12-Minute Crown to Bizarre Bush Election

MARC SANDALOW / SF Chronicle 20jan01

Cowboy Boots?

The surreal scene on the inaugural podium, where George W. Bush will be sworn in as the nation's 43rd president this morning, will tell an improbable tale of American politics.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who sealed Bush's victory with a legal opinion five weeks ago, will swear in the new president using the same Bible George Washington used more than two centuries ago.

President Clinton, whose impeachment trial Rehnquist presided over about the time Bush became a candidate, will be seated in the front row, as will Vice President Al Gore, the first presidential contender since 1888 to win the popular vote and lose the presidency.

George Herbert Walker Bush, the man Clinton defeated to win the White House eight years ago, will be nearby, not far from first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is now a member of the first evenly divided U.S. Senate in history.

It is in front of this remarkable gathering, and in this remarkable moment, that Bush will make his first comments as president.

In a speech said to be no longer than 12 minutes, the new president will make a plea for national unity, take his stand against the partisanship of Washington and try to move the nation beyond the political dramas of the past.

"Inaugurations mark the beginning of a new chapter in our nation's history, and (Bush's) focus and efforts will be forward-looking, not backward-looking," said his spokesman, Ari Fleischer.

Details of Bush's inaugural address have been closely guarded. Aides said it has been in the works since mid-December. The president-elect has practiced his delivery this week as he fine-tunes the draft in front of a TelePrompTer.

Providing only sparing hints, Bush told reporters he will emphasize that he intends to be "the president of everybody -- whether they supported me or not. " Bush also said he will promote an interactive foreign policy, which was a theme of Clinton's farewell address Thursday night.

"We will not retreat within our borders," said Bush, a strong advocate of free trade. He said the United States will be engaged in the world "in a positive and humble way."

"I'll reconfirm that the greatest thing America has to export is freedom," he added.

Inaugural addresses are sometimes memorable -- "We have nothing to fear but fear itself," thundered Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933 -- and oftentimes not.

But they provide a "snapshot of that moment in time," said former Reagan speechwriter Ken Khachigian, who read every inaugural address to prepare President Ronald Reagan for his first address in 1981, describing the experience as "a tour through American history."

Bush arrives in Washington as the first Republican not to face a House or Senate controlled by Democrats since Dwight Eisenhower in 1955. The nation's prosperity, he said repeatedly on the campaign trail, provides a unique opportunity to improve education, reform Social Security and provide large tax cuts.

But Bush's ability to push through his agenda is tempered by the deep divisions of the election -- the first contested presidential victory in more than a century. Bush lost the national popular vote to Gore by more than 500, 000 ballots.

Among Bush's opponents, emotions still run high. Some Democratic members of Congress, including Oakland Rep. Barbara Lee, are boycotting the event to protest what they believe was a tainted vote count.

"I cannot in good conscience celebrate the inauguration of George W. Bush when in Florida, thousands of Americans were harassed, turned away, or otherwise disenfranchised in the November elections," Lee said. "This travesty of justice and democracy must never happen again."

Bush will not comment on the closeness of the election, Fleischer said. "He's going to talk about how there's too much partisanship in Washington and how he wants to bridge the divide."

"This is the same speech he would be giving whether he won with a landslide or a narrow vote," Fleischer said.

Yet Bush cannot ignore the circumstances of history, or the doubts of those people who are still skeptical of his authority.

"He is going to have to assert himself, to grab the reins," said. Khachigian, who now practices law in Southern California and serves as a Republican consultant. "He must not do it like he's grasping for power, but do it in a way that shows he is not fearful of it."

At 12 minutes, Bush's speech would be short by inaugural standards, but far from the shortest: At his second inauguration, Washington's address was 133 words and lasted two minutes.

Abraham Lincoln's second inaugural address, considered such a classic that its full text is chiseled into the marble at the Lincoln Memorial ("With malice toward none, with charity for all . . . let us strive on to finish the work we are in, bind up the nation's wounds . . .") took about five minutes to deliver.

The longest inaugural address was delivered on March 4, 1841, in a frigid downpour, by William Henry Harrison, who shed his jacket and hat to show his ruggedness. Harrison talked in the cold for 105 minutes. A month later, he was dead from pneumonia.

