Wednesday, January 05, 2005
'Pressure Cooker Andrew Card Has the Recipe for Chief of Staff Down Pat
By Mark LeibovichWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, January 5, 2005; Page C01
Andrew Card is talking about his kitchen. "I know my kitchen really well, as evidenced by my rotund being," Card says, patting his belly. "I know where the oven is and I know where the microwave is and I know where the sink is and I know where the refrigerator is and the freezer and the cupboards and the table and the chairs."
Card, 57, is sprawled on the couch of his West Wing office, describing the kitchen from his mind's eye. It is from here that the White House chief of staff organizes the nation's most potent workplace and man-hours. Like his boss, Card is an aggressively lowfalutin character. He is the longest-serving chief of staff in 46 years, yet he reminds people that he toiled many years at a McDonald's and spent one summer as a garbage collector. "I'm not a very smart person," Card says. "I have to work really hard at remembering things." Which explains the deceptively prosaic tour of the Cards' Arlington kitchen. Card rarely takes notes. He does not make to-do lists or scrawl reminders to himself on Post-its. Instead, he keeps much of the Bush White House in his head, or in his kitchen. This is where it gets eccentric for everyman Andy Card.
Card is a student of memory. He practices a technique pioneered by Matteo Ricci, a 16th-century Italian Jesuit. Ricci, who did missionary work in China, introduced the notion of a "memory palace" to Confucian scholars. The "memory palace" is a structure of the mind, to be furnished with mnemonic devices. Ricci might construct an imaginary palace room for each of his students -- filled with furniture and shelves to represent aspects of that student (a painting to express his appearance, a shelf on which to array his scholastic record).
Memory is central to a chief of staff's job. He must possess enough instant knowledge to execute the president's minute-to-minute pursuits, be it macro (his agenda) or micro (when he's due for a haircut). Brad Blakeman, a former White House scheduler, says it's not uncommon to have someone ask where the president will be on a certain date three months in the future and have Card answer precisely. "He knew the president's schedule a lot better than me," Blakeman says, "and I was the scheduler."
While Ricci used a palace, castle or other elaborate edifice, Card's palace is his mental kitchen. Every Monday morning when he arrives at the White House, Card performs the ritual of "cleaning my kitchen."
"I view my job as being responsible for the president to have everything he needs to do his job," Card says. "So when I clean my kitchen, it's really about anticipating what it is the president will have to do, what kind of help he will need to do it and when it has to be done."
When tackling matters of top priority, Card stands at the stove, working his "front and back burners." Intelligence reform is cooking this morning. He needs to call several people: 9/11 Commission Chairmen Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, Reps. Duncan Hunter and James Sensenbrenner, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. They are "on my right front burner," he says.
"Then I shift gears to my left front burner, which is second most important," Card says. He will help the president hire a Cabinet secretary, then move to his right rear burner (hiring White House staff for the second term). "I do that all in my kitchen," Card says. "Now the things I want to put off for a long time, I put in the freezer. But then I can go to my freezer and generally remember things that I put there a long time ago." He will store matters that were resolved or tabled yesterday in a cupboard.
"If you go see Andy at his desk, it looks like he's not doing anything," says Andrew Natsios, a close friend of Card's who is head of the Agency for International Development. "It's almost empty, there's no paper anywhere. But he's created this whole system in his head with this mind discipline of his."
So much institutional history and memory of both Bush administrations is stored in Andy Card's kitchen. He has been as entrenched in Bushworld as the family furniture. He is chronically there -- as in there in the room, in the meeting, in the photo, on the Sunday shows. Card was there, next to Bush One when he vomited on the Japanese prime minister, there in the Oval when Bushes One and Two choked up together on Inauguration Day 2001, and there, in Bush Two's ear as he read "My Pet Goat" on 9/11.
He wakes at 4:20 each morning, commonly stays at work until 10 p.m. and spends most weekends at his office or at Camp David with the POTUS.
