Jingkan Blog

Team Bush demonstrated more discipline, focus, and efficiency in its first years than any presidential administration in recent memory. “If there is dissent within the administration, we never hear about it,” one Washington reporter said. When the president makes a public appearance, he has a story to tell and steadfastly refuses to be distracted by [...]

People who know Bush report that his most outstanding feature is his easy way with people. He often teases visitors and mugs for the cameras. He was a prankster on the 2000 campaign plane and sometimes (literally) turned the cameras back on reporters. Engaged in arguments over policy issues in the hallways of the Texas [...]

If I have erred, I err in company with Abraham Lincoln.
—Theodore Roosevelt
My administration will continue to act on the lessons we’ve learned so far to better protect the people of this country. It’s our most solemn duty.
—George W. Bush, November 27, 2002
George W. Bush amazed even his foes with his steady [...]

Not only did Bush have an ambitious, if highly focused, policy agenda when he came into office. He also believed deeply that success depended on strengthening the office of the presidency. That was at the core of his management style. While policies come and go, he understood that shifts in the institutional balance of power [...]

Both these strategies—rebalancing power with Congress and increasing leverage over the executive branch—came together in the president’s proposal for a new Department of Homeland Security. In the aftermath of September 11, critics argued that the administration had fumbled over key pieces of intelligence that might have alerted officials to the attacks. Calls arose almost immediately [...]

Team Bush reached out even more to tackle bureaucracy through an aggressive management agenda. The Clinton administration had attempted to “reinvent” government. Its downsizing movement, however, quickly stirred opposition among federal bureaucrats, and its effort to “empower” those officials never received much support in Congress.
Bush decided on a different approach. Where the Clinton government [...]

A president not only has the daunting job of dealing with 535 members in the two houses of Congress, each of whom has a separate base of power; he must appoint the 650 top positions in the executive branch. And these officials in turn choose about 2500 other appointees—for more than 3000 political appointments in [...]

Team Bush sometimes played hardball in their relations with Congress, but sometimes they applied a deceptively deft and subtle touch. In December 2002, Republican Senator Trent Lott threw the Republican Party into turmoil by appearing to praise the segregationist legacy of Senator Strom Thurmond at Thurmond’s 100th birthday party. For Bush, the turmoil that resulted [...]

John Dean, Richard Nixon’s White House counsel and no stranger to ruthless political maneuvering, noted, “This administration has been stiff-arming Congress.” On homeland security issues, the administration has been reluctant to give information to members of Congress, and even when the information was shared privately, the administration has refused to declassify it so legislators can [...]

Job One was dealing with Congress. Without a working relationship with legislators on Capitol Hill, Bush would be a lame duck before he had a chance to start. Republicans were anxious to move their long-stalled agenda—and to restore the heady days of the Reagan presidency. Democrats were wary of the new administration’s agenda items. With [...]

Bush was no stranger to such a job, however. Longtime Texas columnist and wag Molly Ivins noted that Texas has a “weak-governor” system. In fact, she argues, not only is the governor not the most powerful statewide official—the office ranks fifth, behind the lieutenant governor, attorney general, comptroller, and land commissioner. Many observers would disagree [...]

George Bush and several talented people around him have made the White House a power center in ways that I haven’t seen in a long time—all the way back to Lyndon Johnson. That is a big statement.
—Robert S. Strauss, former chairman of the Democratic Party and longtime presidential adviser
In the past, those who [...]

If Bush imposes discipline on his staff and office, he does the same for his vacations. An August 2001 Washington Post survey found that Bush had spent 42 percent of his presidency at vacation spots—or en route to them—including Camp David, his parents’ Kennebunkport, Maine, estate, or his Texas ranch. But those “vacations” have often [...]

The well-executed media leak is one of Washington’s most highly developed art forms. Every presidency has learned to feed bits of stories to reporters, disguised as comments by a “senior administration official” or “an official close to the president.” When a story is too hot for a leak from the White House, the administration will [...]

Bush avoided appointing ideologues to key jobs, with some exceptions—most notably Attorney General John Ashcroft. Given the strong support of the Republican right for his campaign, and the Republicans’ long exile during the Clinton years, that was no small feat. Leaders of the Religious Right and conservative Republicans pressed ideological true-believers on the Cheney-led transition [...]

