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For Bush's Staff Chief, A Thorny First Year
As described by current and former White House officials, Bolten's understated style is not entirely dissimilar from Card's, though he spends less time with the president and gets to his West Wing office later than his famously early-rising predecessor, usually settling in before 6:30 a.m. Bolten has worked to expose Bush to alternative views about Iraq and to end a culture of denial of bad news in the White House. He is also said to be more policy-oriented than Card and has insisted on greater rigor in the preparation of briefings for the president.
Much of Bolten's energy has been expended on raising the quality of senior appointments, which even administration critics say have been surprisingly strong for a second term. They include new White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, press secretary Tony Snow, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, intelligence chief John M. McConnell and Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr.
  Colleagues say Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten has found change difficult to achieve at the White House. (By J. Scott Applewhite -- Associated Press) |
Bolten worked for more than a month to persuade his old colleague Paulson to join the administration. Bolten appealed to his sense of patriotism and made the case that Paulson, then the chairman of Goldman Sachs, would have an opportunity to make genuine progress on many of the big issues confronting the country, including Social Security, energy, trade and economic relations with China. After Paulson turned him down, Bolten bided his time for several weeks before approaching him again. This time, he agreed.
Paulson credits Bolten's diplomatic manner with helping change his mind. "I can't tell you the number of times in my career when I didn't take no for an answer -- so I really admire and respect it when other people don't," Paulson said in an interview.
With Bush's support, Bolten has sought to empower Cabinet officers who were marginalized in the first term and has made sure the secretaries have more face time with the president. He has also tried, with mixed success, to settle some of the disputes over detainee policy -- what to do about the Guantanamo Bay facility, how to try terrorism suspects -- that have riven the administration.
Even those close to the White House do not speak confidently about Bolten's policy views. Some say he has a deep moral streak. In the first term, he launched a policy initiative to address AIDS in Africa but cloaked the process in secrecy, calling in officials from the National Institutes of Health, and telling them not to be bound by budget considerations and to "think of something that is a game-changer," according to former aide Kristen Silverberg, now an assistant secretary of state.
Many who know Bolten, who blows off steam by riding motorcycles and bowling, say he is more conservative than outsiders might think. He has spoken privately of what he regards as the president's great courage in pursuing his Iraq policy despite the war's unpopularity. He thinks the problem with the soaring costs of Medicare and Social Security is that the government has over-promised benefits, not that the country is undertaxed.
And even while he has sought to strike a constructive posture with Democrats, Bolten has made little secret of his willingness to confront the opposition over war spending, confident that they are overreaching. One silver lining of the Democratic takeover of Congress, Bolten has said, is that it frees Bush to be more aggressive in using his veto pen to challenge special-interest spending. Bush was reluctant to do that with the GOP-controlled Congress, as part of an effort to keep smooth relations with then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (Ill.).
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) says he has developed a good working relationship with Bolten since the two first talked on Air Force One in 2002, after the signing ceremony in New Hampshire for the No Child Left Behind bill. He says Bolten is accessible and funny and "does speak for the president, which is valuable."
But Kennedy added: "Some people think that because people are nice and pleasant and have a good smile, they are more moderate. Not with Bolten."