He wears his fatigue proudly, advertises his minimal sleep regimen, mentions what bad shape he's in, how he drinks too much coffee and that he needs to spend more time with family -- three grown children, four grandchildren and wife Kathleene, a Methodist minister, whom he met when both were in the fifth grade. In 2003, he passed out during a three-mile run with the president in Crawford, Tex.
Does his fatigue make it harder for Card to remember things? He shakes his head: "My kitchen is in order," Card says, "though I may not be."
Card loves to doodle, a rare indulgence of paper for him. "I am almost always doodling," he says. He can look at old doodles and recall where he was when he drew them, what meeting he was in and what was decided. They are his de facto notes.
Card pulls out a doodle from the top drawer of his desk: It is a pencil sketch of a Canadian flag, which Card drew in a meeting during the president's recent visit to Canada. Beneath the flag is a network of circles, jots, lines and warped squares. It is the driveway of his summer house in Poland, Maine: "Here's the house," he says leading a tour of the doodle. Here's the rock garden, the drainage scheme and a tool shed that he's thinking about building.
"Doodling helps my thinking," Card says, a corollary to creating pictures in his mind. "It helps me to visualize that which I'm listening to." A Range of Options
As Card describes his "kitchen," he is cagey about his front-burner items. "I'm not gonna show you everything I have in my kitchen," Card says. But when less pressing topics arise, Card offers a window into the size and complexity of his kitchen.
An eager storyteller, Card can take a long time with his explanations and descriptions. He is at times compelled to show you every crumb in his cupboard.
Ask Card, for instance, how he chose the exact words he whispered to President Bush on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
"Very carefully," Card says, noting that he wanted to give the president maximum information without giving him a chance to respond, avoiding a public conversation. "I wanted to pass on two facts and one editorial comment and then back away."
The rest of his answer -- unloaded from Card's 9/11 cupboard -- takes 20 minutes.
Card describes the vivid smell of dead fish at the Sarasota golf resort where the president ate dinner on the night of Sept. 10. Walking back to the hotel, Card saw a car parked in a way that blocked a narrow alley. He asked an advance man to remove it.
The next morning, Card became concerned that there was a misspelled word on the blackboard behind the spot where the president would read. The word -- Card doesn't say what it was -- "was adroitly covered by a book cover," he says, adding that it was written in red, orange and blue chalk. Bush learned that the first plane had hit the North Tower as he stood at the door of the classroom, just before he was to begin reading. "We're standing at the door, I'm standing to the president's left," Card says. "The president was holding a doorknob in his right hand."
Card first learned the discipline of Matteo Ricci as a high school junior. He was attending a talk given by "some kind of memory expert" at a Rotary Club near his home in Holbrook, Mass., a middle-class suburb south of Boston. The man quizzed the 50 or 60 people in the audience about personal details -- their names, where they lived and so forth. Then, without notes, he repeated all the information back to them.
Card approached the speaker afterward and asked if he had a photographic memory. "No, no, no," the man said. "I work really hard at this." He explained the Riccian principle of linking facts to visual mnemonics. "He said, take something that you know really well and then associate something with it," Card says. "And I began doing that over the course of time."
Card studied engineering at the University of South Carolina while working at a McDonald's in Columbia (rising as high as night manager). As he manned counters, Card tried to calculate the total price of an order before the clerk could punch it into the cash register. "It really turned into great sport," Card says.
Another McDonald's episode bears mention: Once, when money went missing from the cash register, Card threatened to fire everyone unless it was returned. The cash reappeared and the crew kept their jobs. But Card was serious about his threat, and the episode reflects the resolve behind Card's soft edges, a combination that has served him in politics.
Card's father, a small-town lawyer and unsuccessful candidate for the state legislature, was active in Holbrook politics. Card was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1974, a Republican moderate who favored abortion and gay rights. "He was always very supportive of the things that the Bush administration has been hostile to, like gay rights," says Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who served with Card in the legislature.
Card sought the GOP nomination for governor in 1982 but finished third. An early supporter of George H.W. Bush's campaign for president in 1980, Card ran Massachusetts for Bush, who narrowly won the state's Republican primary over John Anderson. "From then on, it became personal for Andy and the Bushes," says Phil Johnston, a former Democratic state House member who worked with Card on a landmark anti-corruption bill.
