| White
House Chief of Staff Andrew Card is running early. In the space
of two hours, the former state legislator from Holbrook, Massachusetts,
is scheduled to give the Class Day address to a group of Kennedy
School graduates and their families, attend the unveiling of
a portrait of George W. Bush, mingle with students, and take
questions from the Bulletin. It’s the minute-by-minute
race against the clock that most politicians run with limited
success. Card has it down to a science.
His
mastery of time management, however, is only one of the many
skills that make this self-described “swamp Yankee”
something of a Washington anomaly. A veteran of the Reagan
and “Bush 41” administrations, Card has earned a
reputation on both sides of the aisle as a unifier and peacemaker
who can maintain his affable, humble demeanor while navigating
rough political waters. He’s witnessed the changing of
the guard under seven former chiefs of staff, including James
Baker, Don Regan, and John Sununu, but with characteristic
diplomacy, Card avoids the invitation to compare and contrast
his predecessors’ personal management styles. “I’ve
tried not to model myself after any one of those experiences,
but to take good aspects from each of them,” he says
simply.
“My
function, and, I think, the function of any chief of staff,
is the same,” continues Card. “My first responsibility
is the care and feeding of the president, which includes the
greatest challenge — scheduling his time. I frequently
have to say ‘no’ to people who work with him, never
mind good friends and family members,” he remarks. “That
doesn’t mean people aren’t invited to reach around
the chain of command. The president shouldn’t be isolated
from his staff or the real world. It’s a delicate balance.”
• • • • •
Card’s
introduction to politics began early. He was born in Brockton,
Massachusetts (the hardscrabble hometown of boxing legends
Rocky Marciano and Marvin Hagler), before his parents finished
high school, and recalls spending a great deal of time at
his grandmother’s house nearby. “She was very proud
of a photograph that showed her marching down Commonwealth
Avenue in a white dress, fighting for women to get the right
to vote,” he says. “She was also involved in local
politics and served on the school committee,” he adds,
noting that her tenure was somewhat controversial due to the
fact that she was pregnant at the time.
His
grandmother’s dinnertime etiquette also left a lasting
impression. Often, Card recalls, she would begin a meal by
asking each person at the table to repeat something from the
day’s newspaper. “When I was very young, I could
remember comic strips and Red Sox scores. Eventually, it turned
to politics,” says Card, who began attending town meetings
when he was eight years old. “Our discussion of the newspaper
always prompted a healthy debate — that was the norm.
We were taught to pay attention. My grandmother left me the
curse of participation.”
Card
characterizes Holbrook, where the family later moved, as “a
blue-collar, working-class community, kind of on the wrong
side of the tracks.” Although his pedigree includes Mayflower
blood, he jokes that his ancestors must have been stuck with
worthless land, given his family’s lower-middle class
standing (hence the tag “swamp Yankee”). Card attended
the University of South Carolina on an ROTC scholarship, earned
an engineering degree in 1971, and joined the Merchant Marine
Academy before dropping out in 1979 to enroll at the Kennedy
School. The lure of the campaign trail proved too strong a
temptation, however, and he left after a year to work on George
H. Bush’s first presidential campaign. (In the opening
remarks of his Class Day address, Card quipped, “I’ve
always wanted to come back here,” adding that he remembers
enjoying the camaraderie of his fellow students more than
the classroom.)
It
didn’t take long for Card to hit the campaign trail on
his own behalf. After one failed attempt, he won a seat in
the Massachusetts legislature at the age of 26, and went on
to serve four terms in the State House, working with the Democratic
majority to take on bipartisan issues such as political corruption
in state construction work. Philip Johnston, now the state
Democratic chair, collaborated with Card to effect rules reform
in the Massachusetts House. “I’m a very partisan,
liberal Democrat, and we worked just beautifully together,” Johnston told the Washington Post last February, a
sentiment that was echoed throughout the Capitol when it became
clear in the final days of postelection turmoil that Card
was Bush’s pick for chief of staff. If anyone could restore
some vestige of unity and civility to the political climate
and assemble a new White House staff in less than half the
time normally allotted for such a task, most agreed, it was
Card.
