Former USA Freedom Corps Head John Bridgeland says President Bush Bush "wants only the highly relevant information he needs to make an informed judgment."
Bush's Leadership Style: Decisive or Simplistic?
By Mike Allen and David S. Broder
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, August 30, 2004; Page A01
With his speech Thursday night to the Republican National Convention, President Bush will be inviting voters to endorse not only a set of policies -- but also a style of leadership.
Republicans draw a sharp contrast between what they portray as Bush's directness and what they call rival John F. Kerry's tendency to worry issues to death. White House aides describe a president who gathers a small circle of trusted advisers, listens to brief debates and then offers swift, gut-based solutions to problems.
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One of the most persistent criticisms of Bush is that he operates in a largely closed loop with little input from outside experts, relying on longtime confidants, many of whom came with him from Texas. Just as Bush has claimed to read mostly newspaper stories selected by his staff, he also relies on just a few people for most of his ideas about the world.
Again and again, people who know Bush refer to the filter around him. John M. Bridgeland, who was the first director of Bush's Domestic Policy Council and then ran USA Freedom Corps, the president's national-service initiative, said Bush "wants only the highly relevant information he needs to make an informed judgment."
"He trusts his closest advisers to synthesize the information he needs," Bridgeland said.
Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans, Bush's best friend, said the president forces people to boil things down "to discipline the system so that people don't abuse the taxpayers' time of the president."
"He doesn't need the underbrush or nitty-gritty of how the processes worked," Evans said.
But critics say that Iraq illustrates the risks of an approach that narrows the definition of a problem and fails to look at the ramifications of a proposed solution. Accounts of Bush's decision-making about Saddam Hussein describe repeated and detailed briefings on plans for the military assault on Iraq. But no such attention appears to have been directed toward the ethnic and religious differences within that country or on plans for pacification after the hoped-for military victory. In recent interviews, Bush has acknowledged that he misjudged the political and social climate of Iraq and therefore was unprepared for the resistance that has cost so many American lives.
Some administration officials complained that one problem with Bush's reliance on his gut instincts is that often officials who have to sell or implement a policy are unsure how he arrived at it. The president told Woodward in "Bush at War": "I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel I owe anybody an explanation."