Through his link to Bush, Card joined the intergovernmental affairs office of the Reagan White House in 1983. He remained close to Vice President Bush, eventually taking a senior position on his presidential campaign in 1987. He worked closely with Bush's sharp-edged political guru Lee Atwater. "Lee always thought Andy was his guy," says Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and close Atwater associate. "But everyone thinks that Andy is their guy. That's the beauty of him. He has assumed the role of chief therapist in the Bush camp." Rogers also dubs Card "a human Alka-Seltzer" who offsets the acid of clashing egos, ideologies and agendas in a political enterprise.
He was deputy chief of staff in the Bush administration under John Sununu and gained a reputation for his forthright and pleasant manner, especially when performing unpleasant tasks. "We always said that if we ever got fired, we wanted Andy to do it," said Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. (This reputation endures: "I figure when Andy fires me, I'll probably be slapping him on the back laughing on the way out the door," says Dan Bartlett, the current White House communications director.)
Card's signature firing occurred in 1990 when he had to tell his own boss, Sununu, that it was time to leave. There is a vivid scene in Fitzwater's memoir, "Call the Briefing," in which Card, White House counsel Boyden Gray and Bush family friend Dorrance Smith nervously enter Sununu's office after the president concluded that it was time for him to go. Smith and Gray hold back, leaving Card to deliver the news. "This kind of thing always winds up falling to Andy," Fitzwater says.
"Hearing bad news from Andy is like hearing bad news from Dudley Do-right," says Rogers. "You can't shoot the messenger with Andy. And this is a town where the messenger gets shot all the time."
After being appointed Bush One's secretary of transportation, Card was given the dirty work of running the president's outgoing transition team. He spent the rest of the '90s lobbying, first for the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, then General Motors.
Card first met George W. Bush in 1979 during his father's first presidential campaign. ("May. Kennebunkport. We were on Ocean Avenue.") When Card was deputy chief of staff, Bush Two would sometimes walk into his office, collapse on the couch and gather intelligence about his father's administration. "I wouldn't call us friends," Card says of that time.
Card was not involved in George W. Bush's primary campaign, not unusual given that few people who worked at a high level for the former president also worked for his son. "There was an aggressive effort to avoid it," says Bush's longtime media adviser, Mark McKinnon. But in the spring of 2000, Bush's team was dissatisfied with the planning for the summer's GOP convention in Philadelphia and needed someone to take over. "It was a difficult situation in that there was an existing structure in place," says Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
The elder Bush suggested to his son that Card's convention performance could be an audition, according to a source familiar with the discussion. If it worked out, and if Bush won the election, Card would be a natural for White House chief of staff. The younger Bush referred to the job as "The Big One." The Crisper
The story of how Card went from running the 2000 GOP convention to "The Big One" is, frankly, long. At least it is in Card's retelling, which takes 25 minutes.
"This is one of those cupboards you don't open until somebody says, 'Hey, where are those string beans?' " Card says.
Herein, the string beans:
Card tells of discussions he had "that were not very directioned" with Rove, future commerce secretary Don Evans and Bush.
And how, just before he began working on the campaign, Card took his wife to Bermuda after she graduated from divinity school.
And a conversation Card had with Bush on the night of his acceptance speech in Philadelphia in which Bush told him to "keep your dance card clear."
And the conversation Bush had with Card in Boston on the night of Bush's first debate with Gore ("when Gore had a little too much orange makeup on"). They were on a boat ferrying them from Logan Airport across Boston Harbor (not as polluted as before, "thanks to the good leadership of the former president Bush").
And how, over breakfast, an annoyed Kathleene Card asked her husband, "Are you married to me or George W. Bush?"
And then the phone rang and it was George W. Bush, who told Card to call his gubernatorial chief of staff, Clay Johnson.
And so Card flew to Austin and met with Johnson, who had a bunch of notebooks marked "transition" on his desk, and Card figured they wanted him to run the transition, which Card calls "a pain-in-the-neck job," but one he'd be willing to do.
