Conversation 433-043

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feeling that I've given you a hell of a big job here today without telling you what it's all about.

What I'm really talking about, of course, is what we have to do.

We've got to keep this thing going, and it's very easy to do.

I mean, actually, fortunately, we had already divested off his request for such things as, you know, the scheduling and all that sort of so-and-so.

Coal in the domestic market.

But in your case, the critical thing is that

In this whole area of personnel, the agony, you know, the agonies and the fights and so forth, you've got to be the man.

And you should be anyway.

That's what the doctor on office is for.

It's a key part of what this really is.

That's why we set it up.

And also, I just want you to know, too, that I don't want you to... You've been through a few battles before.

Just remember, it's just one battle of a long war, and we're going to beat the bastards.

i think your last night statement today doubled the inspiration level of a lot of people now the way we're going to work here is that uh

You know, you're not the kind of thing, the good executive you are, the mother of the land.

So if you saw from there, if you want to come in, you just get ahold of the bull, and you say, Steve, I've got to see the president.

And you walk in that office, you understand?

I will.

Yes, sir.

I've been running with a bit of a low profile until, outside went too high, actually, inside, until we got our own...

I don't... Do you understand?

We're now ready to go out on you to do that, and...

I want you to remember that in the personality of Mellon, you've got a very rough instrument.

He's a very able man, but you've got to be, there's just got to be some sensitivities.

You've got to be, you've got to be the smooth one.

You know what I mean?

If you would do that, I would appreciate it.

On the great budget decisions and things like that, I mean, frankly, you're going to have some disagreements.

Sure.

And, uh, and pose with some curveball.

I think he's going to get very nice.

He works well with everybody.

He works well with you.

You get along well with him.

But I want you to know that I really count on you.

What we will do with regard to Bob's thing, I don't know.

Yeah.

Whether I will even make any change at all, I don't know.

I might even be able to use that.

Keep your options open for a while.

I just want to, I think, don't want to make a too quick decision.

Well, look, is everybody going to fire him all along?

We can get the work done and keep that option open.

But do you think you would wait a little while?

I argue I'd keep it open and wait a while, and for a number of reasons wait a while.

Not only outside appearances, but an inside look and nothing for the moment will be lost.

We can all work around together.

We have a very good attitude among those that are... How about the so-called staff meeting that you've been having?

She might have replied over it.

Well, there's a problem, and that's a 15 staff meeting that

One of the problems is that it's really the symbolism of who presides and all that sort of thing.

So what we've decided is to, among ourselves, is let's avoid the problem by not even having any formalized meeting.

We've got a subject to talk about.

Let's meet and talk, but don't miss the opportunities to communicate when we have to.

so formalizing that we've you know somebody said well in effect to establish one person relative to the other in a way that's where you don't want your main thing that's right don't let there be a power in front of the light i'm not going to allow that but we've all i know you won't think about that and the others the others i'm not too sure of you see i think you can be more confident of the others all right i think that together we we all said look

There's a job to be done, and the job in particular is to keep your options unforced by anything that any of us do.

And I think everybody's journey in that view of things, and you're doing your way in your time, and we will have kept the options open in the meantime, and not forced anything in the meantime.

This can be done in organizations.

You know how important it is that people around the world begin to figure out how can I make it pay off for me, but I think most everybody

This White House is actually a damn good staff.

We've got a lot of good people.

The outside, one tends to say, government people are not so good.

Outside private people are good.

I think for the jobs to be done and the way it works with all the other...

One of the things that we're doing, and it relates to this question that you just asked, that will be going on here for some longer time, a lot of things that are less than your level of importance, and I realize that has to be a fairly high distilled level, but to give you the benefit of our view of the managerial components across the whole government who are assessing

And continually assessing that.

Continually assessing managerial performance.

Are they getting done what they're setting out to do?

How well?

How poorly?

What are the key things that they're setting out to do?

I'm sure that of the, what might be called the 100 presidential objectives that exist at any time, probably only 25 will be of personal interest to you.

We intend to follow the other 75 in your name to make sure that that which every agency sets out to do is pursued with competence, with diligence, and is against some specified goal or objective.

is the continual battle between Rogers and .

