaked to the press and "the bureaucracies erupted...scuttling the border proposal." The lesson learned by Bush's team was that "ideas introduced piecemeal will be killed piecemeal" (Von Drehle and Allen 2002).

This began a top-secret White House operation that eventually produced a surprising mega-proposal. Reversing course, the president on June 6, 2002, asked Congress to join him in creating a Department of Homeland Security with 169,154 employees and a budget of $ 37.5 billion. The major pieces of the new department—the third largest unit of the federal governmen—-would be the Coast Guard, the Transportation Security Agency, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Customs Service, the Secret Service, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Bush would continue to have a cabinet-level Homeland Security Council and a homeland security adviser in the White House, both created by executive order.

In January 2002, Bush turned to the executive order format again to create another White House office following his State of the Union challenge to the American people to commit themselves to four thousand hours of public service during their lives (Executive Order 13254). He called his new program the USA Freedom Corps, with a council similar to the Homeland Security Council, and gave an assistant, John Bridgeland, instructions to coordinate other government agencies in the volunteer business, such as the Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and Senior Corps.

Aside from these more ambitious innovations, the events of September 11 altered "business as usual" in the White House. In the immediate aftermath, most aides, whether in the Offices of Communications, Public Liaison, Political Affairs, or the OFBCI, assumed responsibilities pertaining to the attack and recovery (Milbank 2001b, A25). Deputy Chief of Staff Josh Bolten was put in charge of the Domestic Consequences Principals Committee, assessing the impact of the attacks on domestic policy. Presidential confidant Karen Hughes created a special White House-based public relations operation aimed at winning international support, particularly in the Islamic world, for the antiterrorist campaign (Pincus and DeYoung 2001, A18).

While it is important to identify new features of an incoming administration, it is equally important to note the volatility of these innovations. If they fail to live up to expectations—or worse, if they create new problems—innovations must be quickly discarded. Presidents are rightly cautious when it comes to adding or subtracting White House offices and responsibilities. Unfortunately, they are often less adept at correcting their own mistakes.

Hitting the Ground Running

Seeking to avoid the missteps of the early Clinton administration as well as skepticism surrounding his ability to govern, President-Elect Bush moved with surprising speed. Clinton had not chosen his White House staff until a week before his inauguration. But by January 4, 2001, Bush had nearly completed the selection of his senior aides. As he made his choices public, pundits were quick to highlight distinctions between the Clinton and Bush staffs, with Bush's people clearly getting higher grades. The National Journal, for instance, characterized the Bush team as "one of the most experienced senior staffs in modern memory" (Simendinger 2001, 246). Interestingly, as Table 1 illustrates, the characteristics of these staffs—age, gender, ethnicity—were remarkably similar.

TABLE 1 The Executive Office of the President (EOP): The "A" Team-Reagan 1981, Bush 1989, Clinton 1993, and Bush 2001
EOP	Reagan 1981 (total staff = 61)	G.H.W. Bush 1989 (total staff = 50)	Clinton 1993 (total staff = 72)	G.W. Bush 2001 (total staff = 65)

Average age	45	43	45	45
% women	5	14	29	28
% minorities	3	8	8	11
% home state	26	10	10	29
Most common	Executive	Executive	Capitol	Presidential
job experience	branch	branch	Hill	campaign

Source: Periodic editions of "Decisionmakers" in the National Journal (April 25, 1981, p. 678; June 10, 1989, p. 1405; June 19, 1993, p. 1457; and June 23, 2001, p. 1866). The table was prepared with the assistance of Daniel Reilly.

The average age of incoming staffers has remained steady since 1981. For all the raves about "seasoned veterans" and critiques of Clinton's youthful staff, the average age of Bush's "A" team was identical to Clinton's. Articles written in the early days of the Clinton administration portrayed his aides as "star struck young staffers" and compared the atmosphere to that of a college dormitory. The title of one op-ed piece—"Home Alone 3: The White House; Where Are the Grown-Ups?"—captures the sentiment among many observers (Krauthammer 1993, A31). Yet for the past twenty years, the average age of presidents' closest advisers has hovered in the mid-forties, a particularly productive and energetic period in the lives of many executives.

