Word: sununu
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...bright side of the Tower fiasco may be that it woke up the White House. "It has got Bush's attention focused," says an Administration official. An outside adviser says, "They've got a major bailout operation under way right now." On Tuesday night chief of staff John Sununu, ever confident and combative, sought advice from an informal group of outsiders that he occasionally convenes: a dozen former Bush campaign officials and political consultants who gathered for dinner in the Roosevelt Room and discussed how to recover from the debacle...
...once. Bush is most effective, associates say, when he has a strong and respected deputy to help him choose priorities and stick with them. He allowed campaign manager James Baker to play that role last fall, but in the 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...
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...
Some Democrats were hinting that Dole and Sununu, who are both more combative than Bush, might be eager for a return to the confrontational days of the Reagan era. "If you're John Sununu and you're more conservative than your President," said a Democratic veteran, "this is a way to get ((him)) to take on Congress early on." Given the large Democratic majorities on Capitol Hill, Republicans scoff at the idea. "We're not that dumb," said a top White House aide...