Rogers must not leave now, I told him that.

He has to stay, and Henry's got to get along with him.

I've got a little discussion with him.

I would like to talk to Henry and say,

I'm reflecting, say you're reflecting here on Roger's reason not to sell rail.

We've got to get control of the bureaucracy.

The bureaucracy leaves the public alone.

Say, Henry, do you move work with Roger?

Are you telecommuting?

I will.

I'll do that.

It's actually that way.

There is a sensitivity going both ways.

There's a degree of paranoia in the State Department because they say,

Henry does get out in front too much.

Sure.

When I picked up the first discussions with Bill Watters and some of his people under the State Department of Management, there was an immediate intensiveness as if we were on a hit tank.

And we had to assure them, look, we're not here on a hit tank.

Our job is to help you be a better manager of your own department now.

What together can we help?

I mean, yeah, sure.

Thank you.

I would think this is a particular time.

There may be a time where it would be more fitting.

I know how close you are to us.

He's got a great confidence in you.

He has a particular kind of confidence that brings him.

a good balance.

But is this the time for him to question his degree?

Wouldn't the defense have been the place for him?

No, no, no.

People think Tom might have used you through the whole of the job.

Yes, after you decided exactly whether you wanted to find him or read the plan for him.

If you brought him in, he'd be a, he'd be a, the whole of the job, I guess, is very unusual.

Very unusual.

I believe that you probably don't want somebody, you don't want somebody there that wants to himself get involved in the so strong operation.

He's got to be, in a sense, sterile.

He's got to be your man and making sure the process works well.

His emphasis is the process, allowing the many others to deal with the substance that goes through that process.

On the other hand, he's got to have a

He's going to have no aspiration of his own.

I think one of the great advantages of Bob Goldman there is that he was working solely for you and he was not working for anything of himself at any time.

Anybody else in that job has to have that same attribute, that same qualification.

I've got to use the Vice President more.

He needs it for his own morale and so forth and so on.

So I'm going to be fighting for the Quadrant, which is good.

The political government will be good.

And making Vice Chairman, I believe.

I'm the Chairman of the Socialist Domestic Council.

I think it's Vice Chairman.

So we've got a lot to do with that then.

I think that's a good idea.

I think that's very good.

We could all miss the role that both Bob and John have been performing.

Do you have a question about that?

They did it in a selfless way, and in many cases people didn't know what really they did do.

They missed.

We're going to have to fill around it.

We're going to have to fill around it in a way that doesn't preclude whatever options that you see, that you should have.

We're going to have to go here to see how things go, and to make sure that they, well, machine science is the main one that can do it.

We terribly have cooperated among ourselves.

That's between us.

gesture myself.

That's right.

The big man, the big man.

Right.

And that's the key that's got to be given that little sermon.

Kick him in the butt.

I don't know.

He gets a lot of the, you know, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all, all

That might be the best thing to do in the second stage.

That's what we've got to do.

There are going to be some things where we don't know exactly where they work.

We're just going to have to work them out and make sure they'll work out for us.

The domestic industry is going to be a problem with regard to what we do in the economy.

There are no good answers.

Your tendency is kind of coming through.

tough it through and not, you know, do a freeze or anything like that.

If one looks at it in a time dimension, the dynamics of it, rather than the moment of it, and picture where you are one month, one year, whatever time from now, from an action today, and consider that as a decision, it's a lot different.

It's so easy to put on a control and have a week's worth of required deadline.

That's the easy thing to do.

And then a banana fading across and a price can be terrible.

Joe Schultz and I think very much alike on that board.

We've had three enterprises and it's all of them.

It's all science.

The way the world works.

The way it succeeded.

We're not going to succeed with it.

And we'll live with it eventually.

True.

People who worry about the stock market, that's not what the stock market is.

The stock market goes up and down.

That's all, you know, late money, and all kinds of foolish factors that would just have to settle over a substitute.

Of course, it is said that your decision, your investment last night, was really substantial to the stock market.

I don't know what today's market was, but I presume it was good, wasn't it?

Whenever you went hard, it actually went down.

You bet your life.