Word: reaganized
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...domestic policy, the White House has been energetic but surprisingly maladroit, hopping among major and minor issues with little continuity or follow-through. The White House has also been inattentive about managing the news and delivering its message to the public, especially when compared with skills of the Reagan Administration or even with the "theme-of- the-day" Bush campaign. "The President has given nobody the overall authority to coordinate people's efforts and make sure things work around here," explains one senior Administration official. "And there's only so much that even a President as active as this...
...White House he has so far denied such authority to Sununu. Bush entered the Oval Office determined to shed his image as an accident-prone candidate who needed extensive handling during the presidential race. He is equally determined not to look as sleepy or staff- managed as Ronald Reagan. As a result, Bush brought along no members of his superb campaign staff to the White House, "and that was very conscious on his part," says a former campaign official...
...Unlike Reagan's chiefs, Sununu does not control the President's schedule, screen his phone calls or parcel out all staff assignments. Instead, Bush deals directly and informally with a wide range of aides, Cabinet secretaries and outside visitors. A senior Administration official observes that Bush operates as "his own chief of staff" in many ways, as well as "his own best intelligence agent...
This scattershot approach makes it difficult to achieve the cynically effective manipulation of TV coverage that was a hallmark of the Reagan Administration. Sununu and White House imagemeister Steve Studdert express disdain for the obsessive attention to television and press coverage under Reagan. But a former top Reagan official points out that "control of the evening news and the headlines is one of the few tools available" for a President who was elected without any specific mandate, whose political opposition controls both houses of Congress, and who has little federal money with which to buy votes...
Richard Neustadt, Harvard's eminent scholar on the presidency, raises a more disturbing point about this -- or any -- new Administration's public relations efforts. Neustadt, who believes the early criticism of Bush is unfair, wonders "whether the control of the electronic media that Ronald Reagan perfected now requires that the President become more passive and turn much of his schedule over to his media planners...