Despite opposition cries that the Bush White House is nothing but "a bunch of white males," the numbers indicate that the president appointed women and minorities in numbers that more closely resemble Clinton than Bush the elder. Significantly, President Bush appointed women to more influential positions than any prior president. The Bush inner circle includes Karen Hughes, counselor to the president ("the most powerful woman ever to work on a White House staff"); National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice; and Margaret Spelling (nee La Montagne), assistant to the president for domestic policy.

President Bush has appointed substantially more minorities than all three predecessors, and at the highest echelons, appointments include Rice and Alberto Gonzales, counsel to the president. The expanded role of Hispanics reflects the president's Texas roots as well as the growing influence of this sector of the population.

Surrounding oneself with a home state "mafia," as the press sometimes charges, may be viewed as a president choosing loyalty over ability. But for two-term governors of the nation's two largest states, it is hardly surprising that Reagan and Bush turned to the talent pools of California and Texas for executives. The first President Bush, lacking a true home state (Connecticut, Maine, or Texas), had a low percentage of home-state appointments. And despite the public impression of Washington being overrun by Arkansans when Clinton was president, Arkansas is a very small state, which was reflected in the low number of appointments.

Finally, in terms of prior experience, the Bush administration turned most often to his campaign, reflecting that there had been less "ad hocery" than in many campaign organizations. As the well-financed front-runner, he had the luxury of picking experts who could move into the White House with him. The Clinton administration was the only one in which working in the executive branch was not among the top two occupations, a phenomenon explained by the twelve-year dearth of Democratic presidents. This absence of Democratic presidents resulted in a smaller talent pool of former White House staff members. Working within these constraints, Clinton recruited from the halls of Congress, where Democratic aides and advisers bided their time between presidential elections.

What is most surprising in this longitudinal comparison is that much of conventional wisdom is wrong. The Clinton administration was not run by youngsters, and the Bush administration was not hostile to appointing minorities and women. The realities of White House staffing defy popular myth.

Assessing the Bush Team: Early Missteps

Mistakes are endemic to the start of any administration. A lethal combination of early arrogance and euphoria often derail best intentions. George W. Bush's first stumble was over the nomination of Linda Chavez for labor secretary. Some blamed the debacle on a lax vetting process, but Chavez withdrew quickly and a less controversial successor was named and confirmed without incident. Having recovered from this mishap, the White House endured an eruption of criticism over the delayed stock divestitures of senior staff and cabinet members, especially the holdings of Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill. The heat was turned up even more when Karl Rove met with lobbyists for Intel, a company in which he owned stock, thereby opening the door to political opponents who promptly demanded an investigation. These missteps resulted in bad publicity that may have distracted the White House officials but did not prove disabling.

In contrast, the newly established White House OFBCI attracted controversy from day one when Republicans and Democrats alike began to question the constitutionality of financially assisting religious institutions that provide government services. The mission of this office not only created opposition within both parties but created enemies and allies within the religious community—the very group that supposedly had the most to gain from such an office. Compounding the administration's tribulations was a summertime leak from an employee of the Salvation Army who revealed that the White House was seeking to protect it from cities' domestic partnership benefit requirements. The uproar created even more suspicion. Eventually, the OFBCI's bill passed the House with anemic support—a vote of 233 to 198—and a rocky road ahead in the Senate. The key Democratic supporter, Senator Lieberman, was not pleased with H.R. 7 and expressed his desire to rewrite the bill. Ultimately, the events of 9/11 relegated the issue to the sidelines, and OFBCI pursued the less controversial component of its agenda—tax incentives for charitable giving (the CARE Act, S. 1924).

These missteps pale in comparison with the shock waves following Senator Jim Jeffords's defection from the Republican Party, causing the party's loss of majority status in the Senate, jeopardizing the president's legislative agenda, and for the first time casting serious doubt on the performance of the White House staff. Why didn't they know about Jeffords's apparent dissatisfaction? If they did know, why didn't they do something?

