How Bush Hires

By Michael Duffy/Washington

Until last summer, Andy Card didn't even have a passport to Austin. Though he had served President Bush off and on for 20 years, he had never been close to the son and even remarked privately that he felt left out as the Bush Restoration unfurled last spring. Then, out of the blue, came the call: Would you like to run the Republican National Convention? Card said yes, but wondered, Who had played matchmaker? Sure enough, George Herbert Walker Bush had quietly nudged his son into giving Card, 53, a tryout. Before long, Dubya liked what he saw. Both behind the scenes and on TV, Card did such a good job organizing a convention with no hard edges and plenty of "new Republican" faces of color that by September he was in line, all by himself, to become White House chief of staff.

You can see in Card's ascent all the habits and practices that the President-elect most prizes when choosing aides and advisers: the family tie, the first-term credential, complete loyalty, uncommon discretion and the diligence of a draft horse. Bush prides himself on being a good judge of people--those who have worked with both men say he is shrewder than was his father about aides' weaknesses as well as their strengths. That is a good thing, because he must choose a Cabinet that balances the many factions in his party--without running afoul of the other one. And he has consciously constructed a White House staff to avoid the mistakes that he believes limited his father's presidency to a single term.

In private and not-so-private asides to the party's right wing all year long, Bush signaled that he was far more conservative than his father ever was. But the party's right wing hasn't missed the most distinctive thing about the Bush team's ideology--it's lack of any to speak of. Aside from his notably conservative running mate, Dick Cheney, nearly everybody on most of the Bush short lists for a top position--from logistics-whiz Joe Allbaugh to international-law consultant Robert Zoellick--is an experienced Republican pragmatist. Yet Bush's aides have been sensitive to the conservative voices in the party. You can see it in the debate over how Bush is assembling--perhaps the word is reassembling--a foreign policy team.

Colin Powell, who was Dad's chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was named on Saturday to the post of Secretary of State, and Bush has all but said Condoleezza Rice will be his National Security Adviser. Rice worked on the NSC staff of Bush's father for two years and has been at W.'s side for six months. But Bush was finding it harder to pick someone to run the Pentagon, perhaps because everyone knows he will look first to Powell and Cheney on military matters. Already one top contender has withdrawn: with Powell's backing, Bush floated Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge for the spot, but Ridge withdrew about the same time that the G.O.P.'s right wing began to whisper out loud that the one-time Army artilleryman was soft on defense. Now leading the short list is retired Indiana Senator Dan Coats, a former Senate aide to Dan Quayle, whose selection would make the conservatives happier.

Bush's tricky juggling act was apparent in other ways. He and his team are mindful that Al Gore received 90% of the African-American vote last month, and that was one reason Bush decided not to clutter the tableau of Powell's nomination Saturday afternoon with other names and faces. A top Bush aide said Bush planned to name Rice, also black, quickly thereafter. "Why do once what you can do twice?" asked the official.

It's no coincidence that the son was struggling to fill jobs in the agencies in which his father's Administration was weaker. Bush pere's Treasury Department was one of the more unremarkable of the past 25 years, and partly as a consequence, there is no wise, seasoned deputy waiting to take his rightful place in the Cabinet Room eight years later. Another factor is that Bush really is a Texan: the businessmen he knows best and is most comfortable with come not from the boardrooms of Wall Street but the oil fields of the Permian Basin and skyboxes of Major League Baseball. A Bush aide said it was harder than expected to find someone he is comfortable with--and who is also held in high regard by the financial markets in New York City.

The Treasury transition team spent more time last week changing search models than sifting resumes. Bush aides had floated the names of three Wall Streeters since Election Day--Don Marron of Paine Webber; Jack Hennessey, former CEO of Credit Suisse First Boston; and the former chairman of Chase Manhattan, Walter Shipley--but none has caught fire in Austin. Bush is concerned that he may have trouble selling his tax and Social Security plans, so last week headhunters set aside the idea of finding a financier for the post and rooted instead for a more political Treasury chief, in the mold of Lloyd Bentsen or James Baker. Soon trial balloons bearing the names of New York Governor George Pataki and New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman seemed to be everywhere.

Aides said Bush was less worried about two other economically sensitive posts--budget director and U.S. Trade Representative--because he felt that he had several strong candidates for each. Among those contending for the Trade Rep's job were Richard Parsons, president of Time Warner (the parent company of this magazine), and Bob Zoellick, who has spent the past 36 days in Tallahassee helping James Baker mastermind the Bush legal victory there. Zoellick, a Bush alum with a keen sense of the connection between foreign policy and the global economy, wants the trade job but was being gently nudged by Austin toward the even more complicated task of assembling and selling Bush's 2002 budget plan to Capitol Hill. Another candidate for the budget director's job was Rob Portman, a Cincinnati Congressman who--no one will be surprised to learn--worked in the White House for Bush's father.

