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Aspin's supporters insist that he served the President well by alerting him to the ramifications of putting U.S. ground forces into Bosnia and successfully arguing against the deployment of troops in Haiti. His advocates also cite his accomplishments in internal Pentagon matters, from opening the ranks for women to hammering out a major base-closing program. "It's this image thing," contended an aide. "Les Aspin runs this place far better than most of his predecessors, but he doesn't look like it."
Arriving at the Pentagon, Aspin inherited two big human problems: Bill Clinton and General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Aspin could never have as much influence with the armed forces as Powell, and he could never fully win the confidence of the men and women in uniform who resent the President's efforts to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. For those reasons, Aspin approached his duties with diffidence.
Even now, he says, "I'm Secretary of Defense, not Secretary of State. I come to the table feeling I should concentrate on issues of direct concern to my department." But he has sharp critics on departmental issues too. Andrew Krepinevich, director of Washington's Defense Budget Project, says that Aspin's ballyhooed "bottom up" reviews of budget and strategy have failed to balance those two elements. The armed forces and weapons programs Aspin has recommended, says Krepinevich, "cannot be sustained by the Clinton defense budget."
State Department officials also say Tony Lake's NSC has too many academic types and too few experienced military, intelligence and Foreign Service professionals. For months Lake had proved his dedication to collegial relations by remaining almost invisible so he would not outshine the Secretary of State. "That's a nice thesis when you have a strong Secretary," says a congressional staff member. "Here you have two men who aren't radiant." In response to this kind of criticism, Lake is now making forays into the public arena, giving interviews himself and allowing his aides to brief reporters on his policy role. He wants Washington officials to be more alert to information from the field, so they can pick up early-warning signals before crises occur. Like Clinton, Lake believes the Administration's foreign policy problem is essentially one of communication -- skill in "articulating the vision," as staff members say -- and could be solved with better public relations. Put another way, they think the fault is not in the policy or its execution but in the public's ability to understand it.
Clinton's chief spin doctor, David Gergen, has been brought in to do some patching up, but he is nettled by reports that he is muscling in on NSC % meetings uninvited. "I'll sit wherever the President wants me to sit," he says. "I do not pretend to be a foreign policy authority. My involvement will be in helping to build domestic support, and international support, for the goals and policies set forth by the foreign policy team." Translation: Gergen will try to generate some political backing for Clinton's policies.
To win that backing, however, the President must lead. The blots on his record -- in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti -- arise from letting others unfriendly to the U.S. take the initiative, while he tries to avoid hard decisions.