And then, on his way out of Texas, Card visited the elder Bush in Houston, where he began to believe they were considering him for The Big One. (Card arrived in Houston at 9, and the Bushes were out when he arrived. Barbara Bush arrived home at 11, the former president at midnight. "I woke up early the next day. I made the bed. I showered. I shaved. I got all dressed."
And then Card flew to Tampa to meet the younger Bush, who was holding a rally in Jacksonville. But Card's flight was delayed and he missed Bush before the candidate went to sleep. ("Karen Hughes was there, her son Robert. Got a bite to eat late at night in the hotel.")
Next morning he met with Bush, who mentioned "The Big One," and the rest, as they say, is in another cupboard.
"Sorry I talked so much," Card says.Counter Strategy
Shortly after Bush took office, Mack McLarty, Bill Clinton's chief of staff, and Ken Duberstein, who held the same post under Reagan, co-hosted a dinner for Card at McLarty's Kalorama home. Several former White House chiefs of staff attended -- or, as McLarty puts it, "those of us who have held the office of chief javelin catcher in the White House." Guests included McLarty's neighbor Donald Rumsfeld (chief of staff under Gerald Ford), Donald Regan (Reagan) and Samuel Skinner (Bush One).
In a toast at the dinner, McLarty told of how Reagan chief of staff Howard Baker called him when Clinton took office to say, "Congratulations, you just got the worst job in Washington."
It's a job that Card is neatly suited to do. "He has that intangible ability to anticipate the rhythm of the presidency," says Duberstein. Card is "a comfortable shoe," Duberstein says, someone the president has become accustomed to.
Bush will tease Card in meetings for his long-windedness and tendency to veer off on tangents. People who have watched them together say the president will sometimes order Card around in a tone that suggests he's talking to a servant. In "The Price of Loyalty," former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill describes a scene in which Bush impatiently demands that Card get him a cheeseburger.
One former Bush administration official compares Card to a little-brother figure to the president, even though Bush is only 10 months older: Bush regards him as a member of the family and would never doubt his loyalty. "But the president can walk on Andy a little bit," says the former official, who asked not to be identified because he doesn't want the White House to be angry with him. "The president talks to him like he's hired help more than he would someone like Cheney or Rumsfeld."
Card loves reminding people that he is hired help -- that the "of staff" in his title is more important than the "chief," as if he were manning a drive-through window back at McDonald's.
"The president has every right to be selfish with my time," Card says. "That means there are sacrifices I need to make for the president to have what he needs. And those sacrifices usually impact my wife or my kids or my grandkids, or my siblings or my friends. And that is a burden I carry."
The burden wears heavily on chiefs of staff. It is "the ultimate burnout job," Duberstein says. In her memoir "Ten Minutes From Normal," Bush confidante Karen Hughes describes Card telling a prospective White House hire what he expects of his staff. "You don't get home until late at night, you work every weekend," Card said, according to Hughes. He said he didn't have a single day off in several years during the first Bush administration.
Card likes to point out that the average tenure of a White House job is 18 months. And that the chief of staff's job in particular is not suited for the long haul. Yet a few days after his reelection, Bush showed up at Card's morning senior staff meeting at to announce that Card would stay on.
"He's under severe stress and I worry about him," says Card's friend Natsios. "I'll call him at his office, at 6 [a.m.], when I know he's there, just to see how he's doing."
Card's name is periodically raised for Cabinet posts -- most recently, he was rumored to be the successor to John Snow as Treasury secretary. Card says he places such items "right on top of the garbage disposal." He shakes his head, asks, "What are you gonna do?" He rubs his eyes and says that it's been another long week.
He was in the office at 5:10 this morning. And he was out at a function at the Kennedy Center two nights earlier. He went to bed at 11:35, "then got a call at 3:50 a.m. from the Situation Room."