All presidential administrations have problems keeping their team members in line. Sometimes it takes time for people to gel in their positions. Sometimes cabinet secretaries, who rarely are shrinking violets, speak out on issues they care about, even if their passions don’t match presidential policy.
In a single week, Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill suggested (in [...]

All presidents have strategies. All work hard to follow them. Success in executing them requires finding a way to quickly adapt existing strategies to new world events—to keep those events from pulling the manager away from the principal goals. For Bush, the key to adhering to his strategy and message lies in his relentless discipline. [...]

Bush exercises six days a week. Most of the time it’s running—outside, if he can manage it; inside, on a treadmill, if he can’t. On Camp David weekends, he runs a tough three-mile course in the morning before going on a two-mile walk with his wife afterward. If he doesn’t run, he uses an elliptical [...]

“ … we don’t have a lot of last-minute scrambling. He [Bush] likes to have trust in the process, that he believes he considers every angle—and makes a choice.”
—Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson
“This is a buttoned-down administration, perhaps the most I’ve ever seen.”
—Stephen Hess, Brookings Institution
On the morning of February 7, 2001, [...]

No matter how effectively a president might craft and sell his message, however, it is only as good as his ability to deliver results. In the end, that is how all leaders are judged. The public would immediately sense whether a message was just a veneer papering over policies moving in opposite directions—or in too [...]

In his campaign, Bush pledged not to govern based on polls. He said he was going to govern on principle, not on the findings of public opinion polls and focus groups. The promise was a barb at Bill Clinton, who polled more than any president in history, both to define his agenda and to shape [...]

After September 11, Team Bush faced a twin challenge: fighting the war on terrorism while getting back to the administration’s original goals. The January 2002 State of the Union Address, with its focus on the “axis of evil,” helped to accomplish part of this goal. The president suggested that the “axis” nations were involved in [...]

No matter how hard any president tries, staying consistently on message is impossible. Reporters live to be fed, and they’re also constantly on the prowl for fresh tidbits not dished out by their White House keepers. Old issues come up in new ways. New issues intrude. Problems crop up that don’t fit the message. And [...]

The disciplined message starts with the president himself. As he showed in the 2000 presidential campaign, to the surprise of his critics, Bush develops a theme and sticks to it. He rarely allowed himself to be distracted from his principal themes, and he relentlessly hammered away at his basic message.
In his surprisingly successful 1994 [...]

Fleischer’s predecessors admire his disciplined focus on the message. Michael D. McCurry served as Bill Clinton’s press secretary, and he often faced wild skirmishes with reporters trying to uncover juicy details amid the investigations into the president’s behavior. McCurry believed that Fleischer might well have discovered the key to dealing with the White House press [...]

In other words, the president must struggle to be heard and, when he’s heard, to make sure that what people are hearing is what he’s trying to say. Some people—including presidential advisers—cynically call this “spin,” but the simple fact is that communicating a clear, consistent, digestible message is a difficult feat. So many diversions compete [...]

“I … had the responsibility to show resolve. I had to show the American people the resolve of a commander in chief that was going to do whatever it took to win. No yielding. No equivocation. No, you know, lawyering this thing to death, that we’re after them.”
—George W. Bush, on addressing the American [...]

The first steps give lasting signals. Bush knew from his study of previous presidencies that many of his predecessors started off balance and struggled to regain their footing. He worked hard to develop and project a confident stride, in style and substance, because he knew that first impressions last.
Develop a plan—and stick to it. [...]

Like all presidents, Bush learned important Washington lessons: Success lasts only until the next crisis nudges it out of the way. The American public applauded his handling of the September 11 attacks by sending his approval rating into the stratosphere, but Middle East turmoil and corporate scandals threatened to shatter his agenda. Political success has [...]

In the months after September 11, Team Bush seemed to struggle to find its voice—and to reshape its strategy. Policy battles raged and new, unexpected issues surged to the forefront. The president either had little to say about them or, when he did speak, did not convey a clear sense of the administration’s policy. Aides [...]

Generals know that war plans become obsolete at the first shot. Similarly, Bush and his aides knew they would have to adapt their strategy to shifting events. All presidents face unanticipated crises. In large measure, their ultimate success lies not in their ability to fulfill campaign promises, but in their skill in coping with the [...]