www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28106-2004Oct12.html
All RSS Feeds THE KERRY RECORD| Managing People Lifelong Collector of Data Can Bog Down His Staffs By Dale Russakoff and Jim VandeHei Washington Post Staff Writers Wednesday, October 13, 2004; Page A01 Until his presidential campaign, the biggest enterprise Sen. By all accounts, Kerry was a ski lled manager, running the office for an old-line district attorney and s wiftly transforming a sleepy, nepotistic organization of part-time prose cutors into one of the most high-powered and innovative in the northeast . "I saw for the first time John's ability to take in huge amounts of infor mation, reach out to experts, set a course and lead," said J William Co dinha, who succeeded Kerry in the Middlesex County district attorney's o ffice and now heads the litigation department at Nixon Peabody in Boston . Kerry campaign staff members, from left, David Wade, Sarah Bianchi, Micha el McCurry and Stephanie Cutter listen to their candidate speak.
From His 'Great Goals' of 2000, President's Achievements Mixed (The Washington Post, Sep 2, 2004) About This Series This is another in a series of occasional articles examining the records of President Bush and Sen.
Sign Up Now Almost 25 years later, Kerry brought the same voracious appetite for info rmation to his presidential campaign. He has three dozen domestic policy councils, two dozen foreign policy groups, an expanding corps of consul tants, and many informal advisers he calls -- about 15 per night -- befo re going to bed. But rather than "set a course and lead," as Codinha described, Kerry has lurched from course to course, periodically switching drivers and road m aps -- and messages -- as he reacts to more and more information and adv ice. "His strength is that he listens," said a regular recipient of Kerr y's late-night phone calls. When he has a clear vision of where he wants to go -- as he did in the prosecutor's office and in the signal achievement of his Senate career, investigating long-standing all egations that the Vietnamese had been holding American POWs and laying t he groundwork for normalizing US relations with Vietnam -- he has used information and advice to become more focused and persuasive, according to colleagues and longtime aides. But in his presidential race, the approach has bogged down his campaign i n indecision or led to jarring changes in direction -- even if the resul t, so far, is that Kerry remains in contention with President Bush. "Thi ngs you thought you resolved a week ago pop up again because he's had an other four conversations," a former adviser said. Kerry's mixed record as a manager is significant because, if elected, he would be the first president since John F Kennedy to arrive at the Whit e House from the Senate, with no major executive experience. Four of the past five presidents were governors, with long records of calling the s hots. In Kerry's case, the strongest clues to how he would manage come f rom recurring themes in the way he has tackled being a prosecutor, a lie utenant governor, a senator and now a presidential candidate. If Bush, a business school graduate, governs with a top-down, corporate s tyle, Kerry's information-intensive model seems to spring from his days as a champion debater in high school and college. Before setting a cours e of action, he regularly engages aides and friends in long discussion a nd argument, often playing devil's advocate to probe for weaknesses and, if he finds them, insisting on more information until he believes he ca n argue all options equally well. It is an approach that wears down even loyal lieutenants, particularly wh en choices seem obvious, but one they say is built into the way Kerry op erates. "Understanding each side from the other side -- that plus his legal train ing as a litigator is his intellectual framework," said Paul Nace, a fri end for more than 30 years. it's mor e challenging to submit your gut reactions to the rigor of intellectual debate. If the president had submitted his gut reactions to intellectual debate, the nation would have been better served." Indeed, Kerry and Bush have almost diametrically opposing management styl es, and Kerry aides often defend their candidate by pointing out that Bu sh has the reverse approach -- and that, in their view, it has not worke d For example, the Bush White House has clear lines of authority, with a small circle of deputies controlling access and the flow of informatio n to the president. A Kerry organizational chart, by contrast, would hav e a thicket of pipelines and back channels to the top from throughout th e enterprise -- and from many friends and advisers far outside it. Whatever the price in efficiency and discipline, the Democrat's aides ins ist that a President Kerry would not have been dependent on a few deputi es, as was Bush, for information -- which turned out to be faulty -- on Iraq's weapons or the military force needed during and after the war. No r, they say, would he have been as passive as Bush in response to a brie fing memo on Aug. " Bush has said he did not demand follow-up on the memo or its mention of 7 0 active al Qaeda-related investigations by the FBI because: "Had they f ound something, I'm confident they would have reported back to me. Frances Zwenig, who served as chief of staff in Kerry's Senate office, sa id: "That memo would've been the beginning of the inquiry in John Kerry' s world, not the end of it. Kerry has a history of drilling into small matters, as well. In 1996, whe n he and his Republican opponent for US Senate, then-Massachusetts Gov . William F Weld, agreed to limit spending on advertising, and lawyers presented them with a draft agreement, "Weld decided to sign in an hour, " said Chris Gregory, Kerry's political director at the time. "Two weeks later, Kerry is still finding problems: 'This word is wrong. With momentum building n ationwide for criminal justice reform, Kerry and a team of fellow young prosecutors set about transforming an office whose case-management syste m consisted of a box of index cards and whose trial lawyers worked part time, often defending accused criminals in their off hours. That wasn't at all the impression he gave," said Codinha, whom Kerry named head of the criminal division. Codinha s aid he and other division chiefs built and ran their teams with autonomy . "He had weekly management meetings, 10 or more of us, and it was alway s collegial. A lot of us had more experience than he did, and he wanted ideas: What's going to make the biggest difference?" The relentless questioner was also there from the beginning. "John wanted so much information, it would annoy people who had an agenda for where to go," Codinha said. "They'd give him three proposals, and he'd want 25 or 50 before he made a decision." Within a year, the part-time prosecutor s all went full time or left, and new divisions were opened in organized crime, victim-witness support and priority prosecution for repeat felon s "I've asked myself why," said another senior member of Kerry's team, rema rking on the contrast between Kerry's clear direction as prosecutor and his indecisiveness and second-guessing as a candidate. We got nothing but great press," s aid the lawyer, who asked not to be identified. Another recurring theme in Kerry's executive style is that he almost alwa ys believes consensus is possible if he knows enough about an issue and the concerns of all those affected. "He thinks he wins because he knows the most," said a longtime friend and aide. Indeed, his legislative achi evements -- in such areas as acid-rain control, fisheries protection and foreign policy -- have resulted largely from patient behind-the-scenes diplomacy with members of both parties, and with little public controver sy. Perhaps the strongest case for Kerry's fact-finding and consensus-buildin g was his work to normalize US relations with Vietnam in the 1990s. It began when Kerry agreed to lead a voluminous congressional investigatio n into the fate of more than 2,200 Americans missing since the Vietnam W ar -- an effort his advisers unanimously warned him against, calling it a quagmire. But Zwenig, chief of staff to the sele...
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