by Dick Morris
The president needs his staff to pick clean the legislative agendas of the individual departments, their proposed regulations and their executive actions, to bring to the White House those initiatives the president needs or wants for himself. President Clinton’s tobacco regulations, food safety standards, and TV ratings system, all key actions of his presidency, could easily have been announced at the agency level, squandering the political credit. Instead, he announced them himself, getting the political reward he needed and deserved.
Cabinet-level bodies like the National Economic Council and the Domestic Policy Council can take over a presidency. Their role model, the National Security Council, runs foreign policy and would like to manage economic and domestic policy as thoroughly. A president should regard both groups with suspicion.
When President Clinton began to move to the center in the middle of his first term, Robert Reich was heard to remark at an Economic Policy Council meeting that “we don’t run economic policy here anymore, it’s run elsewhere.” The reason, he said, was that “we aren’t giving the president what he wants.”
In fact, the Economic Policy Council became more of a hindrance to President Clinton as he turned his attention to welfare reform, a balanced budget, tax credits for college, and a capital-gains tax cut. Marching to the beat of its own drummer, the Council began to forget who was president and demanded that Clinton listen to its liberal opinions.
When frustrated, cabinet secretaries and their staffs often leak to the press to get their own way. A cabinet member is most effective when he forgets that he has a department of paper pushers working underneath him and becomes a close personal advisor to the chief executive—in short, when he mimics the behavior of a White House staff member.
In the Clinton administration, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Henry Cisneros became the president’s most trusted advisor on urban problems by offering his thoughts quietly and privately and taking no personal umbrage if they were not adopted. Similarly, Education Secretary Richard Reilly played the key role in guiding education policy because he respected the confidentiality of his advice to the president.
On the other hand, cabinet members who spoke publicly or used leaks to advance their policies usually infuriated President Clinton. Among the chief offenders was Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, who once leaked to the press that Clinton was considering a value-added tax to fund his healthcare reforms, information that was news to the president.
The cabinet member who is willing to set his ego aside and realize that he has more power as a presidential advisor than as a department head is usually the most effective.
Chapter 26
The Post-Hillary First Lady
HILLARY CLINTON HAS REDEFINED the role of first lady. It will likely never be the same again. She has permanently subordinated the ceremonial and social role that defined the job in past administrations to the new roles of advocate and policy advisor. In a sense, Hillary has functioned as an alternate vice president, representing her husband at political events, providing key advice, acting as a political supporter and lightning rod, and functioning almost as a member of the ticket.
The question is which of these roles will last: the social role, the advocacy role, or the role as a backstage advisor.
It is for her backstage activity that Hillary has drawn the most criticism. Americans are deeply and congenitally suspicious of hidden power. The voice that whispers in his ear has long been worrisome to voters—especially when it speaks at night over a pillow.
Likely, the real role that Nancy Reagan played as a virtual member of President Reagan’s staff was not far distant from the power Hillary Clinton exercises at her husband’s side. But because it was hidden, private, and behind closed doors, it was not a source of major public disapproval. The suspicion about the first lady’s power is aggravated by the basic changes taking place in our system—a more sophisticated electorate and a greater insistence on direct democracy.
As the amount of information available about politics has increased geometrically in recent years, so has the parlor game of guessing about the first lady’s influence. With talk radio and cable TV to lend a loud and repetitive voice to what would once have been discussed in discreet whispers, the impact of an activist first lady arousing public suspicions is greater than it has ever been.
As Americans fell more pasionate about views and are unwilling to delegate decisions to others, hidden influences on a president will bring about an almost visceral jealousy in voters.
Is the first lady to be cowed into silence as a result of voter worries about her power? Not at all. It is hidden power they resent, not public advocacy. Voters want the first lady to raise her voice from the platform. As much as they distrust her behind-the-scenes role, her advocacy of public issues excites them and kindles enthusiasm, not resentment.
The more the first lady is seen as powerful, the less room a president has to be strong. She can be his most trusted advisor and exercise enormous influence, but she must work overtime at cloaking it so as not to hurt her husband.
In early 1995, President Clinton’s image was bedeviled by two big negatives: immorality and weakness. About a third of the voters cited each when they volunteered their criticisms of the chief executive. Those who saw Clinton as immoral proved intractable. Their anger over his abortion and gay-rights policies resonated with their dislike of his sex life and draft-dodging. Nothing could or did bring them back.
But the voters who saw Clinton as weak and vacillating were largely responding to the impression that Hillary ran the White House. Most could not imagine that a strong wife would marry and work with a strong husband in a strong marriage. Rather, they saw the power flow between them as a zero-sum game where she held sway only at his expense.
In the first two years of the Clinton presidency, this basic misconception of the dynamics of the Clinton marriage sapped the president daily of the image of strength that his strong advocacy of healthcare reform and deficit reduction, and his courage in raising taxes, should have earned him. The public was all too ready to believe that the first lady held the real power. Precisely because they fear unelected and unaccountable power so much, they are always vigilant in checking out the first couple’s marriage to be sure that she is not running the country.
