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As his chief of staff, says a presidential adviser outside the government, Bush wanted someone "who would not get along too well with the Congress, too well with the press, too well with the staff." That conviction hardened as Bush watched, with deepening wariness, the performance of his close friend Jim Baker as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff. Baker expertly ingratiated himself with lawmakers, journalists and others, often at the expense of Reagan. He distanced himself from unpopular decisions and took credit for those that worked out well. The pattern, Bush felt, carried over from the Reagan White House to the 1988 campaign.
Sununu, on the other hand, is a natural lightning rod. He is not only willing to take heat for the President but "loves to take heat -- and gives as good as he gets," says New Hampshire G.O.P. Senator Warren Rudman, a Sununu friend. As Bush's bad cop on environmental issues, Sununu drew the fire of the Sierra Club and other activist groups, which denounced him for consistently siding with corporate polluters. They scarcely mentioned Bush, even though Sununu was only carrying out the President's policies. Such loyalty is prized by all chief executives, but especially by George Bush. Moreover, Sununu's unorthodox political calculations have often been vindicated, most impressively when he has stood against the consensus of more seasoned Bush advisers.
Example: the Senate in late January sought to override Bush's veto of a bill that would have allowed Chinese students who feared persecution in their homeland in the wake of last year's Tiananmen massacre to remain in the U.S. The bill had passed the Senate overwhelmingly, and most of his advisers recommended that Bush not invest his prestige in an uphill battle to uphold his veto. Sununu strongly disagreed. He persuaded Bush to put a full-court press on every Republican Senator, promising to protect the students by Executive Order without offending the prickly Chinese leadership. What was at stake, Sununu stressed, was the President's ability to conduct foreign policy without congressional meddling. The argument worked and the veto stuck.
Example: on the eve of the Nicaraguan election in February, "everyone here hoped the resistance would win, but only Sununu really believed it and said so," recalls Robert Gates, the deputy national security adviser. When intelligence experts predicted victory for the Sandinista government, Sununu argued that they must be missing something: Nicaraguans had to be fed up with their crashing economy, even though under such a repressive regime they would be afraid to tell pollsters the truth. During Bush's morning intelligence update on the Friday before the election, a CIA briefer again predicted a Sandinista victory, and Sununu puckishly bet him an ice-cream sundae that he was wrong. On the following Monday morning, the CIA man had to pay up.