George W. Bush: Evaluating the President at Midterm

12. The Bush White House: Comparisons with Previous White Houses

Chapter 12 The Bush White House Comparisons with Previous White Houses Bradley H. Patterson Jr. 191 THE “BUSH WHITE HOUSE” DEFINED The focus of this chapter is the personal staff of the president, what the author calls the “White House staff community,” which includes not only the policy elements advising the president,the vice president,and the first lady,together with their detailees, volunteers, and interns, but also the staff of the NSC. Included too are the professional support units that immediately serve the president, including the Military Office, the residence staff, the Secret Service protective details, plus that half of the Office of Administration that directly assists the White House. This chapter touches only briefly on the institutional elements of the Executive Office of the President. THE WHITE HOUSE AS AN INSTITUTION An institution? How could that be said of the White House? Institutions of the federal government are established by statutes, which are either permanent or subject to periodic reauthorization.The duties of institutions are specified in law and, typically, so are their basic internal structures. Federal institutions are headed by officers appointed by the president and with the advice and consent of the Senate; these officers regularly appear before substantive oversight committees of the Congress and testify about their activities; the senior-most persons in such institutions annually come to the appropriations committees of the Congress to defend the institutions’ requests for funding.The papers of federal institutions—protected, if needed, by security arrangements—are routinely supplied to congressional committees and, if unclassified, are also subject to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. The men and women who staff the working 192 THE BUSH WHITE HOUSE levels of federal institutions are career civilian or military employees, with tenure in their positions. Do these attributes apply to the White House? No. In fact, none of them do. The principal officer in the White House is the president, and the president ’s duties are set forth or implied by the U.S. Constitution.The basis for the personal presidential staff of modern times, however, is not the Constitution; it is a 1939 presidential executive order.1 The structure of the White House staff (with only one exception2 ) is governed by no statute; the functions and duties of the various staff elements appear in no law. The appointment of White House staff officers is never made subject to Senate confirmation, and (except in cases of alleged criminality or egregious scandal) the president does not permit them to testify before congressional committees. The funding requests for White House offices are presented and defended to the Appropriations subcommittees not by White House staff officers but by the Director of the Office of Administration. White House papers can and often are denied to Congress pursuant to the doctrine of presidential executive privilege and are not subject to Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. Staff officers do not have tenure in their White House positions (although many civilian and military career men and women are detailed or assigned to the White House from their home departments). Thus even though the modern White House lacks the accouterments of a typical federal institution, it is an un-institutionalized institution. It is an institution because of one quintessential attribute: durability. Statutory bodies can be extinguished by subsequent statutes (e.g.,the Office of Economic Opportunity, the Interstate Commerce Commission). Presidential executive orders can be changed by a later stroke of the presidential pen. The White House and its substantive staff have been on the scene for well over sixty years, and it is unthinkable that they would be eliminated.The White House is an institution, not of law but of tradition, beginning in 1939. Now, after those six and a half decades, the Bush White House staff stands tall in the executive branch; it is the product, however, of the cumulative decisions and prescriptions of eleven preceding presidents. White House History and Tradition: Meeting the Needs of the Presidency At least twenty-nine of the contemporary White House staff units have been present for a half century; some are much older than that. For example, the Executive Clerk (who handles all of the president’s official, public papers) originated in 1865; Roosevelt not only appointed his six administrative assistants but added the White House Counsel (everything in the White House has a legal aspect);Truman’s administration saw the creation of the NSC staff. It was Eisenhower...