Bush likely to promote from within if reelected

Bush's CEO-style presidency sets policies in the West Wing, and in every corner of the executive branch. He delegates the mechanics of governing to his lieutenants -- who are working for him down the hall, not across town.Of the 20 Cabinet-level posts in Bush's administration, the chief of staff, the budget director, the trade ambassador, and the drug-policy czar are the White House employees who have been elevated to Cabinet rank. The president's senior adviser, Karl Rove, had more say over steel tariffs, for instance, than did U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick or the Commerce Department. Education specialist and domestic policy adviser Margaret Spellings, who arrived in Washington with Bush from Texas, has arguably had more influence over education policy in the first term than did Secretary Roderick Paige. Tom Ridge may know what homeland-security protection should cost the taxpayers, but the budget director and Vice President Cheney, who heads the budget review board for the president, have the final say over how much the Homeland Security Department receives. Colin Powell may want to sway the president on affairs of state, but first, he has to run the traps with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who is one of Bush's near-constant companions and his gatekeeper of all international policy-making.Ask Card whether he wants to stay or go after the election, and he gives the same response he's been offering for four years: "If I don't have 100 percent of [Bush's] confidence, I should not be his chief of staff. Unfortunately, I might not be the first person to realize I don't have 100 percent of his confidence," he says. "I have no expectation that I will or will not serve the president when he's re-elected." Card is so practiced at his answer because he gets asked so often: Four years in the post is considered amazing by the standards of the grueling modern White House. His workday begins at 5:30 a.m. and ends more than half a day later -- at least six days a week. Instead of signals that he wants out, there have been hints that Card may have the record books in mind. He once tasked his staff to research the average tenure of White House chiefs of staff. Answer? Twenty-two months. For those wondering whether Rove expects to remain inside the White House if Bush wins, the answer is decidedly, absolutely, most definitely yes, his colleagues say. "He's thinking about Bush's legacy," not his next client, one source said.There is no certain opinion about whether or how the president might adjust his communications operation in a second term. Some GOP observers outside the White House wish he would make a few changes, but insiders say Bush's fondness for "old shoes" extends to young Texans he enjoys being around, such as Communications Director Dan Bartlett and press secretary Scott McClellan. Bartlett, who has adopted the top-down, lips-zipped policies that counselor Karen Hughes installed in Bush's first two years, has worked for two men in his adult life -- Rove and Bush.White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales reportedly has had enough after four years and is looking for a change. Gonzales has been touted as Bush's first choice for a Supreme Court vacancy (see p. 3211), yet there is speculation that the range of sticky issues he tackled for the president in the White House could make confirmation difficult. If Gonzales leaves, one of his current or former deputies could be promoted. Brett Kavanaugh, Bush's current staff secretary and the president's pending nominee to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, has been mentioned. Defense Secretary -- It is hard to find anyone inside the White House or close to the political center at the Pentagon who believes that Bush will ask Donald Rumsfeld to leave the job he's held twice in his life, in the middle of a war, and even despite his 72 years. And very few expect the flinty, driven secretary to throw in the towel now. "For all his mistakes, Rumsfeld remains indispensable to the president's military agenda," said Loren Thompson, an analyst at the Lexington Institute who consults for defense contractors. "He is the primary author of military transformation, and almost every facet of success for that very ambitious concept is tied to his energy and his stature. I just don't see anybody stepping into Rumsfeld's shoes convincingly as an agent of change in the Pentagon." Secretary of State -- A recent flurry of published comments from Colin Powell and President Bush suggests that each is warmly thinking about a longer-term relationship in their current jobs. But the more-conventional wisdom that Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, are poised to depart is correct, according to a former White House official. "Watch how John Danforth does at the United Nations," this source replied when asked who might succeed Powell. The former Missouri senator and ordained Episcopal minister, recently named by Bush to be U.N. ambassador, is a true conservative whom Democrats embrace for his intelligence and integrity. Although plenty of reports have speculated that Condoleezza Rice could succeed Powell, Rice's current and former colleagues insist she has little interest in the administrative challenges within the State Department culture. National Security Adviser -- Despite outsiders' criticisms that she has been a poor manager of outsized egos and conflicting intelligence -- to the detriment of the president's foreign policy -- Condoleezza Rice's anticipated departure is viewed as entirely voluntary. "I would be surprised if she stayed in her current job," a senior White House official said. Friends believe that Rice wants to return to California, perhaps to academia, while