Organizing the White House Is Obama's First Test

By KARL ROVE

As he organizes his presidency, Barack Obama continues to receive glowing reviews. Three out of four Americans approve of how he's handling his transition.

But organizing and operating the White House will be a much bigger challenge than he can possibly yet understand.

AP

President-elect Barack Obama with Secretary of State-designate Sen. Hillary Clinton and National Security Adviser-designate Gen. James Jones.

Consider national security. Mr. Obama's team has the advantage of inheriting procedures and structures that stretch back to President Harry Truman's 1947 reforms, which created the National Security Council. But there's historically been tension over the roles of the national security adviser and secretary of state. How that tension is resolved depends largely on the able National Security Adviser-designate, James Jones.

Mr. Jones has been Marine Corps commandant and NATO supreme allied commander, posts whose occupants are treated as demigods. How easily will he fit into a staff role? Will Mr. Jones see his responsibility as ensuring the president receives a broad range of options, or will he put a higher priority on advocating his own substantive views? Could Mr. Jones's personal relationship with so many top brass undermine Secretary Robert Gates's control of the Pentagon during what could be Mr. Gates's last year at Defense?

In any administration, environmental policy making is always tricky. The Environmental Protection Agency normally takes the lead, and possesses enormous rule-making authority. Half a dozen or more cabinet secretaries want a seat at policy discussions. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and the Domestic Policy Committee (DPC) generally referee these.

To this complicated mix Mr. Obama has added a White House energy and climate-change czar, former Clinton-era EPA Administrator Carol Browner. Which raises these questions: Will the EPA and its legions of experts still lead policy development, or will the new climate czar? Will the CEQ lose authority to Ms. Browner? There are many strong people in Mr. Obama's environmental arena. Who's in charge, and how will those relationships shake out?

Mr. Obama's new Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Tom Daschle, has never run anything but will have responsibility for one of the government's most complicated departments. And while Mr. Daschle may have lost his last campaign, he's lost none of his skill at internecine warfare. The wily Washington insider also grabbed the title of director of the White House Office of Health Reform. The creation of this new Daschle-led office clearly downgrades both the DPC and the National Economic Council, which have traditionally split White House action on health issues. The question for Mr. Obama is: Who will give him unvarnished, independent counsel on the recommendations of his HHS secretary?

Finally, the Obama team continues discussing how to use its campaign email list. According to press reports, the aim is to "place pressure on key legislators." But that raises problems beyond irritating representatives and senators who will resent the White House for making their lives more difficult. Ethics and election law expert Tom Josefiak of Holtzman Vogel PLLC says the Obama White House should reread the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel's opinions about The Anti-Lobbying Act. One in 1988 warned: "We caution against grassroots appeals, even by the President, that involve substantial expenditures of appropriated funds." This suggests putting the email list on White House servers is a problem.

And who will direct and pay the organizers that the transition team may hire to lead these White House lobbying efforts? Former FEC Chairman Michael Toner, now of Bryan Cave LLP, says running a new grass-roots advocacy group out of the White House could create serious election-law difficulties. The FEC has imposed large civil penalties on some advocacy groups for failing to register as political committees and abide by hard-dollar contribution limits. Also, any White House advocacy group runs the risk of being treated as a Democratic National Committee affiliate, triggering shared contribution limits, reporting requirements, and a prohibition on soft-money contributions. Given Mr. Obama's professed support of campaign finance reform, he could ill afford any of these problems.

Mr. Obama is assembling a strong and intelligent team of people with muscular views and large personalities. Will the individual parts cohere into a well-functioning whole? Things that sound good often work less well in reality. Having served in the White House for nearly seven years and carefully studied how the modern presidency functions, it strikes me that some of Mr. Obama's steps may make smooth operations harder. There are many things more interesting to the press than how the White House is organized, but few things matter as much, as every president will attest.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

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