The President Who Knew Too Much : Leadership means knowing the details--but being able to rise above them

Maybe it was a mistake for so many people to praise Bill Clinton after the Economic Conference in Little Rock. What he did there was remarkable--arguing economics with Nobel laureates, dazzling corporate executives with his mastery of the nuance and complications of public policy. It is difficult to imagine George Bush putting on such a display if the subject were anything other than U.S. relations with China or Iraq. As for Ronald Reagan or Gerald R. Ford . . . .

Indeed, the only recent President who might have matched Clinton’s performance is Jimmy Carter, which brings us to the problem with Clinton’s virtuoso exhibition and the acclaim it received. Analytical intelligence, of the sort Clinton displays so often when answering questions, is always an asset. It has been an important part of Clinton’s appeal. But it is not the same as leadership, and it is not the reason Clinton won the election. Those who voted for Clinton largely did so in hopes that he would act, not analyze. Clinton could get his Administration going by not thinking so hard for a while.

Robert S. McNamara, Herbert Hoover, David A. Stockman, Richard G. Darman--men like these, plus Carter himself, are among the smartest analysts to have served during this century. They have not been our finest leaders. Analysis means reveling in subtle distinctions and immersing yourself in details. Leadership sometimes means ignoring the subtleties, leaving the details to others and stressing large, oversimplified truths.

Franklin D. Roosevelt probably knew that the United States in 1933 actually had more things to fear than “fear itself.” Abraham Lincoln probably realized that “a house divided” could, under just the right circumstances, nonetheless stand. Douglas A. MacArthur must have known that his pledge to return to the Philippines might never come true. Reagan might even have known that the solution to America’s economic problems involved things other than cutting tax rates. Yet by deliberately simplifying reality, men like these pushed politics in their direction. They lapsed as analysts, but they led.

Indeed, analysis is at inherent odds with action. Ph.D. students and book writers know that the longer they work on a subject, the longer they could keep working on the same subject, to do it full justice. The only way they finish is to decide, at a certain point, to stop analyzing and exploring and just plow ahead with what they know.

In “The Last Tycoon,” F. Scott Fitzgerald’s movie mogul Monroe Stahr tells about building a railroad through the mountains. There may be half-a-dozen possible routes, and you could spend forever deciding which one was absolutely ideal. But if you wanted to get the thing done, Stahr said, you simply chose one of them, even for an arbitrary reason--”because the mountain’s pink or the blueprint’s a better blue”--and and went right ahead as if it were the best. The only way to know was to say, “Let’s go.”

The ideal leader would have both abilities: a mastery of detail, so as to come up with the wisest policies, and a capacity to overlook detail, so as to persuade the public to embrace the plans. A President should know when to stop worrying about finding the best solution to a problem and start working to put some solution in place. The policy issues a President must “resolve” are, almost by definition, irresolvable. If there were one clear solution to our drug or deficit problems, the President would never have to get involved. The remedies would already be in place. It is good to have a President shrewd enough to master the arguments for and against different policies, but it is even better to have one who knows his time is too precious to spend on policy-wonkery his assistants can perform.

At his best--which is to say during his campaign--Clinton seemed to show that he had strengths in both areas. During his 12 years as governor, he had mastered the minutiae of welfare policy, education reform, economic-stimulus plans and the lore of bureaucratic management that now goes under the label of “reinventing government.” He showed off his command of detail at every stop on the campaign trail, sometimes wowing and sometimes numbing audiences with six-point answers to every question.

Yet not for a day did he lose sight of the simple, big ideas on which he wanted the election to turn. “Change” was the simplest and biggest, with “It’s the economy, stupid” as a mildly more nuanced version of the same idea. His campaign succeeded where so many of its Democratic predecessors had failed because it stuck so resolutely to these concepts. No matter what Bush and the Republicans tried to talk about, Clinton refused to budge. He and his surrogates popped up every day with reminders that the election was really about “change.”

The Clinton of the campaign trail was a useful and admirable traitor to his class. What Roosevelt accomplished by turning on his fellow aristocrats, what Lyndon B. Johnson attained by working against the segregation of his youth, Clinton achieved by the style of his campaign.

The class whose limits Clinton overcame was not the one to which he was born in Arkansas, but the one into which he was educated at Georgetown, Oxford and Yale. Clinton’s educational peers tend to be analysts, not leaders. They hold appointive office and live in big cities. Clinton, by contrast, exposed himself to electoral politics and stayed in Arkansas. Most people of this class see the nuances and the details and pride themselves on neutral professional skill. Think of Zoe Baird on the witness stand, or most of the experts at the economic conference. Clinton, as a campaigner, used big simple concepts that would have mortified his dons at Oxford but that earned him the franchise to lead.

Yet this is the Clinton that has somehow gone missing since Election Day. During much of this period, he’s become one more Rhodes-scholar policy whiz, grappling with the merits of “managed competition” versus “single-purchaser” health plans, staying up late to master the fine print himself. His buoyancy and smile through the whole distasteful campaign made things seem easy. His furrowed brow now makes things seem hard.

When Clinton said during the campaign that he’d have an economic plan ready on “Day 1,” no one imagined this would be the best possible plan. The promise was a signal that he would act. Like Monroe Stahr, like Roosevelt, like Reagan, he’d do something, and see how it worked.

In treating himself like one more analyst and appearing reluctant to delegate minor chores, Clinton has also exposed himself to the least-appreciated problem in modern politics: sheer fatigue. I traveled with Carter through the 1976 campaign. As the days wore on through each campaign swing, there was a perfect correlation between the cumulative hours of sleep Carter (and his assistants!) missed and the mistakes he (and we) made. Clinton said in a recent interview that all his serious errors in the campaign occurred when he was exhausted. With the exception of his voice, Clinton obviously has an iron-man constitution. But less than a month into his presidency, Clinton looks and sounds drained. For the time being he would do well to take his lead from Reagan: Leave as much as he can to underlings, so he can make the big decisions and explain them to us.

There is plenty of time for correction. John F. Kennedy was two months further into his Administration when he suffered a calamity that dwarfs any of Clinton’s missed steps: the botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs. Kennedy was a better President because of that disaster, since it prompted him to re-examine his entire approach to the job. Perhaps Clinton’s milder difficulties will give him a similar courage to change.

And the ideal opportunity is at hand. On Wednesday, in his first State of the Union Address, Clinton will reveal his economic plan. He knows this will make or break his presidency, to say nothing of what it means for the nation’s long-term strength. Clinton the policy whiz might drown us with the reasons he’s chosen this or that tax. We should hope that Clinton the leader should leave us thinking, “Let’s go.”