others suggest that Bush will not want her to stray that far. Although her interest in Defense once made administration officials ponder Rice's history-making potential at the Pentagon, her mistakes leading up to and beyond 9/11 leave even her stalwart fans wondering whether she could win confirmation for such a job. Leading candidates to succeed Rice, no matter where she might go, include her deputy, Stephen Hadley ("the president has a lot of confidence in him," according to the White House official), and Robert Blackwill, Rice's coordinator for strategic planning at the National Security Council. Director of Central Intelligence/Director of National Intelligence -- Porter Goss recently replaced George Tenet as CIA director. But the job of director of central intelligence is being turned into the (theoretically) more powerful post of director of national intelligence. The consensus speculation is that Goss will move up, leaving Bush to fill the CIA post again. But uncertainty lingers. "They'll need someone who is very familiar with the budget process and the political interplay between the administration, the intelligence community, the military establishment, and the oversight committees in Congress," said one lawyer with close ties to the Bush administration and to the intelligence world. The lawyer suggested that White House Chief of Staff Andy Card or Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten might be superior candidates for DNI. Under the scenario in which Goss is promoted, the betting is on Frances Fragos Townsend, the president's White House adviser on homeland security, to become the first female director of central intelligence.Attorney General -- John Ashcroft, while useful to the president among his socially conservative base in an election year, may be expendable after re-election to appease Republicans who believe he has almost single-handedly hurt the party's reputation on immigration and civil liberties. At any rate, the debate remains over whether Ashcroft wants to leave, or Bush wants to nudge him out. Either way, the expectation is that the president may embrace a new figure to fight crime and terror and help reauthorize the USA PATRIOT Act. Names include Larry Thompson, Ashcroft's first deputy AG who just began a new job as senior vice president and general counsel at PepsiCo. He is well regarded inside the White House and could calm the department culture, but he would not be a partisan firebrand, if that's what Bush seeks in that job. Thompson, if confirmed, would be the first African-American attorney general. Mark Racicot, a former Montana governor and a top choice for AG in 2000, is high on any GOP list, in part because of his loyal and frequently broadcast services as chairman of Bush-Cheney '04. In an interview with National Journal, Racicot said he has promised his law firm he will come back after the election and prefers to be deleted from Cabinet lists. Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, a tough former prosecutor in his hometown, is on Republicans' wish list for a wide array of posts, but his freedom and lucrative new business career are probably more appealing than any job in Washington could be. Former Justice officials have suggested White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who, according to one former administration official, wants the AG post more than he wants to sit on the Supreme Court. Bill Pryor, former Alabama attorney general and a recess appointment to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, would be the darling of the Christian Right as attorney general. He once called Roe v. Wade "the worst abomination in the history of constitutional law." That's part of why he's unlikely to get past Senate Democrats and onto the appeals bench. Homeland Security Secretary -- The question seems to be whether Tom Ridge is ready to leave the administration to join a major consulting firm, or whether Bush might want him to stay in the administration. Smart and knowledgeable sources believe the odds are that he departs but that external events could change his mind. If Ridge goes, his undersecretary, Asa Hutchinson, has been publicly eager for the top job. Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney parlayed his experience heading security at the Salt Lake City Olympics into homeland-security expertise, including intelligence and information-gathering. He impressed Homeland Security Department officials and the White House in the process. Republicans and Democrats tout Thomas Kean, former New Jersey governor and the recent co-chairman of the 9/11 commission, as a public servant who would be stellar in almost any Cabinet post, including Homeland Security. Kean will retire from the presidency of Drew University next spring, around the time he celebrates his 70th birthday. Bernard Kerik campaigned hard for Bush in his capacity as former police commissioner of New York City, and he spoke at the president's New York convention. One source said Kerik would welcome an invitation to join a second term. Chairman of the House Select Committee on Homeland Security Christopher Cox finds himself tacked onto the list by some sources familiar with the department, but they remain unsure of Bush's sentiments and of Cox's thoughts about leaving his California congressional seat. Treasury Secretary -- Insiders believe that Secretary John Snow will stay where he is, at least for another year or so. If Bush wants an overhaul of the tax code to be his domestic plum in a second term, he and his advisers have faith that Snow, who replaced Paul O'Neill, can be effective in that effort. "Snow is staying," a senior White House official said. "The president thinks he's doing a good job." Commerce Secretary -- Bush friend Donald Evans has declined to say what he