Commentary: The Pursuit of Justice: Presidents need advisors who

Daily Record, The (Baltimore), May 16, 2008 by Steven I Platt

Who would be in the room when important decisions are made by President John McCain, President Barack Obama or President Hillary Rodham Clinton? We, of course, don't know.

What we do know is that the president's decision-making style will significantly drive his or her initial selection of advisors and, equally important, which advisors stay. The president or any chief executive at any level of government or private enterprise needs as many advisors as possible who are not employed because they need the job economically or psychologically.

Implementation of this qualification for at least some executive advisors at every level of government would make it more likely that the executive would have advisors of substance and stature who would speak the truth to power without fear.

The fact that an executive would hire such a person would itself be encouraging, particularly if he or she did it knowingly, because it would mean that the executive was not so insecure or conflict- averse that he couldn't tolerate even private disagreement or other "bad news." In turn, this would make it more likely that executive decisions would be reality-based.

History is replete with examples of what happens when the contrary is true.

Michael Powell reports on what he describes as the "heartache" of the White House staff in 1966 "caught between apprehension of looming disaster in Vietnam and the need for candor with their boss, President Lyndon Johnson." To these aides says Powell, "disaster seemed a safer choice."

Powell cites historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr.'s account of then- Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's selection as the "most logical candidate to speak the truth to his boss" since he had told Schlesinger and economist John Kenneth Galbraith that he regarded "a military solution as impossible." Notwithstanding his position, several months later, McNamara was still publicly urging a widening of the war.

Schlesinger says that advisors then turned to Ambassador W. Averell Harriman. It was not to be. Schlesinger noted in his "Journals: 1952-2000" of his friend Harriman: "Everyone has his weaknesses, and Averell's is the desire to be near power."

Next, out of desperation and frustration, reality-based advisor vice president and soon-to-be presidential candidate Hubert H. Humphrey, whom Schlesinger reports offered only "unctuous smiles." Humphrey's problem, Schlesinger says, was "that he could not say something publicly without deeply believing it privately; and when as now, he has no choice in his public utterances, he whips up a fervency of private belief."

Schlesinger draws some historical lessons from this and other illustrative historical events. His conclusion is, "To be a White House advisor is to occupy a peculiarly circumscribed world. You can be a confidant to the most powerful leader in the world, you can fetch his coffee or write brilliant briefs on nuclear disarmament, ride in limousines, share the corner office and chuckle over martinis with the wife of the French Ambassador. But the coin of your realm is your relationship to one man. Displease him and your wilderness beckons"

Another historian, Richard Reeves, further reinforces this historical assessment when he concludes that, "The rule of thumb is never tell the president what he doesn't want to hear."

David Halberstam weighs in as well when he points out that there was one similarity between Mao Zedong and Douglas MacArthur: "Neither of their staffs ever told them a thing they didn't want to hear."

Nevertheless, our best presidents have broken this historical model which gives this writer, to borrow from Barack Obama's phrase, "the audacity to hope" that the next president will do likewise.

Charles B. Strozier, a history professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of "Lincoln's Quest for Union : A Psychological Portrait," reports that Lincoln was "comfortable with the discord" among Cabinet and staff which were "filled with contentious personalities, several of whom considered themselves superior to the president."

Doris Kearns Goodwin, another historian and presidential scholar, cites yet another of our best presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, pointing out that although he "inspired intense loyalty," he was psychologically secure and politically confident enough to invite prominent Republicans into his Cabinet as World War II loomed in 1941.

"Roosevelt was forgiving of disagreement," says David M. Kennedy, a Stanford University historian. "But once a decision was made, it was incumbent to shut up or get out," writes Kennedy. In other words, Roosevelt admired and even enforced what Arthur Schlesinger Jr. described as "the political art of holding your tongue while thinking your piece."

John F. Kennedy encouraged and enforced this political art and skill most illustratively in the Cuban missile crisis when he listened to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Schlesinger reports "barely blanched at the prospect of a nuclear war." But Kennedy decided to negotiate instead.