LOS ANGELES TIMES INTERVIEW : Kenneth Duberstein : Watching Administrations Come and Go From the White House

From his corner suite in a modern office building, Kenneth M. Duberstein can look down Pennsylvania Avenue toward the White House and, beyond that, toward the Capitol. During the past three decades, he has spent countless hours in the corridors of power in each building, culminating his public-service career as President Ronald Reagan’s final White House chief of staff. On Jan. 20, 1989, when Reagan walked out of the Oval Office for the last time, Duberstein was there to bid him farewell.

From the inside and now from the outside, he has watched Administrations come and go. He has seen them spring to life in a whirl of energy, and he has helped close them down in the winter of transition--just as is occurring today.

The photographs on his walls are not the ordinary presidential handshakes that decorate so many Washington offices. Rather, they are a testament to his intimate view of political power.

Here he is at a small dining table, with Reagan and then-Vice President George Bush, as Reagan led a toast to a grinning Mikhail S. Gorbachev at an informal meeting on an island in the New York harbor four years ago. And here is a handwritten note Reagan scribbled in the margin of one happy picture of the two of them: “You deserve the credit for both of us being able to wear these smiles. Thanks for all you’ve done and warm friendship. Ron.”

Duberstein, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., 48 years ago, is chairman and CEO of the Duberstein Group, a consulting company he created in 1989. He is married to the former Sydney Greenberg, and has two daughters and two sons.

Duberstein began his Washington career in 1965, as an intern in the office of Sen. Jacob K. Javits, a moderate Republican from New York. After a brief detour into academia, he began his climb through myriad positions in the executive branch, often charged with minding Capitol Hill. For Richard M. Nixon, he was director of congressional and intergovernmental affairs of the General Services Administration; for Gerald R. Ford, deputy under secretary of labor. He began his work for Reagan as a deputy assistant to the President for legislative affairs.

In 1982 and 1983, he was an assistant to the President, serving as the White House liaison with Congress. Duberstein then spent three years in a lobbying firm, before being summoned back to the White House. Reagan was mired in the swamp of Iran-Contra, and Duberstein was part of the team that helped pull him out.

Question: You have watched presidential transitions from both ends--incoming and outgoing. What’s the difference?

A: In an incoming transition, you sense that all the power is surging toward you. All the press is wanting to talk to you. All the focus is on everything you do: The people that the President appoints, the policies he announces, the meetings he is having, the people who he reaches out to when he comes to Washington. All the electricity is with the incoming.

In the outgoing transition, it’s as if the power is starting to fade from Election Day right through Jan. 20. There is only one President between Nov. 3 and Jan. 20. Only one person can make the decisions that affect our country. Yet each day in the White House you realize your “Auld Lang Syne” is a day closer, and people really do need to start looking for other jobs. That you really do need to spend time smoothing the transition for the incoming people, to let them pick your brains rather than you picking theirs. . . .

In an outgoing transition, you start closing the books on today and start working for the history books. You start thinking of farewell addresses. You start thinking of foreign leaders that might want to visit with you or you visit with them before Jan. 20. You start thinking of when’s the last time I want to do “X” or “Y.” It’s the last congressional Christmas ball, the last state dinner, it’s the last time the President goes to Capitol Hill, it’s the President’s last address to the nation. . . .

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Q: How does that affect a President?

A: At least in 1988 . . . you had a feeling that President Reagan was laying some groundwork for President Bush. And yes, it might be the last time for a state dinner, but he looked forward to seeing Margaret Thatcher. . . . It was reaching out and talking with the staff. And yeah, there were some tears. It was saying goodby.

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Q: Tears on the part of--?

A: Both sides. Both the President and the staff. But he was always looking forward to going home to California, so Ronald Reagan always came back from the tears with optimism.

I think with President Bush there is some sadness because if he had done this or that, then maybe he wouldn’t be leaving for four more years and turning over the reins to Gov. Clinton. So I think there is some understandable dejection, disappointment, depression--though not in a clinical sense. There are a lot of “what ifs.” But I think President Bush, by and large, is fulfilling the remainder of his weeks with class and dignity.

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Q: Is the transition too long?

A: It depends on some decisions you make. For an outgoing Administration, one of the fundamental decisions that does take an awful lot of time is whether or not you’re going to put a full budget together--the full budget blueprint. President Reagan decided to do that. President Bush has decided not to. That takes an awful lot of time. . . . .

For an incoming Administration, I think it’s an appropriate amount of time. For an incoming President, it’s a moment and a time to define your mandate. I think it’s essential that you do that even before you get in office. It is a time where you’re meeting a lot of people, and, all of a sudden, they’re no longer addressing you as “Bill” or “governor,” but now President-elect and soon-to-be President, and your relationships change.

I think President Reagan, in 1980, used the time well to reach out not only across America, but also to the Congress. . . .

