162 Presidential politics
The White House Office
The nerve centre of the Executive Office, and indeed of the presidency, is
the White House Office. Included in the White House Office are the Domes-
tic Policy Council, the Homeland Security Council, the National Economic
Council, the Military Office and a number of other bodies as well as the Of-
fice of the First Lady. The White House Office has a staff of hundreds, but the
twenty or so men and women who work closest to the president are the Chief
of Staff, the Senior Adviser to the President, and Assistants to the President
covering various areas such as National Security Affairs, Legislative Affairs,
Economic Policy, Domestic Policy and Homeland Security. There is also the
Press Secretary, the Special Counsel to the President, and the Director of the
Military Office. The White House Office also includes the president’s physi-
cian, a personal secretary and a social secretary. The exact nature and role of
this group of people depends entirely on the president, who has a completely
free hand in their selection. At one extreme they could be merely a set of
errand-boys running messages or carrying out routine tasks; but in fact the
Assistants to the President have become the most coherent group of people
in the administration, taking a major part in the process of innovation and
policy-making. John F. Kennedy surrounded himself with a group of talented
men from different areas of national life, whose role was described by one of
them, Theodore Sorensen, in the following way:
Two dozen or more Kennedy assistants gave him two dozen or more sets
of hands, eyes and ears, two dozen or more minds attuned to his own.
They could talk with legislators, newsmen, experts, Cabinet members
and politicians – serve on inter-departmental task forces – review papers
and draft speeches, letters and other documents – spot problems before
they were crises and possibilities before they were proposals – screen
requests for legislation, Executive Orders, jobs, appointments with the
President, patronage and Presidential speeches – and bear his messages,
look out for his interests, carry out his orders and make certain his deci-
sions were executed.The allocation of work among these members of the White House staff
is again a matter of presidential taste. Assistants may be detailed to cover
particular fields – foreign affairs, defence or liaison with Congress – or sim-
ply used as generalists or trouble-shooters. The potential importance of the
advisers who are closest to the president lies in the nature of the void that
they fill in the system of government, a void that the cabinet is quite unfit
to fill. With a powerful, dominant personality like that of Kennedy in the
president’s chair they may be influential but clearly subordinate, but what if
the president is not so dominant, or is physically weak? Is there not a danger
that an unelected, unrepresentative official or group of officials could wield
excessive power? Some critics of the Eisenhower administration levelled this