`Working in the eye of the storm': Tim Goeglein pretended as a boy to be a White House news correspondent. Today he finds himself working inside those walls as a special assistant to the president

Insight on the News, May 20, 2002 by Stephen Goode

Tim Goeglein worked 10 years for Republican senator Dan Coats of Indiana, now U.S. ambassador to Germany. He a veteran of the 2000 Bush/ Cheney presidential campaign, for which he moved his family to Austin, Texas, to work for George W. Bush. Since January 2001, Goeglein has been working in the White House, where he is a special assistant to the president and deputy director of public liaison, positions that keep him very busy indeed.

Goeglein, who turned 38 in January, tells INSIGHT that part of his White House work is "getting the president message out to conservatives, Catholics, Protestants and evangelicals, the gamut of the faith community." His job also includes "being in touch with the national-security community, major veterans' organizations, some cultural institutions and both the national and regional think tanks and family-policy councils."

Goeglein has two brothers and a sister as well as two little boys of his own. He still talks to his mother and father every day, even though they live back in Fort Wayne, Ind. "When I have a concern, my first discussion is with my wife and my second is with my parents," he says.

Goeglein is proud that his maternal grandfather "came through Ellis Island in 1916 from Macedonia virtually illiterate and innumerate" to make a successful life in America. That grandfather admired Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But his paternal grandfather was "a finance person, very Republican, and loathed FDR." That his grandson works in the White House would please his Macedonian grandfather, but it would hardly surprise him, Goeglein says, because that grandfather firmly believed that America was "the place such things happened," that it really is the land of opportunity.

Insight: Inevitably, people are going to wonder if working in the White House is just as it is pictured on the hit TV series The West Wing. Is it?

Tim Goeglein: I would say two things. What is inaccurate about the program is that there are not many moments when there are four or five of us, linked at the arms, dashing through open doorways to save planet Earth, as shown once or twice an episode [laughs]. What is accurate is the energy and the pace and the stress.

I worked in the legislative branch 10 years. There is a whole set of pressures and stresses related to that branch. However, there is diffusion of power there. If you are one of 535, then the power, the influence, the attention and responsibilities are divvied up among those 535 senators and representatives. In the executive branch, ultimately, we all work for one man, so the concentration of the pressures, the stresses and the detail are necessarily greater. But I am most comfortable personally working in the eye of the storm. I hope at some level I am thoughtful, but I particularly enjoy being on the action side. I like the idea of being in the swim.

Insight: What's a typical day for you like here at the White House?

TG: My days begin at 7 or 7:30 [in the morning] and they typically go to 7 or 7:30 [at night]. I have a lot of standing appointments. Each week, I give a White House update at the Grover Norquist breakfast [of the conservative Americans for Tax Reform], which meets on Wednesday mornings, and on Wednesday afternoons at the Paul Weyrich luncheon [of the conservative Free Congress Foundation].

I go to the first meeting at 10 and stay at least a half-hour or 45 minutes. I leave there, come back to the White House, usually for what turns out to be 30 or 40 minutes, then I go to the Weyrich luncheon, speak and come back here.

My job is a two-way street. It's not just communicating the president's message outside the White House to the country, which is important. But also I enjoy the interaction with literally hundreds of individuals, and then being able to synthesize what they're saying and reflect that back into the White House bloodstream.

I'm also the White House participant in two or three standing teleconferences every week with conservatives beyond the Washington Beltway. In public liaison, we necessarily work with all of the layers that comprise the Executive Office of the President here at the White House. We also work with the agencies all the time, not only on a daily basis but sometimes hourly. You really get to know a lot of people awfully well.

Insight: With what agencies, for examples, do you work?

TG: The National Security Council. Legislative Affairs. White House Communications. The White House Counsel's Office. The Department of Defense. The Department of Labor. The Department of Veterans' Affairs.

Insight: When you were a boy, did you dream one day of working in the White House?

TG: I grew up in a very nonpolitical home. I had relatives who were Democrats [and] relatives who were Republicans. My great professional goal in life a, as to work in the media. I remember watching the national news every evening, even as a kid of 8, 9 and 10 years old. I thought I would make a great foreign or domestic correspondent!

One of the games I played as a child was to pretend I was reporting from the White House. I never thought I actually would work here and had absolutely no plan or ambition to do so.