• • • • •
After
all, it wasn’t the first time Card had stepped into the
breach. As secretary of transportation in the last year of
Bush, Sr.’s term, he was sent to Florida in the wake
of Hurricane Andrew to take charge of relief efforts and repair
the political damage caused by what some perceived as a leisurely
government response to the $25 billion disaster. Earlier,
as Bush’s deputy chief of staff, he was put in the prickly
position of firing his own boss, John Sununu, after the infamously
outspoken chief of staff overstepped his bailiwick one time
too many. (It wasn’t the first time Card had to give
someone the boot. As a college student, he worked as an assistant
manager at McDonald’s. When an employee who was pilfering
cash refused to confess the crime, Card fired the entire staff.)
“Andy is not going to freelance,” Sununu told the Houston Chronicle last November. “He is a loyalist
who understands his role is to step in front of the spears
aimed at the president.”
Card’s
commitment to the Bush family dates back to 1979, when he
was the Massachusetts campaign chair for George H. Bush’s
first run for the presidency. Although Bush lost the nomination
to Ronald Reagan, he won the Massachusetts primary, and Card
was there eight years later to manage Bush’s New Hampshire
campaign for the Republican nomination against Senator Bob
Dole. In 1982, he launched a failed bid for Massachusetts
governor, then settled into the office for intergovernmental
affairs under Reagan. After coordinating Bush’s transition
out of the Oval Office in 1992, Card considered running for
Senate. “I was anxious to have Ted Kennedy compete against
me for the job, rather than the other way around,” he
laughs. His parents’ failing health, however, quickly
changed his mind. “Serving in a political office is selfless,
but running is selfish,” he explains.
For
now, Card seems content to work behind the scenes, deflecting
questions about future ambitions and emphasizing his here-and-now
role as a staffer. “I need to have the president’s
complete confidence. He doesn’t have to enjoy all of
my confidence. If there’s ever a point when I don’t
have his trust, I hope he’ll have the courage to tell
me so,” he says. “Will he be a successful president?
It’s a function of making good public policy decisions
and marketing them well so that people move forward on them.
The chief of staff helps direct that process, but the president
is ultimately held accountable for my actions. So it’s
a great burden.”
That
burden translates into days that begin at 6:15 a.m. and end
somewhere between 8:30 and 10:30 at night. “I try to
get to bed just as the 11 o’clock news is starting, then
I’m up at 5:15 a.m. like clockwork.” His wife of
34 years, Kathleene, gets up with him, he adds; she’s
a Methodist minister at Trinity Church in McLean, Virginia,
who was raised a Roman Catholic; Card, who was brought up
as a Congregationalist, is one of her parishioners. The father
of three, Card says, “I get as much joy out of one hour
with my grandchildren as I do out of a whole weekend off.”
Card’s
earliest efforts as chief of staff focused on thinning out
an alphabet soup of government offices and trimming White
House staff and salaries. “From a management perspective,
I want to leave some room to grow during the administration,”
he explains. A leaner, more efficient government is clearly
one of Card’s ongoing concerns. In his address, he called
for a decrease in the number of government workers who require
Senate confirmation. President Bush, he noted, won’t
have all of his political appointees in place until he’s
been in office nearly a year; in contrast, John F. Kennedy’s
picks were confirmed within nine weeks. “There was a
transformation of the government’s personality when JFK
was president,” he said. “I didn’t support
him, but I was excited by his election.” Today, he continued,
voters who hope for the same sense of immediate change are
bound to be disappointed.
When
asked about the general skepticism with which the public views
government today — an attitude that many trace to the
Reagan and Bush administrations’ emphasis on ferreting
out bureaucratic waste — Card is quick to make the following
distinction: “You can run on an antigovernment platform
to change the system, but you shouldn’t run on a platform
that says there’s no need for government. If you want
a limited role for government, that’s a philosophical
statement, and an appropriate topic for debate.
“There’s
no greater title you can have in a democracy than politician,”
Card adds, a sentiment he echoes later in his Class Day address.
“Working for a campaign is very seductive. Get turned
on,” he advised the group gathered in the school’s
Forum. “The one thing I’d ask you not to be is agnostic.
Disagree with me, disrespect me, or run against me — but get involved.”
Julia
Hanna is a freelance writer living in Cambridge.
photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP
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