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That sums up the principal complaint against the entire palace guard that surrounds Nixon. It is true enough that the loudest complainers are those whom Nixon does not see. but it can well be argued that their differing views are precisely what he needs to hear in order to grasp reality firsthand. What some have called "the triumph of the advance men" has left many open wounds all over town. Says one Nixon aide: "When you come into the White House after eight years on the other side, you bring in people who are bright but not experienced in Government—especially in protocol, the proprieties of dealing with the Hill and other parts of Government, which can matter more than substance. They think they're bright —that's part of the problem—and experts in politics because they worked in a campaign. Actually, they know very little, especially about the politics of dealing with politicians."
The advance man lives for tomorrow's headlines, worries about deadlines on his flow charts, and reckons achievement by the number of specific tasks he manages to get done. These men, says a high official in one Government department, are "consumed with running the Government, but in the process they've lost sight of the fact that they ought to be running the country."
Gloomy View
That criticism is less than fair. Doubtless, the range of Richard Nixon's contacts outside his official circle is not so great as it might be, but to blame that upon his staff is hardly accurate. A President's staff is his own creature, and each President devises his own system. Nixon is far less isolated than Dwight Eisenhower was; for most of his Administration, Ike sat walled behind Assistant Sherman Adams. John Kennedy was undoubtedly more accessible than Nixon; he deliberately organized his staff to circumvent the massive federal bureaucracy. By contrast, Nixon has concentrated on trying to make the Government responsible to his aims—not always successfully. Lyndon Johnson was far more outgoing than Nixon—he saw or telephoned hundreds of people nearly every day—but he did almost all of the talking.
Nixon prefers an orderly organization that frees him to concentrate, mostly alone, on one big question at a time. Says John Mitchell: "The President recognizes that time is one of the greatest assets he has. He is a man who does his homework, and that becomes quite time-consuming." Nixon also works alone on his major speeches, which his recent predecessors rarely did.
That is his style, and his presidency will ultimately be judged by what he achieved or failed to achieve, not by the way he went about it. Moreover, a President cannot deal with every question personally, and so he must have a staff to screen people and problems he is to confront; thus it becomes a mark of skill in Government for anyone to discover a way to get presidential attention. Says Jerome Rosow, an Assistant Secretary of Labor: "If there is a palace guard, you have to learn to deal with it. That's just the way things are. The guys who get through the palace guard are not only the favorites. They are the ones who are the most effective. They are the guys who make the most cogent arguments, the ones who get the job done." As it happens, Rosow's boss, George Shultz, is