intends to do after the election, but a former White House official said Evans is definitely leaving Commerce. Evans's wife has moved back to Texas, and his son intends to finish school there, according to current and former White House officials. Among some Washington lobbyists, the speculation has been that Bush might ask Evans to be his next chief of staff, though they don't see Evans as the right fit for the job, as Bush has defined it. "My betting would be against it," says one K Street source close to the White House. "I think Don is an outside person." Others suggest that the president would want to keep his friend around in some role. The leading name to succeed Evans at Commerce is Mercer Reynolds III, the finance chairman of the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign. "I think he wants it, and he's a logical choice for the job," another well-connected lobbyist said.Office of Management and Budget Director -- Joshua B. Bolten is definitely staying in the administration if Bush is re-elected, a senior White House official says, and if Bush wants him to stay put at OMB, he will. If Treasury is not John Snow's post for some reason, Bolten is a prospect there, and some have mentioned him as a chief-of-staff-in-waiting, since he served as Andy Card's deputy. As for who might replace Bolten, there are few guesses, since a change is not widely expected. Stephen Moore of the Club for Growth says he is itching to get Bolten out ("he's more of a political guy") and wants a real "warrior for smaller government" installed in his place. His suggestion: Donna Arduin, who has made a name for herself as a budget expert in Michigan, in Florida, and currently in California under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Asked whether Bush really wants to slash spending in a second term, as conservatives urge, Moore said, "I'd like to say yes, but I don't think this is an administration that is anti-Big Government." U.S. Trade Representative -- The prevailing assumption is that Robert Zoellick is leaving, but the guesswork about a successor is just that -- guessing. The USTR job is often a catch-all perch for defeated members of Congress or campaign advisers who didn't make the cut elsewhere in the Cabinet. In the grab bag of names: Grant Aldonas, currently undersecretary of Commerce for international trade and a former chief trade counsel on the Senate Finance Committee; and Gary Edson, former deputy assistant to the president for international economic affairs. Health and Human Services Secretary -- Secretary Tommy Thompson initially found the job of running a federal department a tad less fulfilling than running a state, which he did in Wisconsin, but his enthusiasm increased once he settled in. Before the Medicare prescription drug measure was enacted this year, the oddsmakers were saying Thompson was headed into the private sector to make the first real money of his life. But confidants began suggesting that Bush might persuade him to stay at HHS, at least for a transition period, or even to head Transportation, which Thompson once thought he wanted. But Transportation has been so altered by the Department of Homeland Security, one Thompson friend suggested, that it is no longer the same department it was three years ago. A source close to the secretary says that Thompson, if he stays with Bush, now has his eyes on DHS if Tom Ridge departs. Possible successors are HHS deputy secretary Claude Allen, whom friends see as a proven manager who could pick up smoothly where Thompson leaves off, and Mark McClellan, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a young standout in job after job. McClellan, a physician and an economist whose brother is White House press secretary Scott McClellan, started with Bush as a policy adviser in the White House and was promoted to lead the Food and Drug Administration. Gail Wilensky, a senior fellow at international humanitarian group Project HOPE who ran Medicare and was a top health care adviser to Bush 41, was runner-up for the HHS job in 2000. William Roper, dean of the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), is another former Medicare administrator. He ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Bush 41 and has served as an adviser to Bush 43 in both of his presidential bids. Out in the states, HHS names include New York Gov. George Pataki (if he decides not to run for president in 2008), Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, and Colorado Gov. Bill Owens.Education Secretary -- The education establishment widely expects Roderick Paige, 71, to step down. White House education adviser Margaret Spellings has the job locked up, various sources inside and outside government report. Other suggestions gathered in interviews: former Pennsylvania schools chief Eugene Hickok, now Paige's deputy; Los Angeles schools superintendent and former Democratic governor of Colorado Roy Romer; former Michigan Gov. John Engler; Bush education adviser Sandy Kress (a more likely candidate to fill Spellings's vacancy if it emerges at the White House); and Education Department official and former Arkansas schools chief Ray Simon. Transportation Secretary -- Norman Mineta, the lone Democrat in Bush's Cabinet, plans to leave in January, according to a senior White House official and department-watchers. At 72, with some health problems behind him, Mineta may have caught wind that Labor Secretary Elaine Chao and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham reportedly fancy his job. Chao was deputy transportation secretary under George H.W. Bush. Michael P. Jackson, Mineta's first deputy at Transportation, could be a favorite of former Transportation Secretary Andy Card, for whom Jackson once worked. Jackson is now with the private-sector engineering firm