Don't bother asking: The rest of that cupboard is closed.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
'
By Mark LeibovichWashington Post Staff WriterWednesday, January 5, 2005; Page C01
Andrew Card is talking about his kitchen. "I know my kitchen really well, as evidenced by my rotund being," Card says, patting his belly. "I know where the oven is and I know where the microwave is and I know where the sink is and I know where the refrigerator is and the freezer and the cupboards and the table and the chairs."
Card, 57, is sprawled on the couch of his West Wing office, describing the kitchen from his mind's eye. It is from here that the White House chief of staff organizes the nation's most potent workplace and man-hours. Like his boss, Card is an aggressively lowfalutin character. He is the longest-serving chief of staff in 46 years, yet he reminds people that he toiled many years at a McDonald's and spent one summer as a garbage collector. "I'm not a very smart person," Card says. "I have to work really hard at remembering things." Which explains the deceptively prosaic tour of the Cards' Arlington kitchen. Card rarely takes notes. He does not make to-do lists or scrawl reminders to himself on Post-its. Instead, he keeps much of the Bush White House in his head, or in his kitchen. This is where it gets eccentric for everyman Andy Card.
Card is a student of memory. He practices a technique pioneered by Matteo Ricci, a 16th-century Italian Jesuit. Ricci, who did missionary work in China, introduced the notion of a "memory palace" to Confucian scholars. The "memory palace" is a structure of the mind, to be furnished with mnemonic devices. Ricci might construct an imaginary palace room for each of his students -- filled with furniture and shelves to represent aspects of that student (a painting to express his appearance, a shelf on which to array his scholastic record).
Memory is central to a chief of staff's job. He must possess enough instant knowledge to execute the president's minute-to-minute pursuits, be it macro (his agenda) or micro (when he's due for a haircut). Brad Blakeman, a former White House scheduler, says it's not uncommon to have someone ask where the president will be on a certain date three months in the future and have Card answer precisely. "He knew the president's schedule a lot better than me," Blakeman says, "and I was the scheduler."
While Ricci used a palace, castle or other elaborate edifice, Card's palace is his mental kitchen. Every Monday morning when he arrives at the White House, Card performs the ritual of "cleaning my kitchen."
"I view my job as being responsible for the president to have everything he needs to do his job," Card says. "So when I clean my kitchen, it's really about anticipating what it is the president will have to do, what kind of help he will need to do it and when it has to be done."
When tackling matters of top priority, Card stands at the stove, working his "front and back burners." Intelligence reform is cooking this morning. He needs to call several people: 9/11 Commission Chairmen Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, Reps. Duncan Hunter and James Sensenbrenner, and House Speaker Dennis Hastert. They are "on my right front burner," he says.
"Then I shift gears to my left front burner, which is second most important," Card says. He will help the president hire a Cabinet secretary, then move to his right rear burner (hiring White House staff for the second term). "I do that all in my kitchen," Card says. "Now the things I want to put off for a long time, I put in the freezer. But then I can go to my freezer and generally remember things that I put there a long time ago." He will store matters that were resolved or tabled yesterday in a cupboard.
"If you go see Andy at his desk, it looks like he's not doing anything," says Andrew Natsios, a close friend of Card's who is head of the Agency for International Development. "It's almost empty, there's no paper anywhere. But he's created this whole system in his head with this mind discipline of his."
So much institutional history and memory of both Bush administrations is stored in Andy Card's kitchen. He has been as entrenched in Bushworld as the family furniture. He is chronically there -- as in there in the room, in the meeting, in the photo, on the Sunday shows. Card was there, next to Bush One when he vomited on the Japanese prime minister, there in the Oval when Bushes One and Two choked up together on Inauguration Day 2001, and there, in Bush Two's ear as he read "My Pet Goat" on 9/11.
He wakes at 4:20 each morning, commonly stays at work until 10 p.m. and spends most weekends at his office or at Camp David with the POTUS.
He wears his fatigue proudly, advertises his minimal sleep regimen, mentions what bad shape he's in, how he drinks too much coffee and that he needs to spend more time with family -- three grown children, four grandchildren and wife Kathleene, a Methodist minister, whom he met when both were in the fifth grade. In 2003, he passed out during a three-mile run with the president in Crawford, Tex.