Bush wants to name a Democrat to some post, perhaps the Department of Energy, if he can just find one who'll go along. The job of whittling down the options has fallen to Cheney, who has spent the past few weeks since his heart attack gathering resumes and making tentative feelers and offers so Bush is never turned down. "Cheney doesn't decide," explained an aide, "but he does tee up the choices." Giving Cheney the job of sifting through the names may turn out to be a nifty bit of Bush judo: if the party's base doesn't like the outcome, Bush may be figuring, they can take it up with the Veep, who is the most conservative guy on Bush's team, at the moment anyway. Bush has told intimates that each Cabinet post is a riddle in miniature: you never know, he says, who will be a good manager and who merely a good public salesman. So he is trying to build strong management teams at the deputy level in every agency in case the top guy washes out.

In an interview with TIME last week, Bush singled out one Governor in particular for praise: Racicot, of Montana, who emerged during the Florida fiasco as a take-no-prisoners surrogate for the Governor. Racicot's accusation that Gore had declared war on U.S. troops by trying to toss out their absentee ballots has already made him a target among some Democrats on Capitol Hill. But Bush is unbowed and is considering the former state attorney general for Justice or Interior. "He's a genuinely good person," said Bush, "a genuine guy. I promise you that whatever position he's in, he'll be a star--in a very quiet and humble way. He'll be a great success."

Bush is quite aware that many Governors have been flops at Cabinet jobs, and has seen others come to Washington with personal agendas of their own. He watched his father wrestle for three years with a White House chief of staff named John Sununu, a former New Hampshire Governor, who ran the White House as if he were President. The Bush family--Dubya included--long ago decided that one reason the old man lost in 1992 was that Sununu kept many good ideas from reaching the Oval Office.

So it makes perfect sense that the son plans to turn his West Wing over to the one man from his father's era who was seen inside as the anti-Sununu: Andy Card. Described as fair, tireless and completely loyal by colleagues, Card was the one person Bush aides and family members could go to with their complaints and requests when Sununu was being his usual unpleasant self. Says Bush now: "Andy Card is an experienced, low-keyed person who understands the definition of chief of staff is not junior President, but is the chief of a staff of very high-powered people whose job is to never deny access but to enhance access to me, and if there is a tie to be broken, he can break it in a good thoughtful way."

Card has come far since way back in 1974, when he first met Bush's father. He has worked as a garbageman, run a McDonald's, been a Massachusetts legislator, run and lost a bid for Governor and then came to Washington to work in the Reagan White House. For more than a year in 1987 and 1988, he slept on a cot in Bush's father's New Hampshire campaign headquarters. After three years as Sununu's deputy, he served as Transportation Secretary, then spent the Clinton years as a lobbyist for the automakers. His wife Kathleene is a Methodist minister; they have three grown children.

Bush veterans love Card because he is an honest broker who will make the trains run on time, but no one mistakes him for a visionary. Card has spent the past six weeks at Bush's side, organizing his days, his briefings and his decision making. "Andy has no ego," said a veteran of the Bush White House.

Card worked last week putting the finishing touches on a team of West Wing veterans from the last time around, junior advisers who have all spent eight years in the private sector, made some money, and are ready to move up a couple of notches. Josh Bolten, who toiled in the Trade Representative's office for Dad, is in line to be the domestic policy chief. Economist Larry Lindsey, who did policy for W.'s father before being named to the Federal Reserve Board, is the favorite to take over the Economic Policy Council. Lindsey is the father of Bush's $1.3 trillion tax-cut plan; Bush must soon decide whether to try to pass it, toss it out or enact it piece by piece.

Bush is sensitive enough about the Restoration label that he is certain to bring in new faces wherever he can. Bush would like to have his three top Texas loyalists close by in the White House: political guru Karl Rove, press attache Karen Hughes and operations chief Joe Allbaugh--if he can get him to come. (Allbaugh, who isn't keen to move to D.C., joked to TIME recently that he was "looking for lottery numbers so I can tell the Governor to 'Go to hell.'") Bush's alter ego, Don Evans, a friend going back 25 years, will probably be Commerce Secretary. And there was talk last week of recruiting Dallas Cowboy great and Annapolis grad Roger Staubach to be Secretary of the Navy.

The problem with a restoration this big is that it's so hard to keep it a secret. And old habits die hard. How else to explain the woman working the switchboard at the Bush-Cheney transition headquarters the other day who picked up the phone and said, "Bush-Quayle." She quickly corrected herself with an embarrassed laugh, but who could really blame her?

With reporting by James Colburn and Matthew Cooper/Washington

With reporting by James Colburn and Matthew Cooper/Washington