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I was watching C-SPAN the other day, and there was an expert on administration and management who has, along with a number of other historians from both sides of the aisle, written a book called 'the Nerve Center,' detailing the way the white house works. The author has been a source for the West Wing series.

One of the things he said that surprised me was that from a management standpoint, Bush's first term was probably the smoothest-functioning white house since world war two. The author showed a chart of 'average number of leaks in the first 100 days of a presidency (8), and at the end of the first year. (18). Bush's first admin has been 0 and 0.

He also said that the Bush team has raised the bar for crisis handling. Basically, when there's a problem, bush delegates a team of 3 to deal with it. Other people are not allowed to 'fix' on it without permission. The author said that Bush noted that Clinton's white house dealt with scandals as if they were a soccer match: everyone on the team runs to the ball and kicks at it. Most of the time, they end up kicking each other. Clinton also brought in outsiders in the second term to clean house, and this only multiplied the backstage intrigue, as everyone sucked up to the new guy.

Bush Replaces Traditional No Comment With Refuse To Negotiate with Myself In Public