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Nixon: Organizing the White House.

Nixon admired the way President Eisenhower ran his cabinet when Nixon was Vice-President. He modeled his own first administration alike. So at first he wanted to have the departments run by strong heads, “deputy-presidents”, as Melvin Small calls them. Smith further claims Nixon had made his selections “on the basis of politics rather than competence, ideology, or loyalty.”

Nixon’s euphoria soon faded and the President lost interest in cabinet meetings, which he considered boring and unnecessary. So he came to reorganize his administration again and gather strong capacities in the White House. He built something like a virtual cabinet around the Oval Office. Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman were Nixon’s principal advisers on running the administration and on domestic affairs. Ehrlichman was a White House counsel at first and soon increased his influence until he was appointed Executive Director of the Domestic Affairs Council in 1970. Nixon also revived the institution of the Chief of Staff, with Haldeman being the first since the Eisenhower years. Haldeman shielded Nixon from visitors as well as his own administration. Everybody had to pass him in order to speak or see the President. Only three people had unlimited access: John Mitchell, Henry Kissinger, and later Charles Colson. Mitchell was Attorney General and Nixon’s closest adviser during his first administration. Later he headed the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Colson was responsible for Public Relations. Kissinger, finally, was Nixon’s National Security Adviser. With him Nixon conducted foreign policy, often without consulting or even turning against the State Department and its head, William Rogers. Kissinger sometimes even drafted Nixon’s orders for the Secretary of State.

At the beginning of his second term, Nixon wanted to reorganize the government in a large scale. His plan included a reduction of the number of departments from eleven to seven. But soon after he developed this plan, Ehrlichman and Haldeman had to resign and the Watergate scandal really evolved. The plan was dropped.

Bureaucracy grew during the Nixon-Years, although the President had a deep distrust in them. White House staff and Senior staff grew by one third, and when Nixon left the White House, the people working for executive bureaucracies numbered 6.000 in contrast to 570 in 1968. Furthermore, Nixon managed to reduce Democrats and Independents in the departments, but still Republicans were the vast minority. Law-making was enormously difficult for Nixon, as his party was neither in control of the House nor of the Senate.

The relatively small number of Republicans in the bureaucracy was only one reason, why Nixon did not trust them. He also regarded them ineffective and not flexible and fast enough. As Nixon “confronted an iron triangle of bureaucrats, lobbyists, and members of Congress who together could alter sabotage” (Small), he relied on his closest advisers mainly and decided either without asking the departments or against their advise.