Does his fatigue make it harder for Card to remember things? He shakes his head: "My kitchen is in order," Card says, "though I may not be."
Card loves to doodle, a rare indulgence of paper for him. "I am almost always doodling," he says. He can look at old doodles and recall where he was when he drew them, what meeting he was in and what was decided. They are his de facto notes.
Card pulls out a doodle from the top drawer of his desk: It is a pencil sketch of a Canadian flag, which Card drew in a meeting during the president's recent visit to Canada. Beneath the flag is a network of circles, jots, lines and warped squares. It is the driveway of his summer house in Poland, Maine: "Here's the house," he says leading a tour of the doodle. Here's the rock garden, the drainage scheme and a tool shed that he's thinking about building.
"Doodling helps my thinking," Card says, a corollary to creating pictures in his mind. "It helps me to visualize that which I'm listening to." A Range of Options
As Card describes his "kitchen," he is cagey about his front-burner items. "I'm not gonna show you everything I have in my kitchen," Card says. But when less pressing topics arise, Card offers a window into the size and complexity of his kitchen.
An eager storyteller, Card can take a long time with his explanations and descriptions. He is at times compelled to show you every crumb in his cupboard.
Ask Card, for instance, how he chose the exact words he whispered to President Bush on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001: "A second plane hit the second tower. America is under attack."
"Very carefully," Card says, noting that he wanted to give the president maximum information without giving him a chance to respond, avoiding a public conversation. "I wanted to pass on two facts and one editorial comment and then back away."
The rest of his answer -- unloaded from Card's 9/11 cupboard -- takes 20 minutes.
Card describes the vivid smell of dead fish at the Sarasota golf resort where the president ate dinner on the night of Sept. 10. Walking back to the hotel, Card saw a car parked in a way that blocked a narrow alley. He asked an advance man to remove it.
The next morning, Card became concerned that there was a misspelled word on the blackboard behind the spot where the president would read. The word -- Card doesn't say what it was -- "was adroitly covered by a book cover," he says, adding that it was written in red, orange and blue chalk. Bush learned that the first plane had hit the North Tower as he stood at the door of the classroom, just before he was to begin reading. "We're standing at the door, I'm standing to the president's left," Card says. "The president was holding a doorknob in his right hand."
Card first learned the discipline of Matteo Ricci as a high school junior. He was attending a talk given by "some kind of memory expert" at a Rotary Club near his home in Holbrook, Mass., a middle-class suburb south of Boston. The man quizzed the 50 or 60 people in the audience about personal details -- their names, where they lived and so forth. Then, without notes, he repeated all the information back to them.
Card approached the speaker afterward and asked if he had a photographic memory. "No, no, no," the man said. "I work really hard at this." He explained the Riccian principle of linking facts to visual mnemonics. "He said, take something that you know really well and then associate something with it," Card says. "And I began doing that over the course of time."
Card studied engineering at the University of South Carolina while working at a McDonald's in Columbia (rising as high as night manager). As he manned counters, Card tried to calculate the total price of an order before the clerk could punch it into the cash register. "It really turned into great sport," Card says.
Another McDonald's episode bears mention: Once, when money went missing from the cash register, Card threatened to fire everyone unless it was returned. The cash reappeared and the crew kept their jobs. But Card was serious about his threat, and the episode reflects the resolve behind Card's soft edges, a combination that has served him in politics.
Card's father, a small-town lawyer and unsuccessful candidate for the state legislature, was active in Holbrook politics. Card was elected to the Massachusetts legislature in 1974, a Republican moderate who favored abortion and gay rights. "He was always very supportive of the things that the Bush administration has been hostile to, like gay rights," says Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who served with Card in the legislature.
Card sought the GOP nomination for governor in 1982 but finished third. An early supporter of George H.W. Bush's campaign for president in 1980, Card ran Massachusetts for Bush, who narrowly won the state's Republican primary over John Anderson. "From then on, it became personal for Andy and the Bushes," says Phil Johnston, a former Democratic state House member who worked with Card on a landmark anti-corruption bill.