Barbara Bush’s adroitness in seeming totally nonpolitical made her an adorable, unthreatening figure to most Americans. At the end of the Bush presidency, her popularity so outstripped his that she appeared on camera advocating his reelection in several commercials. Roslaynn Carter attracted her share of negatives, but the obvious lack of direction of the Carter presidency made it hard for anyone to impute power-grabbing to either of them.
But Hillary so obviously relished her role in the White House that she made herself into a target for Clinton’s critics. Throughout Bill’s career, Hillary has frequently served as a lightning rod, deliberately attracting the fire that would otherwise be aimed at her husband. During the 1992 Republican National Convention, she was castigated by speaker after speaker. The GOP seemed to have forgotten which Clinton was appearing on the ballot. Leaving Bill Clinton largely unscathed, the 1992 Republican convention was one of the only ones in American history not to produce any gain in the polls for its candidate. (The average gain per convention over the postwar period has been a ten-point bounce).
As painful as the attacks on Hillary were to the president, the brickbats aimed at her during the first term—and as of this writing, in the second term as well—have done little to dent his popularity. But they did take their toll on her. Throughout the 1996 campaign, Clinton’s favorability rating hovered around 60-35 while Hillary’s ranged around 50-45.
Oddly, it was the power Hillary had in the White House, not the scandals that came to be attached to her, that lowered her popularity. Voters did not mind her supposed roles in the Rose law firm, travel office, Whitewater, and FBI file scandals nearly as much as they did her behind-the-scenes work
in helping run the administration.
For all the negatives Hillary attracted by her hidden power, her public advocacy of issues affecting women and children earned her tremendous popularity. Americans want their first lady not to be silent, but to speak out in public—not in private. They want her to be an advocate of causes, not an author of legislation. They need to see her fighting for her beliefs on the platform, not for her favored nominees or political agendas in private meetings. When the news magazines begin to cover the first lady as a power center, the president is in trouble. But when she speaks in public, it is usually a big help.
Many politicians rely heavily on the political advice of their wives, but they do so in private and that makes all the difference. A president needs to realize that the public is prepared to impute incredible power to his wife. The press is waiting to write the story of her hidden influence. Only the most deliberate attempts to douse the story can even begin to keep it under control. The two keys to managing this public sensitivity are to see that the first lady has a visible, substantive, public advocacy role and to be careful dealing with the White House staff.
The only way to sell the idea that the first lady is not running the country is to promote what she is doing. The more she speaks out on issues of concern to her, the less the public will speculate on what else she is doing behind the scenes. It is a vacuum, not public advocacy, that stimulates their suspicion of her power.
Presidential staff members are especially sensitive to the hidden power of the first lady. It seems like dirty pool to them that their policy recommendations, so forcefully argued in Oval Office meetings, can be undone so easily in the residence. Whenever they see the first lady exercising power, they are quick to leak to the press. Thus begins a cycle especially deadly to the president.
Whatever role the first lady has in influencing a president’s decisions must be kept from the staff. Recognizing that her negatives were hurting her husband, Hillary Clinton followed a careful policy of never attending a staff strategy meeting about the campaign until she began to participate in pre-convention planning after two years of voluntarily absenting herself from the process of campaign direction. She was careful never to show her hand to the White House staff.
Hillary obviously plays a role as “defender in chief” in her husband’s administration, which will probably be unique in history. Unless we assume that the congruence of a sexually active president, a loyal first lady, and a prurient special prosecutor is likely to repeat itself, there is not much likelihood of this role becoming a staple part of the job.
The more permanent contribution of Hillary to the institutional history of the first lady’s role will be the substantive expansion into the realm of policy advocacy.
Except for Eleanor Roosevelt, all other first ladies have confined their advocacy to safe causes—drugs, illiteracy, hunger, et cetera. It will be Hillary’s lasting contribution that she manned the frontier of policy advocacy with her advanced views of the need for a federal role in education and child-rearing.
One can imagine that few future first ladies will want to endanger themselves by assuming as high a political profile in their husband’s administration as she has. But hopefully, her public advocacy will set a precedent for the future.
Chapter 27
The Vice President
THE VICE PRESIDENT is to the president as the queen is to the chess player: the single most valuable piece. He is potentially the most important member of the administration. Yet, only the Carter-Mondale and the Clinton-Gore relationships seem to have risen to this level. In depriving themselves of such a relationship with their VPs, other American presidents have made major mistakes.
The intimate relationship between President Clinton and Vice President Gore should probably be the role model for future administrations. But it is unlikely that we will often see the combination of a president who is not at all territorial and a vice president who rigidly follows the president’s priorities at all times and in all circumstances.
One of President Clinton’s most endearing traits is his almost total absence of ego. Pride, jealousy, envy are almost totally missing in his personality. It is easy for him to cede power to a vice president because he is so unpossessive of it himself.