As we enter the summer of 2002, it is not clear that the staff innovations designed to meet the challenges of "America's new war" can achieve the necessary level of integration and cooperation. Nevertheless, the Bush team appears to have established an advisory system reflective of a unique balance between White House staff and cabinet input—a system that fits the needs of today's crisis atmosphere. The president will have to respond to cracks that appear in his administrative structures and personnel weaknesses, but he deserves credit for diminishing the intense public fear in the aftermath of 9/11 by responding in a manner that suited the needs of the country.

In the end, it is impossible for any administration to be mistake-free. Stumbling is inevitable. Still, President Bush benefited from his predecessors' mistakes. His transition and first days seemed like a cakewalk compared to the unrelenting criticism faced by President Clinton. Assembling a staff of seasoned veterans in less than fifty days is no small feat. Avoiding all manner of mistakes is well beyond the realities of doing governance in Washington.

References

Allen, Mike, and Alan Sipress. 2001. Attacks refocus White House on how to fight terrorism. Washington Post, September 26.

Barnes, James A. 2001. The imperial vice presidency. National Journal 33 (11, March 17): 814.

Houston, Fiona. 1993. Youth actively served by junior Clinton aides. New York Times, March 28.

Kahn, Joseph. 2000. Bush's selections signal a widening of cabinet's role. New York Times, December 31.

Krauthammer, Charles. 1993. Home Alone 3: The White House; where are the grown-ups? Washington Post, May 14.

Kumar, Martha. 2002. Recruiting and organizing the White House staff. PS 35 (1): 35-40.

Milbank, Dana. 2001a. Serious "strategery"; as Rove launches elaborate political effort, some see a nascent Clintonian "war room." Washington Post, April 22.

--. 2001b. White House staff switches gears. Washington Post, September 17.

Milbank, Dana, and Bradley Graham. 2001. With crisis, White House style is now more fluid. Washington Post, October 10.

Nakashima, Ellen, and Dana Milbank. 2001. Bush cabinet takes back seat in driving policy. Washington Post, September 5.

Pfiffner, James. 1996. The strategic presidency: Hitting the ground running. 2d ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.

Pincus, Walter, and Karen DeYoung. 2001. U.S. says new tape points to Bin Laden. Washington Post, December 9.

Simendinger, Alexis. 2001. Stepping into power. National Journal 33 (4, January 27): 246.

Stephanopoulos, George. 1999. All too human. New York: Little, Brown.

Von Drehle, David, and Mike Allen. 2002. Bush plan's underground architects. Washington Post, June 9.

Authors

Publication: Presidential Studies Quarterly

Explaining Increasing Turnover Rates among Presidential Advisers, 1929-1997

Matthew J. Dickinson and Kathryn Dunn Tenpas — Wed, 01 May 2002 00:00:00 -0400

The transformation of the presidential electoral process from a party-controlled to a media-driven candidate-centered system has made it increasingly difficult for presidents to meld governing and campaigning expertise within a single White House-centered advisory organization. This is because the skills needed to win office are increasingly divorced from those needed to govern effectively. As presidential priorities shift from campaigning to governing (or vice versa), then, presidents must reorganize their advisory system to maximize the usefulness of those aides possessing the requisite talents and experiences. The findings from a logistic regression analyzing the causes of staff turnover during the period 1929-1997 are consistent with the claim that higher rates of presidential staff turnover are linked to changes in the presidential selection process.

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Authors

Matthew J. Dickinson
Kathryn Dunn Tenpas

Publication: The Journal of Politics

Bush's 'A Team': Just Like Clinton's, But More So

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Stephen Hess — Sun, 27 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

This is an excerpt from a longer paper (background paper)

What does the Bush White House have in common with that of Bill Clinton? More than you might think. The media have characterized the Bush White House as filled with graybeards and the Clinton White House as a haven for youngsters, but neither image is true. The staffs each of these presidents assembled upon coming to the White House—the five dozen or so most influential members of the executive office of the presidency—look remarkably similar in several ways. While Clinton vowed to assemble a staff that "looked like America," Bush's has been even more diverse. And their "A Teams" were roughly the same age. Finally, both Bush and Clinton politicized the presidency to the same degree. These are some of the findings of "The Bush White House: First Appraisals," a paper to be released on Wednesday by the Brookings Institution, which compares the executive office in the first six months of each administration since Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.

