BACKGROUNDER:
CHOICES FOR A SECOND TERM TEAM BEING WEIGHED
(Advisers asked to use imagination in recommendations)
By Alexander M. Sullivan
USIA White House Correspondent - 03 December 1996
Washington -- President Clinton is asking his transition advisers to exercise their imaginations before recommending nominees for his national security team.
The President, White House Press Secretary Mike McCurry points out, is working his way through the traditional pressures that bear on choosing a Cabinet, and is ahead of the schedule compiled by previous presidents entering their second term. Clinton is weighing claims to Cabinet posts being made by women, who furnished his margin of victory over Republican Bob Dole, by Hispanics and by African Americans.
McCurry says he sees "no reason" to change the current guidance on when choices for Cabinet posts will be announced. "I said we would deliberate and begin to make final decisions this month," he said December 3, "and be prepared to make announcements in January" so that nominees would be presented to the Senate for confirmation when Congress gets down to business next month.
That timetable gives constituent groups latitude to make their views known, and women in particular have been quick to respond to perceived slights to one possible nominee, Madeleine Albright, because of her gender. Albright, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, has been mentioned as a possible successor to Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
Gender, McCurry says, is but one of the "factors" that Clinton will weigh. While acknowledging the "rampant speculation" about Albright, McCurry declared "how the team works together" is a Clinton priority. "How people work together is driven more by personality than by gender," he added. Speaking specifically of Albright, McCurry noted, "We just happen to have someone who is a very highly qualified, successful candidate" for the State Department slot. "We'll have to wait and see" which way Clinton decides.
Clinton will name his choices for the national security cluster, McCurry believes, before selecting other Cabinet nominees. For one thing, he notes, the President wants to speak individually with each Cabinet officer about his or her plans before making final decisions; he has spoken to about half the Cabinet thus far, McCurry says. Meanwhile, McCurry is resigned to media speculation about potential Clinton choices so long as the reports recognize that no one knows which shoulder Clinton himself eventually will tap.
In McCurry's view, the traditional demands of constituency groups for a place at the Cabinet table must take a back seat to other considerations when it comes to choosing the national security cluster. That includes the Secretary of State and Secretary of Defense, the President's National Security Affairs Adviser, and the Director of Central Intelligence. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has announced he will resign; Defense Secretary William Perry is expected to do so; National Security Adviser Anthony Lake has not publicly indicated his plans, nor has CIA Director John Deutch.
McCurry says Clinton wants to pick a national security cluster that works together at least as well as the current group, and is convinced he will be able to do so. Asked how the President can replicate the unusually cohesive team now in place, McCurry replied, "That's what you have to think about carefully. You talk to people who know individuals and imagine how they will work together and what chemistry they will have, how their strengths and weaknesses complement each other."
McCurry said Clinton was told by "several people" as he consulted constituency groups that the teamwork exemplified by the national security cluster should be preserved. "In the first four years," McCurry explained, "the functioning of our national security cluster was remarkable in the sense of the clue in a Sherlock Holmes mystery -- that of the dogs that didn't bark. We didn't follow the traditional pattern of enormous friction and tension between, principally, the State Department and the (staff of the) National Security Council."
McCurry agreed that a major reason for the lack of friction lies in the personalities of Christopher and Lake, each of whom heard the barking of the dogs at first hand in previous administrations. Christopher watched the rivalry between Secretary of State Cyrus Vance and NSC Adviser Zbigniew Bzezinski in the Carter Administration, and Lake served on the staff of the NSC when Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State Rogers competed for President Nixon's favor.
"They are unique personal relationships," McCurry says of Christopher and Lake, "that worked to advance American foreign policy. Yes, the President wants to replicate that as he thinks about posts that are likely to be open. Yes, he's thinking about how individuals would work together in that fashion (in the second term). He wants people who will work well together to create innovative and dynamic policy options."
It will be the task of the national security cluster, McCurry notes, to wrestle with "the very largest architecture" of U.S. foreign policy at century's end: "the future of Europe and how Russia fits into that, the future of Asia and China's role, hemispheric issues that flow from enhanced and increased trading relationships, weapons nonproliferation, terrorism, narcotics and international crime."
McCurry calls the pressures from constituencies "inevitable," and sees
in the number of names being mentioned for Cabinet posts conclusive
evidence that "we've done a good job of reaching out to those
communities and touching base with them. We're getting good feedback,
which is one of the reasons you reporters are pursuing a lot of
names."
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