Word: toweringly
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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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...
Still, ad hoc decisions can lead to posthaste confusion, as quickly became apparent on Capitol Hill. When the Tower nomination appeared to be doomed, White House counsel Boyden Gray, a longtime Bush favorite who often acts independently of others on the staff, pressed for postponement of a vote in the Senate Armed Services Committee. But at the same time, White House lobbyists were pressing for an early vote...
...budget address, he flew to Canada. Then he exhausted his staff (though not himself) on a whirlwind five-day tour to Japan, China and South Korea, including formal meetings with two dozen foreign leaders that required extensive preparation and diverted the Administration from the efforts to confirm Tower and to fill other vacant posts...
...When the Tower nomination foundered, an inordinate share of the blame began falling on Sununu for his lack of Washington experience and his abrasive personality. Many of the Tower snafus, however, were beyond Sununu's control, as are most of the tensions in the structure of the Bush White House. Several Administration officials expect that this spring training crisis could even strengthen Sununu's hand as Bush realizes he needs someone to run stronger interference for him. Already Sununu has adopted the system used by Bush's vice-presidential chief of staff, in which subordinates are under strict orders...
...aides seem to be realizing that the presidency is too wide a stage to control by ad-hocracy. The trick will be to impose coherence without stifling the President's spontaneity. If the White House can do so, it should be able to recover quickly from the Tower disaster. Otherwise, barely halfway to his 100-day mark, America's 41st President may become hostage to outside events and forces...