Minding the President

Even people who know and like Leon Panetta aren't sure he can bring order to the devolutionary Clinton White House. Like Mack McLarty, Panetta appears unfailingly polite. Like Clinton, he comes from modest roots, and straddles his party's left and moderate flanks. His self-deprecating humor is disarming: top aides say he cannot go more than a few minutes in meetings without making some self-critical wisecrack. Reporters lost track of the number of times Panetta, who turned 56 last Tuesday, observed -- with a roll of his eyes -- how his new job was "one hell of a birthday present."

But there is a tougher side to Panetta too. He has a ferocious temper that has been known to reduce aides to tears when balls are dropped or questions go unanswered. He insists on punctuality, and, as chairman of the House Budget Committee, once required all staff members to clock in and out -- an unheard- of regimen on Capitol Hill. "He wanted an honest day's work out of us," said a longtime aide. Another OMB official admitted last week that Panetta's criticism can be so withering that she sometimes takes "the long way around" the rectangular corridor of the Old Executive Office Building rather than risk running into him outside his nearby office. Asked last week whether little things or big things seemed to set Panetta off, an associate OMB director, quickly replied, "Yes."

The son of Italian immigrants, Panetta grew up in Monterey, California, where his parents owned and ran a small cafe that served Calabrian fare to Army troops at Fort Ord. Panetta attended the University of Santa Clara for his undergraduate and law degrees and afterward joined the Army, serving in the intelligence branch. He came to Washington in 1966 as an aide to a Republican Senator and, after the 1968 election, became Richard Nixon's chief civil rights officer at the old Health, Education and Welfare Department. When Panetta aggressively sought to coerce Southern school districts into complying with court-ordered busing plans, Nixon fired him. Panetta learned of the decision when press secretary Ron Ziegler announced his departure to reporters.

After working for a year for New York City Mayor John Lindsay, Panetta returned to California, practiced law and became a Democrat. He won a seat in Congress in 1976 and rose quickly, tangling with Tip O'Neill when he and a group of other Young Turks grew impatient with the speaker's stewardship of the chamber. Though he fell out of favor with O'Neill, Panetta fought back, eventually taking control of the House Budget Committee in 1989. One longtime Panetta advantage has been his wife Sylvia, who ran his district office in California as an unpaid aide while raising three boys.

Panetta has had his run-ins with Clinton too. In April 1993 it was the OMB director who first complained in public that the nascent Clinton team was losing its way amid a host of false starts and foolish early moves. That's the kind of candor Panetta will need if he is to bring order to Clinton's sprawling management style. But Panetta insists that Clinton longs to be better managed. More discipline, Panetta said last week, "is something he wants."

Though he likes to swim and is addicted to C-SPAN, Panetta stays close to his hardscrabble roots -- literally. He tries to get back to California twice a month, where his idea of relaxing is to climb onto his Ford tractor and work the ground on his family's 11-acre walnut ranch in the Carmel Valley. "He gets unspeakably cranky if he doesn't get back regularly," said an associate, who joked that aides have taken up inner-office collections for airfare when Panetta has been in Washington too long.

Now that Panetta is Bill Clinton's chief of staff, his beloved weekends in Carmel will be rare indeed. At the White House they may want to start passing the plate immediately.