The Organization Man

By Michael Duffy/Washington

Meetings at the Clinton White House are informal affairs, beginning late and ending later. So when political consultant Paul Begala stumbled into an 8:30 a.m. health-care meeting last month just 14 minutes late, he was certain that he was right on time. Instead, the first thing he saw and heard was deputy chief of staff Harold Ickes close his notebook and say, "O.K., let's get to work." Dumbfounded, Begala rechecked his watch. "It said 8:44," he recalled. "I thought, 'Man, I like this guy!' Never before in the recorded history of the Clinton presidency has there even been a 14-minute meeting -- until Harold."

Many White House officials view the arrival of Harold Ickes much the way Jane and Michael Banks came to regard the coming of their strict new governess, Mary Poppins. In an Administration that likes to think big and play messy, Ickes is devoted to detail and driven to discipline. While he has by no means reversed the fortunes of the President's health-care reform bill -- last week many legislators on Capitol Hill were sounding taps again for central elements of Clinton's plan -- the 54-year-old New York attorney has brought to the White House skills that have often been scarce: planning, organization and political fire fighting. "He's not afraid to make a decision, take responsibility," said Pat Griffin, the top White House lobbyist, "and that's what we need to pull this thing off."

The best measure of Ickes' influence is that the Clintons have given him responsibility for their three most pressing problems: health care, the 1994 elections and the murky Whitewater scandal. His giant portfolio irritates some colleagues. "He's making a big difference," said one official. "The problem is now that he's started to make a difference, they're trying to make him do everything."

Public service comes naturally to Ickes; his father went to Washington as F.D.R.'s Interior Secretary in 1933 and stayed in that job until 1946. The younger Ickes, born when his father was 65, attended Stanford and Columbia Law, broke horses for four years in California, then began a 25-year career as a lawyer and liberal activist. He worked for a string of losing presidential candidates -- Ted Kennedy, Ed Muskie and Jesse Jackson -- often tying the party establishment in knots with his knowledge of arcane rules and procedures. But he signed on early with Clinton and later became his New York City convention manager. After the election, Clinton was ready to tap him to be deputy chief of staff when federal investigators launched a probe of Ickes' law firm's work for a union alleged to have ties to organized crime. When federal officials cleared his name last fall, the Clintons pressed him to run the struggling health-care effort. "I was not brought down here as a legislative or substantive expert. I'm here because some people think I know how to pull an organization together," he said last week.

Arriving in the capital eight weeks ago, he found the White House in a defensive crouch and himself in charge of the damage-control effort on the Whitewater controversy. He organized a small team of loyal Clinton aides and began pressing the reluctant First Couple to consider a special prosecutor. Ickes was aided in this task by what a White House official called "his close personal relationship with Hillary. In some ways," the official said, "Harold has replaced Vince ((Foster)) as someone she trusts, as someone she trusts completely."

Many White House officials admitted that they were initially anxious about Ickes' arrival, fearing his well-known temper and were worried that he would push the White House to the left. But colleagues say he has been more pragmatic than his liberal credentials imply and relies more on his wit than his temper to keep the troops in line. Dismayed by officials who were leaking to reporters, Ickes acidly began a meeting on Whitewater: "Why don't we just call in a stenographer so the Washington Post doesn't miss a single word?"

Ickes keeps a close eye on Whitewater. Maybe too close. Last week Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman told the House Banking Committee that he had met three weeks earlier with Ickes, White House counsel Bernard Nussbaum and Margaret Williams, Hillary Clinton's chief of staff, to discuss a Whitewater- related matter. Altman oversees the Resolution Trust Corporation, which is examining whether to investigate former officers and borrowers of the Madison Guaranty Savings & Loan for evidence of fraud. Altman told the panel he gave the White House officials an update on the RTC's timetable for action. Ranking minority member Jim Leach of Iowa called the briefing "inappropriate." Ickes dismissed it as a "very short" informational session. At week's end Altman announced that he would remove himself from any involvement in the investigation of Madison.

Ickes' biggest challenge has been trying to right the listing health-care ship. For weeks, Clinton and his aides offered to drop key provisions of the reform plan, without getting anything in return from opponents. "If I'm going to give up alliances," House Ways and Means chairman Dan Rostenkowski complained last week, referring to the insurance-buying pools described in Clinton's plan, "I'm going to get something for it." Ickes has tried to pick up the pieces by sending Clinton to speak to senior citizens, pharmacists and other groups that the White House thinks should support its plan. In another setback, the board of the American Association of Retired Persons decided last week not to endorse the Clinton bill.

To avoid further losses, Ickes holds daily tactical meetings and thrice- weekly strategy sessions. He has overseen counterattacks on the Clinton plan and has tried to stiffen the short list of items that Clinton insists must be in the final bill. Even Clinton is sticking to the script.

But neither Ickes nor anyone else can predict what will happen when House and Senate subcommittees begin writing health-care bills. Representative Pete Stark, a California Democrat who chairs the subcommittee that is expected to act first, said last week there is no support on his panel for mandatory alliances. "Without the alliances," Stark said with characteristic tartness, "President Clinton's plan unravels like a $50 suit." Stark, who favors government-run health care, surprised colleagues last week by joining forces with Representatives Sander Levin of Michigan and Ben Cardin of Maryland on a pay-as-you-go plan that would phase in benefits to workers as companies helped states meet voluntary spending targets. The White House knows such moderate compromises could win bipartisan support, but it isn't willing to endorse any alternatives yet. "We're not trading at this point," says Ickes.

But he will eventually, which helps explain why Clinton has given Ickes responsibility for strategy for the 1994 congressional elections. Typically, the President's party loses seats in the House during its first midterm election. White House officials are trying to limit the loss to 24 seats, which would leave Democrats with an 18-vote margin, and to retain their six- vote edge in the Senate. Placing Ickes in charge of health care and politics makes sense: the person who decides what to fight for and what to give away in the legislative bartering on health care will have a great deal of influence over who gets party money, who wins presidential visits and who gets to ride on Air Force One. By any measure, Ickes' influence is on the rise.

With reporting by Dick Thompson/Washington