I'll Have My Chief of Staff Call Your Chief of Staff's Chief of Staff

By Al Kamen
Friday, May 4, 2007

Used to be in this town that you were nobody unless you had a chief of staff. No more. You want to be someone in this town? Then you need a chief of staff to the chief of staff, someone to get your chief of staff's coffee so the chief doesn't need to leave that important meeting.

In fact, from humble beginnings at the start of the Reagan administration, the chief-of-staff function has "spread downward in the bureaucracy to where this is now a chief of staff to an assistant assistant secretary," according to New York University professor Paul Light.

The various deputy chiefs "are there to make the chief look better," Light said. There are deputy chiefs of staff to assistant secretaries and a chief of staff to an associate deputy assistant secretary, he said.

It appears that the first Cabinet-level chief of staff showed up at the Department of Health and Human Services in 1981, Light said. The secretary, former Pennsylvania senator Richard Schweiker, recalled that he had long heard of the difficulties of getting things done in big agencies. So he picked his longtime aide on the Hill, David Newhall, and gave him the chief-of-staff title so he would have the power to steer things through an oft-clogged bureaucracy.

From that humble beginning, the chief-of-staff position quickly metastasized so that every Cabinet member now has a chief of staff.

In the position's early incarnations, the chief of staff generally was someone like Newhall, selected by and loyal to the secretary, there to watch the secretary's back and so on, Light said. That arrangement largely held true during the Clinton years.

But "the nature of the function has changed dramatically in the Bush administration," Light said, "where the chiefs are selected by the White House vetting process and tend to be very young and very loyal" to the political arm of the White House. "So they have at least a dotted line to Karl Rove," Light said.

There are 14 Cabinet department chiefs of staff, and 13 of those have deputy chiefs. There are seven chiefs of staff to undersecretaries. There are 10 departments with chiefs of staff to an assistant secretary, and four of those have a deputy chief of staff.

That deputy title is now "the fastest spreading title in the federal hierarchy," said Light, who is "sans a chief of staff for the time being."

And of the original goal of streamlining the bureaucracy? Perhaps "it works too well," Schweiker said.

A Name in the Hat to Be Deputy at State

The State Department is looking at candidates to replace aid chief Randall Tobias, who thought it would be a great idea to "have gals come over" to his apartment from an escort service to give him a massage.

We're told a leading candidate is Henrietta Holsman Fore, State's undersecretary for management. But there may be some opposition to her, however, since she gave $3,500 in 1999-2000 to a pro-choice Republican women's group called WISH List.

The administration's Agency for International Development population policies have been fiercely antiabortion, and HIV-prevention programs have chiefly promoted abstinence.

A Summer Vacation in Sunny Iraq

Members of Congress have been furious about Iraqi parliament plans to take a two-month vacation this summer.

"I have raised this with officials at various levels, including the prime minister," Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, said in Sharm el-Sheikh yesterday, our colleague Karen DeYoung reported. The response at the prime minister level, he said, is that "it shouldn't be two months. One month. It shouldn't be a week. Maybe a weekend."

"They have the same sense a lot of Americans have: . . . 'How can you go away for the summer when you've got both Iraqi and American soldiers out there fighting and dying?' "

So what's going to happen? "In the new Iraq, the Maliki administration cannot order" the parliament to do what the Maliki government wants. "I hope they'll do the responsible thing," Crocker said.

The EPA Guide to Aging

It's Older Americans Month and the Environmental Protection Agency's office of civil rights "invites you to a lecture as part of" that celebration, a flyer at the agency said.

And the speaker? Noted surgeon Craig R. Dufresne, who's a clinical professor of -- what else? -- plastic surgery at Georgetown University Medical Center.

But his topic is "Look Better, Feel Better: A Non-Surgical Approach for Looking Younger for Those 40 and Over." (Forty?) Of course, if the "non-surgical approach" doesn't work, maybe he's available for a little nip here, a tuck there? His chat is Tuesday at 1:30. Best to get there early.

Waning Interest in Parliament?

So former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is running for president? But an old book from his personal library, "Why America Needs Parliamentary Government," by William S. Field, is being sold on eBay.

"This item will come with a certificate of authenticity that proves this book does in fact come from Mr. Romney's personal collection," the seller says. "Quite a unique item to own!"

Guess he's changed his mind again. . . .

For Loyal Service, a Posting to Sudan

Loop Fans recall Alberto Fernandez, head of public diplomacy for the Mideast, who, somewhat undiplomatically, said the administration had been arrogant and stupid in its Iraq venture. In Arabic. On al-Jazeera.

His boss, Undersecretary Karen Hughes, defended him against the usual calls for discipline. Now he's going to be chief of mission to Sudan. We know what you're thinking, but State folks swear this is not a punishment. Not at all, a great posting. He was in competition with former deputy spokesman Adam Ereli for the top job at the embassy on the island of Bahrain, but Ereli got that one.

Look, we're not buying this, but that's what they said.

From Foreign Policy to Philanthropy

Meanwhile, longtime foreign policy guru Barry Lowenkron, who has worked at the Pentagon, the CIA and the State Department's policy planning shop and now is assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, is moving to Chicago to be vice president for global security and sustainability at the MacArthur Foundation. He'll be overseeing grants of about $75 million a year going to about 65 countries. (And he'll probably be a very popular fellow.)