But the generic lesson of the Clinton-Gore rapport is to choose a vice president out of love, not convenience. Tickets that are “balanced” cause relationships that are unbalanced, to the detriment of the administration.
Eisenhower looked for a young running mate from among the party faithful and chose Nixon. Kennedy recruited Johnson to help him carry Texas. Johnson sought to attract liberals to his cause by choosing a liberal like Humphrey. Reagan tapped Bush to unite the party. Bush sought a younger image and chose Quayle. Each man chose his vice president for the wrong reasons. None of them could use their vice president the way Carter used Mondale or Clinton uses Gore.
The political role of the vice presidential nominee has changed as the electorate’s sophistication has increased. Traditionally, presidential candidates chose VPs to balance the ticket geographically or ideologically. In doing so, they chose the opposite of themselves. But Gore’s role was not to balance the ticket, but to help explain it to the voters. It was not that Gore was different from Clinton, but the fact that he was like him, that helped the ticket.
Since Gore was a more familiar figure on the national landscape than was Clinton, his selection served to emphasize to the voters the kind of man Clinton was. Gore’s youth, vigor, and modernity underscored Clinton’s own. His Southern heritage reinforced Clinton’s. Gore’s presence did not balance Clinton’s candidacy, it elaborated it. He augmented Clinton’s appeal to environmentalists, an area where the Arkansas governor’s good intentions had not always been matched by achievements.
When the Clintons and his own family campaigned together, Gore noted that “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Their collective image of youth and their telegenic families attracted the voters.
But it is serving as vice president that Gore has made his true mark. Clinton assigns Gore responsibility for literally dozens of areas. In each, Gore turns in a capable, loyal job. His writ extends to the environment, global warming, the ozone layer, science, NASA, technology, defense contracts, wiring schools for computers, tobacco regulation, TV ratings, nuclear stockpiles in Russia, government efficiency, family-leave policies, and many other areas.
Gore is Clinton’s ideal staff member: able, loyal, self-effacing. The weekly meetings between Clinton and Gore are held religiously and permit the freest exchanges of views. For his part, Clinton treats Gore as a stockholder in the administration. To Clinton, Gore is a coowner. Everybody else is either an ally, an adversary, or the hired help.
Even when Clinton was down and out after the 1994 elections, Gore stayed loyal. He is constantly discreet in what he says and always backs Clinton as much as he can. For his part, Clinton honors this marriage made in heaven by actively promoting Gore’s candidacy to succeed him.
A president has to work to make his vice president effective. Beyond just appointing him, he has to be sure his VP is not torn to pieces by the White House staff. The typical presidential staff resents the vice president even more than they do the first lady. They fear his power as they do hers, but they are better able to snub him without incurring the chief executive’s wrath. By restricting his staff, limiting his flow of information, and spreading word that the VP is powerless, they constantly undermine his power.
Almost every VP has had his problem with the president’s staff. In the first years of the Clinton presidency, the staff treated Gore as an outsider. Gore was particularly conscious that trusted Clinton aide George Stephanopolous had formerly been on the staff of House Speaker Dick Gephardt, then a possible rival for the 2000 Democratic nomination.
In the Bush White House, there was tension between the president’s staff and Vice President Quayle. President Reagan’s staff usually treated Bush as an outsider. Gerald F
ord’s staff saw Nelson Rockefeller as an albatross they were anxious to shed, and Nixon’s people regarded Spiro Agnew as impeachment insurance—as long as Spiro was next in line, Nixon was safe.
The dislike between the staff and the vice president is rather like that between in-laws. Their relationship is the consequence of the president’s marriage to the vice president. It is not a choice of their making, yet they have to live with it. The resentment, jealousy, and spite that come to the surface are legendary.
Only if the president deliberately cedes power to the vice president and forces his staff to serve both of their needs can a vice president be effective. The key to having an effective vice president is to make the staff see him as their master.
The best way to empower a vice president is to cede substantive areas to his control. Even though President Kennedy’s disenfranchisement of Vice President Lyndon Johnson is widely recognized, he set a most important precedent in assigning space exploration and NASA to his vice president. President Clinton has followed this course in assigning a huge portion of the administration’s agenda to Gore’s care.
There is no blessing in politics more important than a skilled, top-level politician who is dedicated, loyal, and competent. It’s well worth a vice presidency in return. Future presidents would be foolish to choose as their running mates anyone who they would not consider their top choice for chief of staff—or their second choice for president.
Chapter 28
Father Knows Best
AMERICANS HAVE ALWAYS wanted the president to be a fatherly figure. Those who have fully invested the image—FDR, Eisenhower, and Reagan—have been the most beloved. Presidents who never quite rose to the paternal level—Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson, and Truman—have been markedly less popular. Only John Kennedy, coming after the passivity and benign indulgence of Eisenhower, was able to lead the nation as a peer.
