Word: cabineted
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...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...
...latest on the Bush transition, Cabinet appointments and breaking news, go to time.com
...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...
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...
Bush is a little vague on a lot of things. Yes, we are looking at a steep learning curve. The worst moment of the 36-day Long Count was probably when Bush, attempting to "look presidential," held a mock Cabinet meeting, in the course of which he observed in an appallingly chipper manner, "There are issues in Israel right now that I'm looking forward to hearing about...