Bush’s manservant

March 31, 2006

TNR’s [tag]Ryan Lizza[/tag] has a fascinating look at [tag]Andy Card[/tag]’s resignation as the president’s [tag]Chief of Staff[/tag], not necessarily because of any big controversy that sparked the departure, but because of the way the president perceives the man who effectively runs the White House.

If you’ve watched West Wing on TV, you’ve no doubt seen the WH Chief of Staff as a towering figure who is integrally involved in shaping how a presidency operates. This depiction is in line with many actual White Houses, where presidents rely on their CoS as their right-hand man in matters of national, and international, significance.

Bush, however, operates a little differently. Dan Froomkin suggested the other day that Card has effectively served as “[tag]Bush’s nanny[/tag],” a characterization bolstered by Card himself when he said he’s responsible for making sure Bush “has time to eat, sleep and be merry.”

In a similar vein, Lizza described Card as Bush’s “manservant.” One anecdote stood out.

[Card] first arrived in the Bush world in 1979, when he chauffeured George H. W. Bush around New England during his long-shot presidential run. By the time he was named chief of staff in 2000, little had changed with respect to Card’s relationship with the Bush family. According to an account in Ron Suskind’s The Price of Loyalty, while interviewing Paul O’Neill for the job of Treasury secretary, Bush turned to a Secret Service agent and demanded, “Go get me Andy Card.” Bush didn’t summon him for his views on tax policy:

Bush looked impatiently at Card, hard-eyed. “You’re the chief of staff. You think you’re up to getting us some cheeseburgers?”

Card nodded. No one laughed. He all but raced out of the room.

Card approached his job for the last five-plus years with the same fanatical humility. He scheduled Bush’s haircuts with the kind of professional enthusiasm that other senior officials reserved for mapping out war strategy or shaping Social Security policy. He sacrificed his weekends if Bush needed a biking partner.

Lizza speculates that Bush may have seen the way his father’s chiefs of staff garnered too much power and overcompensated by making Andrew Card perform the duties of a glorified intern. I like Kevin’s interpretation better: that Bush is a “man-child” and “insecure blusterer” who enjoys these kind of sycophantic relationships.

W and Andy are like Bertie and Jeeves except, in this case, Jeeves isn’t any smarter than Bertie.

  • If this is true, I feel bette about “Budget-busting” Bolten being “promoted” to CoS. Maybe the reason Bush appoints so many underqulaified toadies to important jobs is that they are nothing but glorified personal assistants. They were never expected to actually run the departments they headed.

    I am surprised that I am still shocked by the antics of this clown. He really kept true to his pledge to do things differently in Washington. Maybe he needs to ask people to stop praying for him!

  • I don’t buy the overcompensation argument either. The only way Bush could take power from one person on his team would be to either (1) assume the responsibilities himself, or more likely (2) delegate to someone else thus displacing the power elsewhere. Such as to Karl Rove, for instance. Or to Cheney.

    I’m sure Bush enjoys sychophantic relationships, but I think it may be a bit more complicated. Card was a loyal retainer of the family. It is suitable and expected in the Bush crime family to reward the retainers, even if they are not capable of carrying out the responsibilities of the position. Thus, the long-term association of Card with the Bushes meant that George W Bush probably knew of Card’s limitations as an administrator and assigned the important stuff to those whose abilities he better trusted. So Card goes get the cheeseburgers probably because he wasn’t good enough to do much else.

  • Could be he makes himself feel better by belittling those around him – and the smarter they are, the better and better he feels.

  • Now, now. Lizza should know that W wasn’t paying any attention when his daddy was Prez.

    Most likely Bush just assumed that Chief of Staff meant the chief household servant. You know how he gets things into his head…

  • This is consistant with his ‘I was a C student, and now I’m president’ comments. He needs to belittle others in order to make himself feel important and powerful (like hazing the new pledges in the fraternity). Why anyone would put up with that attitude is beyond me.

  • When I got a graduate degree in management, there was a theory advanced that a really good manager was someone who could have people who were smarter than he/she working in the organization, and could be the one responsible for directing the effort, relying on the smart folks to take care of things.

    And then I got into government, where it took me the longest time to figure out the California State bureaucracy, but I did. Before about the earlyt 1970s, that was not a “premier” job, and the best people that went into it (with a couple of really obvious exceptions) were at best third-rate. Then around the early 70s, with the economy as it was, there were a lot of people who were at least second-rate, if not first-rate, coming in. Yet it was always the third-raters who got the promotions! Why was this? What manager wants to be threatened with exposure of being the dunce that he is by having the organization’s ass publicly saved by someone who is competent?

    Bush, as the first “MBA President” is merely following form. That and the fact he knows in his heart that he is the worthless moron his father told him he was growing up, so that the only way he can look “big” is to make others look “small.”

    I remember 20 years ago, working for one of the worst bosses ever, the producer Jon Peters, who may be one of the least-educated people I ever met (there has long been a theory that he is actually illiterate), but who made a whole lot of very successful movies and became a multi-multi-millionaire in the process. He also always hired really top-rate people to make the movies he produced (and spent more than his share of time abusing and belittling them – few ever worked for him more than once – but they did get the chance to perform, and perform they did, but an example of how he is is that Spielberg once worked with him and had it in his contract he didn’t have to talk to him). He once said when I was in the room, “A producer doesn’t have to know how to make a movie – a producer has to know how to get a movie made.” Those are two really different jobs, and he definitely knew the second, and knew that one part of it was to hire the best he could get and let them do their job.

    Bush has no clue “how to get the movie made.”

    More and more he reminds me of Caligula. Like Caligula, his evil is spawned by his stupidity.

  • Thanks rege – it’s this or start throwing things or buying guns.

    More and more, with news like this, Scanlon being whacked by his spurned fiancee, etc., etc., I am reminded that Anthony Trollope is still a highly-relevant contemporary political commentator. Too much of the recent news reminds me of a bad rewrite of “The Way We Live Now.”

  • Normally, a CoS coordinates the flow of advice and decision-making about policy and politics from the vast bureaucracy in the WH and the departments. In this WH, policy is whatever Cheney wants, and politics is whatever Rove wants. So all Card has to do is schedule haircuts.

  • they are doing a remake of “The Toy” and Andy Card will be playing Richard Pryor’s role. except and the end of the movie there’s no redemption – the manservant is simply fired.

  • I think that Bush I, who did serve in WWII (apparently to restore the family dignity after his father Prescott besmirched it for over a decade as “Hitler’s banker”), was more in the touch with the world than Bush II. To the Regal Moron everyone (those close to him, as opposed to us “little people’) is a servant, nothing more. The only women who have daily access to him (Babs, Condi, Laura, and Karen Hughes) are “mommy” figures full of TLC for their baby; Andy Card seems to have been the male fulfillment of the same role. God knows where Jeff Gannon fit in.

  • Too bad Andy Card didn’t find George W. a powdered wig and a pair
    of high heel shoes. Then his resemblence to Louis XIV (“I am the State”)
    would have been complete.

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