Through his link to Bush, Card joined the intergovernmental affairs office of the Reagan White House in 1983. He remained close to Vice President Bush, eventually taking a senior position on his presidential campaign in 1987. He worked closely with Bush's sharp-edged political guru Lee Atwater. "Lee always thought Andy was his guy," says Ed Rogers, a Republican lobbyist and close Atwater associate. "But everyone thinks that Andy is their guy. That's the beauty of him. He has assumed the role of chief therapist in the Bush camp." Rogers also dubs Card "a human Alka-Seltzer" who offsets the acid of clashing egos, ideologies and agendas in a political enterprise.
He was deputy chief of staff in the Bush administration under John Sununu and gained a reputation for his forthright and pleasant manner, especially when performing unpleasant tasks. "We always said that if we ever got fired, we wanted Andy to do it," said Bush press secretary Marlin Fitzwater. (This reputation endures: "I figure when Andy fires me, I'll probably be slapping him on the back laughing on the way out the door," says Dan Bartlett, the current White House communications director.)
Card's signature firing occurred in 1990 when he had to tell his own boss, Sununu, that it was time to leave. There is a vivid scene in Fitzwater's memoir, "Call the Briefing," in which Card, White House counsel Boyden Gray and Bush family friend Dorrance Smith nervously enter Sununu's office after the president concluded that it was time for him to go. Smith and Gray hold back, leaving Card to deliver the news. "This kind of thing always winds up falling to Andy," Fitzwater says.
"Hearing bad news from Andy is like hearing bad news from Dudley Do-right," says Rogers. "You can't shoot the messenger with Andy. And this is a town where the messenger gets shot all the time."
After being appointed Bush One's secretary of transportation, Card was given the dirty work of running the president's outgoing transition team. He spent the rest of the '90s lobbying, first for the American Automobile Manufacturers Association, then General Motors.
Card first met George W. Bush in 1979 during his father's first presidential campaign. ("May. Kennebunkport. We were on Ocean Avenue.") When Card was deputy chief of staff, Bush Two would sometimes walk into his office, collapse on the couch and gather intelligence about his father's administration. "I wouldn't call us friends," Card says of that time.
Card was not involved in George W. Bush's primary campaign, not unusual given that few people who worked at a high level for the former president also worked for his son. "There was an aggressive effort to avoid it," says Bush's longtime media adviser, Mark McKinnon. But in the spring of 2000, Bush's team was dissatisfied with the planning for the summer's GOP convention in Philadelphia and needed someone to take over. "It was a difficult situation in that there was an existing structure in place," says Bush political adviser Karl Rove.
The elder Bush suggested to his son that Card's convention performance could be an audition, according to a source familiar with the discussion. If it worked out, and if Bush won the election, Card would be a natural for White House chief of staff. The younger Bush referred to the job as "The Big One." The Crisper
The story of how Card went from running the 2000 GOP convention to "The Big One" is, frankly, long. At least it is in Card's retelling, which takes 25 minutes.
"This is one of those cupboards you don't open until somebody says, 'Hey, where are those string beans?' " Card says.
Herein, the string beans:
Card tells of discussions he had "that were not very directioned" with Rove, future commerce secretary Don Evans and Bush.
And how, just before he began working on the campaign, Card took his wife to Bermuda after she graduated from divinity school.
And a conversation Card had with Bush on the night of his acceptance speech in Philadelphia in which Bush told him to "keep your dance card clear."
And the conversation Bush had with Card in Boston on the night of Bush's first debate with Gore ("when Gore had a little too much orange makeup on"). They were on a boat ferrying them from Logan Airport across Boston Harbor (not as polluted as before, "thanks to the good leadership of the former president Bush").
And how, over breakfast, an annoyed Kathleene Card asked her husband, "Are you married to me or George W. Bush?"
And then the phone rang and it was George W. Bush, who told Card to call his gubernatorial chief of staff, Clay Johnson.
