US' first ever MBA President is intent on strict discipline

US' first ever MBA President is intent on strict discipline
Press Trust of India

Washington, March 12: President George W Bush is reorganising the White House to make it function with the crisp efficiency of a blue-chip corporation, the New York Times has reported.

The Harvard MBA President's staff, it says, knows to look sharp, speak fast, poll less and spare him the details.

Not since Eisenhower's days in the White House, has a president so reorganized a government to function with the efficiency of a corporate house, say administration veterans.

The trappings are unchanged. As with president Bill Clinton, the American flag still looms over the president's right shoulder in photographs; at cabinet sessions, Bush still sits in the chair with the highest back.

However, those common threads do not reveal the fundamental differences in Bush's way of functioning.

These include the time he devotes to his job (far less than Clinton); the authority given to his Vice President Dick Cheney, who acts as a Chief Operating Officer; the interplay among staff members (they must follow a dress code and rules on cordiality); and the use of pollsters (they have been kept out of the oval office), the report says.

For Americans whose notions of White House life stem from the freewheeling Clinton era, or even from "the West wing," the popular television programme, Bush seems determined to render a different image.

"This (White House) is the only bureaucracy in Washington that can change to fit the personality of the president. This president is the first ever to have an MBA," Andrew Card, Bush's Chief of Staff says.

The recent release of Bush's budget blueprint, said the paper, underscores a telling difference between Bush and Clinton.

By Card's estimate, Bush devoted "in the neighbourhood of five hours" to meetings to discuss his budget proposal. By contrast, Gene Sperling, who for years was a top economic adviser to Clinton, said the former president spent at least 25 hours in official meetings assembling the budget in his first weeks in office.

"There has been a sea change," said Kenneth Duberstein, who was a Chief of Staff for Reagan. "This is the first time in American history we've had a president and a Prime Minister," i.e Bush functions as president and Cheney as de facto Prime Minister.

One reason, sperling suggests, is that Clinton had to function in a time of budgetary deficits while Bush has surpluses.

When Clinton was president, says Sperling, "it wasn't like you sat around and just decided this is the best way to cut up the huge surplus you have inherited. We literally had to present Clinton with scores of potential cuts which could even cost members of Congress or the president himself an election."

Bush, says the paper, imposes a discipline so tight that Card halts senior staff meetings at precisely 7.55 each morning even if people are in mid-sentence-so that he can arrive exactly in time for Bush's intelligence briefing at 8.

Giving an instance, the report states that Lawrence Lindsey, Bush's Chief Economic Adviser, recently arrived for the president to videotape a message to a banking convention, only to find that the taping had begun ahead of schedule. Afterwards, Bush gently upbraided his aide, saying: "Lawrence, we're the on-time administration."

The president, said the paper, usually arrives at the oval office by 7 a.m. and is out by 6.30 p.m., Often for dinner at the residence.

Card rejected the idea that Bush is a hands-off president guided by his handlers, as many said of Ronald Reagan. "Reagan was used to, if you will, setting stage direction," Card said, adding, "President Bush has been known as giving direction".

Another stark difference, said the paper, is how the Bush administration handles politics. While polling has been commissioned by the White House, Bush's pollsters joke that he has banned them from the oval office; they have yet to meet with him.

Stanley Greenberg, Clinton's first pollster, said that in the early days of the Clinton administration, he met with the president weekly in the oval office to review the latest surveys, and often spent several days a week in the White House in the early months.