IJ Reilly
May 3, 2004, 11:36 AM
The full article is worth a read. Choice excerpts here:
Political experts say recent works by White House insiders reveal an absence of analysis in the president's decision-making style.
By Maura Reynolds
Times Staff Writer
May 3, 2004
WASHINGTON — President Bush styles himself as the first CEO president, applying the rigor and authority of his MBA education to the job of chief executive of the nation.
But that's not the picture that emerges from three recent insider accounts of the workings of the Bush administration, experts in decision-making and presidential management say. On the contrary, they say, the president appears to have a highly personal working style, with little emphasis on systematic analysis of major decisions.
"There seems to be almost an absence of any analytical or deliberative process for mapping the problem or exploring alternatives or estimating consequences," said Graham Allison, a professor of government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
And Bush appears to give greater weight to his own instincts than to experts or other sources of advice and information. The president has a "bias for action," said Roderick M. Kramer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. "I've been struck by [how] Bush's sense of personal identity as a leader shapes his decisions," he said.
[...]
Greenstein said that one striking thing about all three books was what they don't show. There are few examples, for instance, of Bush presiding over meetings in which subordinates presented problems, weighed evidence and aired differing views.
"I think a lot of policy is made on the fly," he said. "It isn't a process in which people assemble and go back and forth in a rigorous way."
Another thing largely missing from the books was any indication that documents or memos weighing policy alternatives are circulated and discussed. Harvard's Allison said one of the few documents the administration did prepare in advance of the Iraq war — the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq probably had weapons of mass destruction — was quickly compiled and not very well done.
"The more it's examined, it seems quite sloppy," he said. "At this point, if there had been some good analysis of the issues on paper, we would have seen some evidence of it.
"The contrast with the textbook conception of informed decision making is distressing," he said.
Without a framework for analysis, many important policy discussions appeared to have been disorganized at best, the management specialists say.
O'Neill, himself a legendary chief executive, was scathing in his depiction of a meeting Bush held to decide whether to push for a second round of tax cuts, describing the discussion as haphazard as "June bugs hopping around on a lake."
"Without the hard, factual analysis that allows you to make informed judgments about the worth of various proposals, [that's] about what you can expect," he said.
Sometimes, policy discussions seem not to have taken place at all.
In the Woodward book, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is depicted as attending an National Security Council war planning meeting on Aug. 5, 2002, and realizing that the president and his top advisors were discussing details such as troop deployments and targets in Iraq without ever having held an NSC meeting on the question of whether to go to war in the first place.
[...]
Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, said that though Bush's style was similar to Reagan's, he seemed to rely on a narrower circle of advisors.
"Bush appears to rest his confidence in a few people whose judgment corresponds to his gut instincts" he said. "He seems to be obsessive about being decisive, but willing to make hard and fast decisions on the basis of ideology more than evidence."
[...]
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bushbooks3may03,1,5710077.story
Political experts say recent works by White House insiders reveal an absence of analysis in the president's decision-making style.
By Maura Reynolds
Times Staff Writer
May 3, 2004
WASHINGTON — President Bush styles himself as the first CEO president, applying the rigor and authority of his MBA education to the job of chief executive of the nation.
But that's not the picture that emerges from three recent insider accounts of the workings of the Bush administration, experts in decision-making and presidential management say. On the contrary, they say, the president appears to have a highly personal working style, with little emphasis on systematic analysis of major decisions.
"There seems to be almost an absence of any analytical or deliberative process for mapping the problem or exploring alternatives or estimating consequences," said Graham Allison, a professor of government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
And Bush appears to give greater weight to his own instincts than to experts or other sources of advice and information. The president has a "bias for action," said Roderick M. Kramer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. "I've been struck by [how] Bush's sense of personal identity as a leader shapes his decisions," he said.
[...]
Greenstein said that one striking thing about all three books was what they don't show. There are few examples, for instance, of Bush presiding over meetings in which subordinates presented problems, weighed evidence and aired differing views.
"I think a lot of policy is made on the fly," he said. "It isn't a process in which people assemble and go back and forth in a rigorous way."
Another thing largely missing from the books was any indication that documents or memos weighing policy alternatives are circulated and discussed. Harvard's Allison said one of the few documents the administration did prepare in advance of the Iraq war — the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that Iraq probably had weapons of mass destruction — was quickly compiled and not very well done.
"The more it's examined, it seems quite sloppy," he said. "At this point, if there had been some good analysis of the issues on paper, we would have seen some evidence of it.
"The contrast with the textbook conception of informed decision making is distressing," he said.
Without a framework for analysis, many important policy discussions appeared to have been disorganized at best, the management specialists say.
O'Neill, himself a legendary chief executive, was scathing in his depiction of a meeting Bush held to decide whether to push for a second round of tax cuts, describing the discussion as haphazard as "June bugs hopping around on a lake."
"Without the hard, factual analysis that allows you to make informed judgments about the worth of various proposals, [that's] about what you can expect," he said.
Sometimes, policy discussions seem not to have taken place at all.
In the Woodward book, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell is depicted as attending an National Security Council war planning meeting on Aug. 5, 2002, and realizing that the president and his top advisors were discussing details such as troop deployments and targets in Iraq without ever having held an NSC meeting on the question of whether to go to war in the first place.
[...]
Richard K. Betts, director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University, said that though Bush's style was similar to Reagan's, he seemed to rely on a narrower circle of advisors.
"Bush appears to rest his confidence in a few people whose judgment corresponds to his gut instincts" he said. "He seems to be obsessive about being decisive, but willing to make hard and fast decisions on the basis of ideology more than evidence."
[...]
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-bushbooks3may03,1,5710077.story
