Word: bosses
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...when Reagan was mulling over appointments, he boasted that Weinberger could fill any Cabinet post. The Defense Secretary, for his part, is an extremely loyal team player who is fond of pointing out that Reagan is the "most underrated world leader of our time," and often compares his boss to Winston Churchill...
...Paul Nitze, whom presidential aides praise as an effective negotiator at the intermediate-range nuclear forces talks with the Soviet Union in Geneva, could become angry enough to follow his boss out the door. The White House would not welcome that development. Meanwhile, Burt's nomination is expected to be reintroduced in the Senate in January, mainly at the insistence of Secretary of State George Shultz...
...will miss these reverential spoofs, but the puns and wordplay should be universally accessible. Three officers, names Over, Under and Done, involve themselves in the obvious ranking problems: was Under Over, or was Under over Done? And there are boundless throw-away lines: Ted is praised as "the real boss, the top banana, the head cheese...
There are other reasons why Reagan frequently does not hear straight arguments from his aides. An avuncular figure, warm and generous to a fault, Reagan projects a peculiar quality of vulnerability. The White House staff and Cabinet members worry deeply when they have to tell the boss he is in trouble. One aide fretted for hours about the glum presentation that he was to make at one budget session. "I finally said the hell with it," he reports. "I decided if I couldn't tell it to him straight, I shouldn't be working here." Reagan was not visibly affected...
These problems, although they are pronounced in the Reagan Administration, are not unique to it: all able subordinates learn the trick of quoting the boss's own words back to him, and no President's advisers have ever relished bringing the chief bad news. But there is another difficulty that does seem somewhat peculiar to the Reagan White House: the President abhors conflict among his aides. Says Nancy: "He doesn't function well if there are tensions. He likes everybody to like one another and get along...