A closer look at the numbers, as shown [below]:

AGE: Early on, the average age of Bush's closest advisers was identical to that of Clinton's. In fact, for the past 20 years, the average age of the presidential A Team has hovered in the mid-forties.

DIVERSITY President Bush has appointed women and minorities in numbers that more closely resemble Clinton's White House than that of Bush's father. And the current president has appointed more women to influential staff positions than has any other president.

President Bush has appointed substantially more minorities than all three of his predecessors. Hispanics have an expanded role—a reflection of the president's Texas roots as well as the growing influence of that population.

HOME STATE: A president who surrounds himself with a home state "mafia" is often criticized as having chosen loyalty over ability. But for Ronald Reagan and the current president, two-term governors of two of the nation's largest states, choosing large numbers of California and Texas executives was hardly surprising.

EXPERIENCE: Unlike his three predecessors, President Bush turned most often to his own campaign as a source of his closest White House advisers. Of the four, Clinton's administration was the only one in which executive branch experience was not among the top two previous job descriptions. This is explained largely by the Democrats' 12-year absence from the White House.

POLITICIZATION: In terms of overtly falling prey to the "permanent campaign" ethos of politics, President Bush has out-Clintoned Clinton, who was criticized as hyper-political. Bush's Office of Strategic Initiatives is devoted to expanding the Bush electoral coalition and keeping watch over the Republican base. Then there's the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, a component of his compassionate conservatism. But it is also a not-so-subtle attempt to reach out to the religious wing of the party.

To the extent that the current A Team is reminiscent of Clinton's, Bush is no doubt hoping the teams will have something else in common—a two-term presidency.

Source: Periodic editions of "Decisionmakers" in National Journal. (April 25, 1981, p. 678; June 10, 1989, p. 1405; June 19, 1993, p. 1457; and June 23, 2001, p. 1866). These figures are subject to revision. Table prepared with the assistance of Daniel Reilly.
*For the purposes of this study, we used Texas as President Bush's home state.

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas is associate director of the University of Pennsylvania's Washington Semester Program and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution. Stephen Hess is a senior fellow at Brookings.

Authors

Publication: The Washington Post

Bush's 'A Team': Just Like Clinton's, But More So

Kathryn Dunn Tenpas and Stephen Hess — Sun, 27 Jan 2002 00:00:00 -0500

An excerpted version of this background paper appeared in The Washington Post (excerpted version)

A closer look at the numbers, as shown below:

AGE— Early on, the average age of Bush's closest advisers was identical to that of Clinton's. In fact, for the past 20 years, the average age of the presidential A Team has hovered in the mid-forties.

DIVERSITY— President Bush has appointed women and minorities in numbers that more closely resemble Clinton's White House than that of Bush's father. And the current president has appointed more women to influential staff positions than has any other president.

HOME STATE— A president who surrounds himself with a home state "mafia" is often criticized as having chosen loyalty over ability. But for Ronald Reagan and the current president, two-term governors of two of the nation's largest states, choosing large numbers of California and Texas executives was hardly surprising.

EXPERIENCE— Unlike his three predecessors, President Bush turned most often to his own campaign as a source of his closest White House advisers. Of the four, Clinton's administration was the only one in which executive branch experience was not among the top two previous job descriptions. This is explained largely by the Democrats' 12-year absence from the White House.

POLITICIZATION— In terms of overtly falling prey to the "permanent campaign" ethos of politics, President Bush has out-Clintoned Clinton, who was criticized as hyper-political. Bush's Office of Strategic Initiatives is devoted to expanding the Bush electoral coalition and keeping watch over the Republican base. Then there's the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, a component of his compassionate conservatism. But it is also a not-so-subtle attempt to reach out to the religious wing of the party.

To the extent that the current A Team is reminiscent of Clinton's, Bush is no doubt hoping the teams will have something else in common—a two-term presidency.

Source: Periodic editions of "Decisionmakers" in National Journal. (April 25, 1981, p. 678; June 10, 1989, p. 1405; June 19, 1993, p. 1457; and June 23, 2001, p. 1866). These figures are subject to revision. Table prepared with the assistance of Daniel Reilly.

*For the purposes of this study, we used Texas as President Bush's home state.

Authors

Publication: The Washington Post