charged off to war in the Persian Gulf, playing "madcap golf" (eighteen holes in an hour and a half) as he went (ibid., 30). Bush's random impulsiveness alarmed and shocked Republican elders on occasion, such as when he chose the barely known, untested, and not highly regarded Dan Quayle as his running mate, seemingly displaying an almost juvenile willfulness in the face of opposition from the party regulars. Then he nominated John Tower for Defense against their advice and stuck with him through a losing confirmation battle. Similarly, he ignored the advice of James Baker and others who urged him to adopt the triumvirate model of senior aides, rather than the strong chief-of-staff model that had proven so disastrous for Nixon with Haldeman and Ehrlichman and for Reagan with Don Regan in his first term. Instead, Bush chose John Sununu as his chief of staff, who operated in a hierarchical manner to similar negative results. While Sununu ostensibly ran an open and informal shop, characterized by face-to-face meetings and informal conversations rather than memoranda, his hierarchical style peeked through as he "placed himself as the final judge of whether aides could proceed with what they proposed or Sununu should first consult with the president." Indeed, aides with opposing viewpoints could be easily shut out of the policy process with no direct access to the president (Campbell 1991, 199).
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Sununu's problems stemmed in part from his hierarchical style and in part from his insistence on a streamlined staff, another dimension of his overbearing style, a small staff being easier to control. Several trial balloons landed with the thud of lead: the early attempt to levy a tax on deposits in bank accounts in an attempt to stave off the crisis in the savings and loan industry caused a hail of protest and a hasty retreat; a barnstorming trip to mark the first one hundred days of the administration created no storm; the proposed reduction in the capital gains tax rate caused tumult among Republicans on the Hill. Other issues, such as Medicare catastrophic coverage, funding of abortions, and clean air legislation, caused him grief; all these events and issues were marked by inadequate staff work and hasty mop-up operations of damage control within the president's own party (ibid., 200-01).
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 | | In the fall of 1989, a strong secrecy motif emerged in the administration. For example, Bush did not tell his defense secretary, Richard Cheney, or CIA director, William H. Webster, about the planned Malta Summit between Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. In December 1989 protests about inconsistencies in his China policy stemming from a visit to China by foreign adviser Brent Scowcroft, and Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S.
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