Aecom, and colleagues say he seems content there but could be swayed by a call from Bush. If the president opts to promote from within the department, Federal Aviation Administration chief Marion Blakey is a candidate, though she would face opposition from unions after tussles over privatization of federal jobs. Two other possibilities: Federal Highway Administrator Mary Peters, the former Arizona transportation secretary; and former Texas Transportation Commission chief David Laney. Labor Secretary -- "It was no secret that the Department of Labor was not her first choice; she wanted DOT," one industry source said of Secretary Elaine Chao. Some see her help campaigning for Bush this year as a good-soldier effort to keep a hand in beyond Election Day, perhaps for that Transportation move. If Chao departs, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Chair Cari M. Dominguez, and George Salem, Labor's chief legal officer during the Reagan administration, are candidates to watch.Agriculture Secretary -- No Cabinet secretary has seemed to relish denouncing John Kerry as a flip-flopper quite as much as Secretary Ann Veneman has, on her travels for the president this year, doling out millions of dollars in federal grants. "Agriculture Secretary Campaigns to Keep Job," read a Reuters headline on October 17. Veneman-watchers differ about whether she is actually miserable or "at home" at Ag, torn between her strengths (farm-trade negotiations; swift response to the first U.S. mad-cow case) and her weaknesses (farm bill flop; criticism over imported Canadian beef). If Veneman departs, farm lobbyists and others interviewed offer this list of prospects: Charles Kruze, president of the Missouri Farm Bureau (described as Karl Rove's "favorite farmer"); Allen Johnson, chief agriculture trade negotiator at the Office of the United States Trade Representative; Bill Hawks, undersecretary of agriculture for marketing; John Thune, if he loses his Senate bid in South Dakota; Texas Democrat Charles Stenholm, if he loses his House re-election bid, although some Republicans said he was passed over in 2000; and Bruce Knight, former wheat and corn lobbyist and chief of the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator -- Many industry sources and knowledgeable observers in the environmental community anticipate that Administrator Mike Leavitt, who succeeded Christie Todd Whitman more than a year ago, would remain in a second term. One sign that he'd like to stay in the administration: He moved his family to Washington from Utah. "He's a good, smart guy who knows how to work the system," said one agriculture lobbyist. "He'll stay because he just got there." Energy Secretary -- Spencer Abraham will be replaced, or at least that's the consensus among lobbyists and interest groups with Energy Department business. Some blame Abraham, whom some industry lobbyists describe as difficult to work with and an ineffective representative of Bush's energy policies, for Congress's failure to pass the president's (and Vice President Cheney's) energy bill. "It's hard to be secretary of Energy and have Cheney run energy policy," one slightly sympathetic lobbyist said. Speculation is that a Republican who loses his or her race in November could succeed Abraham. Other ideas: Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn, who attended Yale with Bush and raised plenty of campaign dough for his friend; Rep. Heather Wilson (the suggestion of one environmental lobbyist, who noted that many of the federal national laboratories within the department are located in Wilson's home state of New Mexico); and Tony Garza, currently the U.S. ambassador to Mexico.Interior Secretary -- Gale Norton is widely perceived as someone who has done the White House's bidding, avoided ugly publicity, and built strong industry alliances. "There's a pretty good likelihood that she'd be asked to stay on, because Interior hasn't caused [the White House] a significant amount of trouble," one energy lobbyist offered. The only caveat is a publicized suggestion that Norton is angling for a judgeship. If she leaves, speculation revolves around current and former Western governors, such as Idaho's Dirk Kempthorne or Colorado's Bill Owens. An agriculture source, however, asserted that Kempthorne irritated the White House in 2003 when he lobbied to be EPA administrator, a job that went instead to Mike Leavitt.Housing and Urban Development Secretary -- Both political parties often put mayors on their short lists to manage the challenging Department of Housing and Urban Development, but don't bet on a mayor in a second Bush term, said Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. "Former mayors are people who run things, who have been in charge," said Katz, who was chief of staff to Henry Cisneros, former Clinton HUD secretary and mayor of San Antonio. "It's hard to dictate to them." And Katz asserts that Bush is not looking for a newsmaker. "The next HUD secretary in the Bush administration will be told, 'Cut the budget and follow our direction.' " HUD observers close to housing issues expect Secretary Alphonso Jackson to stick around, at least for a year or so, in a new Bush term. Jackson, who as deputy secretary was appointed to the top spot when Mel Martinez departed in 2003 to seek a Senate seat in Florida, is a pal from Bush's Texas days. Though Jackson managed the housing authorities in Dallas and St. Louis, he is viewed as a "stopgap appointment" among housing insiders. Fights over housing choice voucher reform and further agency budget cuts will get ugly in a second Bush administration, and HUD will need a leader who can reach out to both parties. A long-shot successor if Jackson steps down is Charlotte, N.C., Mayor Patrick McCrory, president of Republican Mayors and Local Officials.