I never confronted Obama directly over what I (as well as Clinton, Panetta, and others) saw as the president’s determination that the White House tightly control every aspect of national security policy and even operations. His White House was by far the most centralized and controlling in national security of any I had seen since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger ruled the roost. I had no problem with the White House and the NSS driving policy. As I had witnessed time and again, the big bureaucracies rarely come up with significant new ideas, and almost any meaningful departures from the status quo must be driven by the president and his national security adviser—whether it was Nixon and Kissinger and the openings to the Soviet Union and China, Carter and the Camp David accords, Reagan and his outreach to Gorbachev, or Bush 41 and the liberation of eastern Europe, reunification of Germany, and collapse of the Soviet Union.
Just as Bush 43 had driven the Iraq surge decision in late 2006, I had no issue with the White House and the NSS driving the policy reevaluation early in 2009 on Afghanistan. But I believe the major reason the protracted, frustrating Afghan review that fall created so much ill will was due to the fact it was forced on an otherwise controlling White House by the theater commander’s unexpected request for a large escalation of American involvement. It was a request that surprised the White House (and me) and provoked a debate that the White House neither sought nor wanted, especially when it became public. I think Obama and his advisers were incensed that the Department of Defense—specifically the military—had taken control of the policy process from them and threatened to run away with it. That partly accounts for the increased suspicion of the military at the White House and the NSS. The Pentagon and the military did not consciously intend to snatch the initiative and control of war policy from the president, but in retrospect, I can now see how easily it could have been perceived that way. The White House saw it as a calculated move. The leak of McChrystal’s assessment and subsequent public commentary by Mullen, Petraeus, and McChrystal only reinforced that view. I was never able to persuade the president and others that it was not a plot.
I had served in the White House on the National Security Staff under four presidents and had strong views as to its proper role. I had come to learn that White House/NSS involvement in operations or operational details is usually counterproductive (LBJ picking bombing targets in Vietnam) and sometimes dangerous (Iran-Contra). The root of my unhappiness in the Obama administration was therefore not NSS policy initiatives but rather its micromanagement—on Haitian relief, on the Libyan no-fly zone, above all on Afghanistan—and I routinely resisted it. For an NSC staff member to call a four-star combatant commander or field commander would have been unthinkable when I worked at the White House and probably cause for dismissal. It became routine under Obama. I directed the commanders to refer such calls to my office. The controlling nature of the Obama White House, and its determination to take credit for every good thing that happened while giving none to the people in the cabinet departments—in the trenches—who had actually done the work, offended Hillary Clinton as much as it did me.
These issues did not begin under Obama. There has been a steady trend toward more centralized White House control over the national security apparatus ever since Harry Truman considered his principal national security advisers to be the secretaries of state and defense. (That they were Dean Acheson and George Marshall certainly helped.) But even Truman initially had opposed legislation creating the National Security Council, convinced that Congress was trying to impose “cabinet government” on him. Since then the presidential staff assigned to national security has increased many times over. As recently as the Scowcroft-led NSC staff in the early 1990s, professional staff numbered about fifty. Today the NSS numbers more than 350.
The controlling nature of the Obama White House and the NSS staff took micromanagement and operational meddling to a new level. Partly, I think, it was due to the backgrounds and résumés of the people involved. For most of my professional life, top NSC positions went to people who may have aligned with one party or the other, but they had reputations in the foreign policy and national security arenas that predated their association with the president—either from academia (such as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Condi Rice) or longtime service in the military, intelligence, or foreign policy arenas (such as Frank Carlucci, Jim Jones, Colin Powell, Steve Hadley, Brent Scowcroft, and me). Inevitably there were some politically or personally connected handlers as well, but they were the exceptions. Obama’s top tier of NSS people, though, was heavily populated with very smart, politically savvy, and hardworking “super staffers”—typically from Capitol Hill—who focused on national-security-related issues only as their careers progressed. This changed profile may explain, in part, their apparent lack of understanding of or concern for observing the traditional institutional roles among the White House, the Pentagon, and the operational military.
Stylistically, the two presidents had much more in common than I expected. Both were most comfortable around a coterie of close aides and friends (like most presidents) and largely shunned the Washington social scene. Both, I believe, detested Congress and resented having to deal with it, including members of their own party. And so, unfortunately, neither devoted much effort to wooing or even reaching out to individual members or trying to establish a network of allies, supporters—or friends. They both had the worst of both worlds on the Hilclass="underline" they were neither particularly liked nor feared. Accordingly, neither had many allies in Congress who were willing to go beyond party loyalty, self-interest, or policy agreement in supporting them. In this, they had more in common with Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon than with LBJ, Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41. Nor did either work much at establishing close personal relationships with other world leaders. Bush did somewhat more of this than Obama, but neither had anything like the number of friendships cultivated by Ford, Reagan, and Bush 41. (I don’t know about Clinton; I wasn’t there.) Both presidents, in short, seemed to me to be very aloof with respect to two constituencies important to their success in foreign affairs.
Both were generous, kind, and caring when it came to men and women in uniform and their families. Both presidents—and their wives—devoted significant time and energy to helping the wounded and all military families. Helping those families was particularly important to Michelle Obama and Jill Biden. Both presidents regularly, privately, visited our wounded at hospitals and met with families of the fallen. No one could have asked either to do more or to care more. As was fitting.