ABSTRACT
On this occasion the directive came from “Steve somebody” in the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs. Reich’s chief of staff Kitty Higgins relayed the message to her boss: “The White House wants y ou to go to Cleveland . . . They called this morning.” Reich was to tour a factory, get on local TV, and tout the administration’s achievements during Clinton’s first one hundred days in office. And Reich wasn’t happy about it. He felt he had more important things to do. His job was to advise the president, implement public policy, and “help people get better jobs,” not parade around the country like a trained seal. Who precisely wanted him to go to Cleveland?, he grilled Higgins. The White House wasn’t a person, after all. It was a huge organization composed of over a h undred different offices and man y hundreds of individuals, all of whom claimed to speak on behalf of the White House. Did the president want him to go? Or was this a directive from the White House chief of staff or perhaps some other senior presidential advisor? Or was “the White House wants” merely code for what some mid-level White House staffer thought would be a fruitful use of the secretary’s time? Or, worst of all, from Reich’s point of view, was the Cleveland trip simply the bright idea of some lowly White House aide, some “snotty kid” only one step removed from a campaign internship?2