Bush ran as a Washington outsider, but he is no newcomer to inaugurations. He was on the podium when his father was sworn in as president in 1989, and twice watched his dad take the oath as vice president.

The senior Bush will become the first father to watch his son become president since Joseph Kennedy watched John Fitzgerald Kennedy take the oath in 1961.

"I'm sure it's going to be really emotional," the president-elect told the Washington Post. "But whatever (my dad's) emotions are, he needs to keep it to himself, so it doesn't affect me -- so it doesn't become contagious."

180-Degree Turn at Oval Office White House phone won't be ringing in the wee hours

Robert Salladay, Chronicle 20jan01

"Nine o'clock, and I'm gone. I have never been one to stay up late," President-elect Bush writes in his autobiography.

Americans put great stock in how hard the president works, even though the country pretty much runs itself. But Bush's admission is a good reminder: His inauguration signals another startling change in personal style at the White House.

President Clinton seemed to think the country needed him around the clock, but Bush is expected to approach the job more like a corporate board president with a twilight tee time than the nation's nonstop personal healer.

The White House is going to look a lot more like General Motors Corp. than ever before. Bush got his MBA from Harvard and has nominated more corporate CEOs and business executives to his Cabinet than any other president. He's the first president with an MBA.

Bush told Texans six years ago he wanted to bring a "business approach" to government. As for the "open" sign at the White House, start thinking the business is a country bank rather than a 7-Eleven.

Clinton, a former governor himself, has grumbled that Bush may not realize that being president is far more stressful and demanding than any other job out there. "The message of the Bush campaign is just that, I mean, 'How bad could I be? I've been governor of Texas. My daddy was president. I owned a baseball team,' " Clinton said in July.

"(Clinton) is not someone who I think knows how to relax and get away from it," said Leon Panetta, the former White House chief of staff who brought some order to White House. "He is totally enmeshed in issues and politics. You got calls from the president at 2 o'clock and 3 o'clock in the morning. I can't image George W. Bush has that level of energy. I haven't seen that level in almost anyone in politics."

As the White House regulates its hours a bit, the country will have to calibrate itself to Bush's personal style, which can range from awkward and goofy to deeply personal. The new president's secret asset may be that he shows just as much emotion as President Ronald Reagan or even Clinton.

Bush has already nearly wept in public. When he announced the nomination of Colin Powell as secretary of state, Bush was said to be so moved by Powell's story that tears welled up in his eyes.

The country can expect at least four years of this, along with many more sideways winks, downturned smiles and spontaneous chuckling.

It's probably why Bush did so well in the election, particularly in comparison to the occasionally sanctimonious Vice President Al Gore, who, with the untimely exception of his concession speech, looked more as if he was running for vice principal than president.

"Americans like their conservatives smiling, like Ronald Reagan; they don't like them snarling, like Pat Buchanan," Allan Lichtman, chairman of the history department at American University, said recently in a forum on presidential style for CNN. "Thus, I think, while Bush is a solidly conservative candidate, he has found a way of presenting that without being threatening to the American people."

The biggest change may be how Bush does business inside the White House. The shift could be just as dramatic as when Ronald Reagan's broad view of the political landscape overtook the microscopic view of Jimmy Carter, who once famously demanded to know who was using the White House tennis courts.

When it came to making decisions, Reagan's management philosophy involved checking a box on a staff memo.

On the campaign trail, Bush's public events would often end at 4 p.m., in part to accommodate the East Coast press corps but also because Bush simply got too tired to campaign into the night. There were only two or three events a day, and weekends were often free.

Bush carried a special down pillow from Austin, and he required a long workout break around midday to clear his head. (His staff once set up a treadmill on a train he took through the Central Valley.)

Clinton seemed to think the job required constant attention and his every effort. Even his public jogging routine early in his administration was designed more for schmoozing than losing weight.

At one of his last fund-raisers in Hillsborough, Clinton kept his exhausted staff waiting well past 1 a.m. after arriving in California in the early morning and then demanded a crossword puzzle to work on on the way to pick up Chelsea.

