Honest Broker?: The National Security Advisor and Presidential Decision Making

Introduction: The Case for the Honest Broker Role

Introduction The Case for the Honest Broker Role A nalysis of presidential decision making, particularly in the area of foreign and national security policy, is a critical area of research. It examines processes and dynamics that are truly consequential in their results. Its implications and findings bear great significance when put into practice. In studying decision making, much attention has focused on a range of variables thought to have some causal impact and explanatory value: the organization and structure of decision-making processes, the impact of presidential personality, management, and leadership style, the development and effects of a White House-centered institutional presidency, the presence of bureaucratic politics and group dynamics, and the consequences of rational actors operating within institutionally defined parameters, to list just a few. However, with some important exceptions,1 relatively little attention has been focused on how the particular roles of participants in presidential decision-making processes are defined and operate. My purpose in this book is to examine the role of the National Security Council (NSC) advisor: the president’s chief, in-house source of coordination and of substantive counsel on foreign policy and national security matters. But the argument of the book is also, in part, admittedly prescriptive. I am interested in how a particular definition of the role of NSC advisor—that of the honest broker—relates to effective presidential decision making. The basic notion of the role, which I will discuss in more detail below, is that the NSC advisor is not just another source of policy advice. Rather, the person in that position needs to be concerned with the fair and balanced presentation of information to the president and those advising the president (often called the “principals”) as well as the overall quality of the organizations and processes that come into play in decision making. As we shall see, these elements of the broker role 2฀ |฀ Introduction were central to the responsibilities of the NSC advisor—“Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs,” as it was initially titled—when the position was created in 1953 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower. But I should also point out that the title NSC “advisor” is something of a misnomer for the position during the Eisenhower years: providing substantive policy advice was not seen as part of the advisor’s role and occurred rarely. In the post-Eisenhower years, the job evolved considerably. Eisenhower saw the NSC system and its staff as a device for effectively harnessing the relevant agencies and departments so that they would have productive input on policy options. For his immediate successor, John F. Kennedy, that system was too ossified and bureaucratic: the NSC advisor and staff, by contrast , needed to be a presidential instrument—a presidential staff and a direct source for presidential initiatives. Subsequent presidencies, as we shall see, have grappled with these two organizationally different models and the different implications they bear for the role of the NSC advisor. The book explores this evolution, especially how many national security advisors have deviated, in various ways, from the foundational task of what I will call “brokerage.” This part of the analysis concerns how other facets of the postEisenhower NSC advisor’s role—such as providing personal advice to the president , serving as a media spokesperson, or getting involved in the implementation of policy—stand in relation to the task of brokerage as well as how they affect decision making. Is honest brokerage a thing of the past? As we shall see it is not. Can it be squared with these added duties as the job has changed over time?That is a more difficult question, and one that shall be of chief concern. There is a strong case to be made that honest brokerage is an important and vital contributor—although not necessarily the only contributor—to effective decision making. Many NSC advisors have identified honest brokerage as an important part of the job of being an effective advisor. Some empirical studies of what makes for decision-making success identify components of the deliberative process that approximate some of the duties of the honest broker. Likewise studies of decision failures, such as the Tower Commission’s report on the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan years, have identified problems that might have been remedied through more effective brokerage activity. The findings of the Tower Commission are also illustrative of another part of the argument: the problems that can arise when NSC advisors embrace other activities, such as...