Help Wanted: Manager

By Hugh Sidey

THE PRESIDENCY

Jerry Ford has never met a payroll. It would be one of the ironies of our time if the President was undone at the polls and one cause of his fall was that gallant cliche from the conservative past, a past he has evoked in his battle against Big Government.

But it is apparent that there is a growing gap between what Ford talks about and what comes out on the bottom line of the ledger. His own White House staff, for instance, is still bloated with 550 people, 10% or 20% above some estimates of what is needed.

One cannot gauge a President by the normal standards of executive performance, those generally associated with business management. Yet the purely managerial and organizational requirements of the presidency have grown more than almost any of the other responsibilities, and they have been given less attention than they should have. Since Eisenhower, we have put men in office with almost no experience in running a shop. In Ford's time, this management problem, which basically involves money and how efficiently it is spent, could become so acute as to devastate his re-election chances.

Harvard's President Derek Bok urges the "education of a new profession" for public service, with "more sophisticated skills in policy analysis and administration." Bok suggests that we are approaching "the threshold of a new era of scarcity and restraint in which the deficiencies of Government cannot be papered over by constantly rising levels of prosperity."

What are the executive requirements that will produce results, even in the complex environment of the presidency?

An old hand like James Rowe, who was once an F.D.R. aide, is more convinced than ever that among politicians, Governors are best prepared because they are most closely measured by results. The other men in Government who impressed Rowe over the years were the international bankers, though none became President. Each day they had to acknowledge their mistakes and correct them--or they went broke.

Clark Clifford, when he was Truman's aide, was always impressed by how hard Truman worked, how he immersed himself in the detail of legislation and administration. Truman knew how his Government worked or did not work, not unlike the days when he managed Jackson County, Mo.

Some of the professors at the Harvard School of Business believe that Ford would help himself if he followed basic rules for modern corporate executives. To operate any major enterprise there needs to be purpose. From that must flow a strategy for results (Ford has waited for problems, then reacted). There must be shared goals within the organization (Ford has repeatedly attacked the bureaucracy over which he presides and which he needs to carry out his orders). Effective systems of information are vital (there are almost no reliable assessments of how some of the huge Government programs are working).

Wise men of both parties agree that the management problem is critical. Congress, of course, figures big in it, passing programs for the President to administer, refusing to change them or kill them when they falter. Still, there is room for presidential action in almost every area of administration. Ford has the power to cut personnel in the major departments, and he promised to pare those agencies. Yet, in his time in office, ten out of the eleven departments have grown larger. A lot of successful administrators could tell him that if he means business about conquering Big Government, he will have to come out from behind the microphone and grapple with the problem himself.

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