Ceo Style May Be What Times Call For
`I set goals. And I delegate. And I hold people accountable for achieving the goals.” That’s how George W. Bush described his management style to CBS News in his first extensive post-election interview.
If Bush ends up as president, Washington will be in for a shock - the style he describes could not be more different from the detail-devouring Bill Clinton. It’s not necessarily better or worse, say those who’ve worked in past White Houses, but it’s definitely different.
That’s because Clinton’s background is in politics and Bush’s is in business, says former Democratic Rep. Jim Jones. Jones served as White House chief of staff at the end of the Johnson administration, where he remembers a president who wanted “to know every fact, every bit of gossip and see everything through.” Bush’s approach, according to Jones, who also put in time as head of the American Stock Exchange, is “much more a CEO mentality, where you develop people of talent, put them in charge of carrying out the business of the company while you work the board.” And who’s the board in the case of the president? “Congress,” answers Jones.
It’s a style that many old capital city hands have compared to President Reagan’s but some members of the Reagan administration bristle at the analogy. “Ronald Reagan was very wise, that’s the difference,” insisted one of the former president’s intimates. “I don’t know whether this guy’s wise or not.” Another Reagan devotee put it this way: “Bush doesn’t have the fully formed views and philosophy that Reagan developed over a lifetime.”
These men argue that a delegator-in-chief only works effectively if the president has the capacity to inspire the public, the way Reagan did. And they worry that Bush’s appearances since the election have been less than inspirational.
“It’s an awesome thing he’s facing and I don’t feel like he’s really gotten ready for the idea of being president,” mused yet another Reagan appointee. “I don’t sense any driving force behind a Bush administration other than getting along with everybody.”
But that might be exactly what the country needs right now. Even one of the Republican skeptics admits that “it could be very important to get a period of time to heal ourselves, to watch and see government work.”
Bush once explained to us his theories about spending political capital in order to amass more of it. Having clearly reflected on his father’s failure to use his high approval ratings after the Persian Gulf War to achieve something here at home, George W. Bush took that lesson in squandering capital to heart as governor. He told us he used the political capital from his victory in the election to get a few things done. Then, by getting those things done, he acquired more political capital and was able to get bigger things done. It’s a model Bush is sure he can replicate if he gets to Washington.
It’s going to be tough, given the fierceness of the partisanship and the closeness of the election.
“A big tax cut’s not likely,” says former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein, “but Bush might enact the leftovers agenda. He might find common ground on HMO reform, prescription drugs for seniors, the marriage penalty, the death tax and maybe education reform. Then people would say he’s learned the ways of Washington and demonstrated he can govern, and then maybe he can get big things done.” That sounds a lot like Bush’s own formula for success.
And that success depends on “working the board” in Jim Jones’ term - spending a lot of time cozying up to both parties in Congress. But first he would have to show he is serious - by appointing a cabinet that’s bipartisan and ethnically diverse - then it might work just fine if he would let the cabinet worry about the details.
As one former Reagan official put it, “One hundred years ago the movers and shakers in this country were in business and the press. Those are the people whose biographies we’re reading now - Rockefeller and Hearst, not McKinley. This is a time like that, when the innovators in business are the great people, not the policy makers.”
It’s a time that might suit a would-be President George W. Bush just fine. He doesn’t seem to want to plan great plans or dream great dreams. He does want to get some things done and bring people together in the process of doing them. If he succeeded, it would be a lot more than presidential management style that changed in Washington.