"Clinton has a tremendous intellectual curiosity, which Bush does not evidently," said Dennis J. Goldford, chairman of the political science department at Drake University. "Bush may be more corporate hierarchical than Clinton. Where Clinton wanted to watch the whole game, Bush just wants to know the score at the end of the game."

Only former Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower comes close in openly courting business to fill his Cabinet. At the peak of the Cold War, just as the Soviets were launching Sputnik, Eisenhower appointed Procter & Gamble's president, Neil "Old Soaper" McElroy, to become U.S. secretary of defense.

Bush's designated treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, was chairman of aluminum-maker Alcoa. Secretary of defense nominee Donald Rumsfeld worked for drug manufacturer G.D. Searle & Co. and General Instrument Corp., which makes cable TV equipment. Commerce secretary nominee Don Evans was chairman and CEO of the oil and gas company Tom Brown Inc.

Bush started his business career running three oil exploration companies that eventually went belly up or were sold to larger firms. His first company was aptly named Arbusto. In 1989, Bush took over the Texas Rangers, which observers say he ran more like a committed cheerleader and able negotiator than a pinched accountant.

Bush's business experience has always been questioned.

"Bush is the guy who signed off on the trade of Sammy Sosa," said John Orman, a political science professor at Fairfield University in Connecticut. "He had his father's name and some public money to get started, and the Texas governor ranks very low in terms of power. The Texas Legislature hold most of the power. He's not used to being much of an authority."

But nobody seems to question the fact that Bush appears to know his weaknesses and strengths as a leader. As governor, Bush compromised far more than he dictated. During his transition, he has shown he's willing to put powerful people under him, which is a sign he recognizes he needs strong- willed national leaders on his team -- and also a sign that he feels he can control them.

Bush sees himself as the board president above these people, with Vice President Dick Cheney, also an oil and gas businessman, acting as a sort of CEO. While this hierarchical structure may work in the business of drilling oil, historical analysts say, it's not clear it will work for the the business of being president, particularly if most of Bush's information is filtered through a few gatekeepers, as it was with Reagan, or if the Cabinet has a will of its own.

"The principal danger is that you can delegate power, but as president, you cannot delegate responsibility," Panetta said. "And if you have a powerful Cabinet that starts doing its own thing, you rapidly lose control."

There are parallels, too, between business and the military. CEOs and generals are used to things moving when they issue a command, but, Goldford said, the task of being president "isn't the power to command, it's the power to persuade."

---- Tips From Those Who Know

Chuck Bay, CEO and president of Broadbase Software, Menlo Park:

"One of the things that surprises people when they work as a CEO is: The day never ends. You're getting paged from 6 a.m. to 10:30 at night. You have to be available to people. You can't turn it off."

Lavonne Luquis, CEO and president of Latino.com:"Great leadership is an ongoing balancing act that artfully blends opposing elements or traits. It requires really listening to others yet also being decisive. It requires patience and stamina. And it must be tempered with kindness and strength.''

Bill Walsh, general manager, San Francisco 49ers:

"Be sensitive and utterly alert to people who build their own constituents or own empires around you. And this is what broke Nixon, broke him wide open, because he wasn't alert to that -- and what was going on right next to him, and how people yielded power because of their connection with the president, and how they were reckless about it."

Eva Paterson, executive director of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco:

"Have somebody on your staff who will tell you things that you don't want to hear. Someone who you trust who will tell you the truth."

Fred Lau, San Francisco police chief:

"Just really stick to the basics. Establish a mission, and then search for your experts to get the job done, instead of trying to create experts to get the job done. . . . Don't get so isolated in your perspective that you forget about the people you're delivering the services to."

Susan Medak, managing director of the Tony Award-winning Berkeley Repertory Theater:"I am driven to keep a clarity of vision - and I hire people who share that vision, and who know more about what I need them to do than I do. On the other hand, you need to know enough about that job you need to have done to be able to know whether each person is doing it well. Delegation is not the end-all and be-all, and Bush needs to know this.'' Mark Fainaru and Robert Salladay

E-mail Robert Salladay at rsalladay@sfchronicle.com