It’s a time, clearly, to think about what your priorities are. To make sure that you don’t have 20 or 30 or 40 or 50-- a la Jimmy Carter--which wound up, in fact, fundamentally eroding the Carter presidency. But, rather, the one, two, or three things that you want to focus on--you want to make your priority--that are going to dominate your first year or your first couple of years.

It’s a time to figure out the organization, of how you’re going to manage the executive branch. . . . .

Finally, it’s about giving people jobs, and getting the best people in the right jobs, beginning with the Cabinet and then the White House staff and ending with the sub-Cabinet. I don’t think that can be done in a day or a week. I think you need the FBI investigations, the clearances, the checks on Capitol Hill. I think it takes an awful long time.

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Q: In the transition, what are the biggest traps the new government can fall into?

A: Deciding that they have too many priorities. Letting Cabinet officers pick all the other appointments in their department so that people have loyalty to the Cabinet and not to the President. Not understanding and being respectful of the role of Congress. It’s recognizing that you’re going to be inundated for jobs and making sure that you pick not only the right people or the best people, but also the people that you have the special chemistry with. I think that is critical.

I think a mistake to be avoided is to appoint all your campaign operatives to government jobs. Campaigning and governing are different specialties, and you need a different breed. I think you need to have a mix of “outsiders” and people with Washington experience who can help you with the road maps to navigate the many forks in the road.

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Q: How is Clinton doing in this regard?

A: I think, to date, Bill Clinton has done a splendid job in transition. I think he is beginning to define his mandates to be more than change, but (also) to get our economy going again--and strengthen it. I think he is deliberating well on the organization of the executive branch. His initial forays into Washington have given him an opportunity to begin courting the Congress. I think he has been much less accessible in this past month, as he’s done his deliberations, than he was during the campaign, and I think that also is helpful to him. And I think he seems to be on target with the Cabinet appointees that everybody has rumored; that he is mixing the people he’s comfortable with with people from the outside, and he’s meshing a team that has special chemistry.

So I think, at least initially, he’s staying on message . . . . The only exception for the first month has been when he got off on the tangent of gays in the military. That seemed to dominate two or three days. But Clinton appears now to be back on the economy as the central focus in his presidency, certainly his first year.

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Q: Is it upsetting to a President, as the clock ticks down?

A: I think President Reagan had an uncanny ability to sense that his time had come to move off center stage, and I think that President Bush also has that same sense as Gov. Clinton assumes the presidency. . . .

On the day of Jan. 19, 1989, the Oval Office continued to be the center of hustle and bustle. Sometime during the night of the 19th, they removed all the President’s portraits, collections, and furniture with the exception of the desk and a couple of chairs.

When the President arrived in the Oval Office on Jan. 20, for one final briefing from his national-security adviser, Colin Powell, and from me as chief of staff, for the first time, we briefed him standing up, because there just weren’t enough chairs in the Oval Office. We looked around and the paintings was gone, the collection of Remingtons was gone. The desk, for the first time, was bare.

The President wanted to know whether he could give his national-security code card back, (the card carrying the nuclear war codes) and the answer was “No, not until 12:00 noon.” Colin and I both had tears in our eyes. We saw him a few minutes later as he greeted the Bushes, and Nancy Reagan greeted the Bushes, and everything was fine. But it was a poignant few minutes with the President.

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Q: We’ve heard that George Bush took pains to separate campaigning from governing, and that Bill Clinton’s advisers envisage a perpetual campaign. Which is the right way to go?

A: I think the right way to go is that you must always campaign for your ideas and for what you believe in. Ronald Reagan, more than any other modern President, understood the power of the presidency when it comes to being the bully pulpit. He used it exquisitely to explain to the American people why he wanted to do something, why he wanted to do it on their behalf, and how he was going to fight for it. He rallied the American people. That’s why this town, Washington, was overwhelmed by Reagan victories in 1981 and 1982. Because he rallied the people around him.

I think Bill Clinton understands that if you’re going to take on the entrenched powers in Washington, the so-called special interests, you need the American people on your side.

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Q: In congressional relations, what can we expect?

A: Right now, the country wants to give Bill Clinton the benefit of the doubt. I think Bill Clinton, at least initially, has reached out with the Congress and said, “I want to work in partnership with you, I want to work in harness.” I think it’s going to be interesting to see some of these Democrats who have made their career opposing the executive branch all of a sudden now having to support the executive branch. I think Clinton is going to be unlike Carter in the sense that he’s going to work with these congressmen and senators. . . . There’s no longer an excuse that “Well, that’s coming from the President and I’m of the other party.” I think the Congress has to make it work.

I think, at least initially, if Clinton can keep focused on the economy and keep the markets reassured that he cares about long-term deficits, that, in fact, he is going to get a Congress that for the first six to nine months is going to be compliant and very much doing his will. But he has to keep it focused, and not start going on to a whole number of other priorities, because that’s when he’s going to start losing that congressional coalition.

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Q: He can control that?

A: By and large, by the economic package that he proposes, he can control a lot of it.