And so Card flew to Austin and met with Johnson, who had a bunch of notebooks marked "transition" on his desk, and Card figured they wanted him to run the transition, which Card calls "a pain-in-the-neck job," but one he'd be willing to do.
And then, on his way out of Texas, Card visited the elder Bush in Houston, where he began to believe they were considering him for The Big One. (Card arrived in Houston at 9, and the Bushes were out when he arrived. Barbara Bush arrived home at 11, the former president at midnight. "I woke up early the next day. I made the bed. I showered. I shaved. I got all dressed."
And then Card flew to Tampa to meet the younger Bush, who was holding a rally in Jacksonville. But Card's flight was delayed and he missed Bush before the candidate went to sleep. ("Karen Hughes was there, her son Robert. Got a bite to eat late at night in the hotel.")
Next morning he met with Bush, who mentioned "The Big One," and the rest, as they say, is in another cupboard.
"Sorry I talked so much," Card says.Counter Strategy
Shortly after Bush took office, Mack McLarty, Bill Clinton's chief of staff, and Ken Duberstein, who held the same post under Reagan, co-hosted a dinner for Card at McLarty's Kalorama home. Several former White House chiefs of staff attended -- or, as McLarty puts it, "those of us who have held the office of chief javelin catcher in the White House." Guests included McLarty's neighbor Donald Rumsfeld (chief of staff under Gerald Ford), Donald Regan (Reagan) and Samuel Skinner (Bush One).
In a toast at the dinner, McLarty told of how Reagan chief of staff Howard Baker called him when Clinton took office to say, "Congratulations, you just got the worst job in Washington."
It's a job that Card is neatly suited to do. "He has that intangible ability to anticipate the rhythm of the presidency," says Duberstein. Card is "a comfortable shoe," Duberstein says, someone the president has become accustomed to.
Bush will tease Card in meetings for his long-windedness and tendency to veer off on tangents. People who have watched them together say the president will sometimes order Card around in a tone that suggests he's talking to a servant. In "The Price of Loyalty," former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill describes a scene in which Bush impatiently demands that Card get him a cheeseburger.
One former Bush administration official compares Card to a little-brother figure to the president, even though Bush is only 10 months older: Bush regards him as a member of the family and would never doubt his loyalty. "But the president can walk on Andy a little bit," says the former official, who asked not to be identified because he doesn't want the White House to be angry with him. "The president talks to him like he's hired help more than he would someone like Cheney or Rumsfeld."
Card loves reminding people that he is hired help -- that the "of staff" in his title is more important than the "chief," as if he were manning a drive-through window back at McDonald's.
"The president has every right to be selfish with my time," Card says. "That means there are sacrifices I need to make for the president to have what he needs. And those sacrifices usually impact my wife or my kids or my grandkids, or my siblings or my friends. And that is a burden I carry."
The burden wears heavily on chiefs of staff. It is "the ultimate burnout job," Duberstein says. In her memoir "Ten Minutes From Normal," Bush confidante Karen Hughes describes Card telling a prospective White House hire what he expects of his staff. "You don't get home until late at night, you work every weekend," Card said, according to Hughes. He said he didn't have a single day off in several years during the first Bush administration.
Card likes to point out that the average tenure of a White House job is 18 months. And that the chief of staff's job in particular is not suited for the long haul. Yet a few days after his reelection, Bush showed up at Card's morning senior staff meeting at to announce that Card would stay on.
"He's under severe stress and I worry about him," says Card's friend Natsios. "I'll call him at his office, at 6 [a.m.], when I know he's there, just to see how he's doing."
Card's name is periodically raised for Cabinet posts -- most recently, he was rumored to be the successor to John Snow as Treasury secretary. Card says he places such items "right on top of the garbage disposal." He shakes his head, asks, "What are you gonna do?" He rubs his eyes and says that it's been another long week.
He was in the office at 5:10 this morning. And he was out at a function at the Kennedy Center two nights earlier. He went to bed at 11:35, "then got a call at 3:50 a.m. from the Situation Room."
Don't bother asking: The rest of that cupboard is closed.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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