that floorflusher

Anyone who watches the movie "Charlie Wilson's War" on DVD will find the disc contains two extra features: in one of those a film guy says with amusement,

It was said of Charlie Wilson -- "he's the only man I ever met who could strut, while sitting down."
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I had never heard that expression before, but it jumped out at me from footnotes listed at the back of Sally Bedell Smith's book, Grace and Power: The Private World of the Kennedy White House.
"strut sitting down"
And they give you a page number -- It's up front, before Chapter one and the Preface -- a list of people.
McGeorge Bundy, 41. National Security Adviser. Admired for a mind of "dazzling clarity and speed." So supremely confident it was said he could "strut sitting down." An influential voice on foreign policy.
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Two pages on, there's --
---------[excerpt] Lawrence O'Brien, 43. JFK's liaison with Congress. Son of a Massachusetts saloon keeper, highly regarded for keen political judgment. Bobby Kennedy said he could "talk the balls off a brass monkey."
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., 43. White House gadfly, troubleshooter, and unofficial historian of the Kennedy years. Dubbed the "court philosopher" by The New Yorker, Pulitzer Prize-wining author and Harvard professor. Adviser to Jackie on everything from books for the White House library to foreign films for the screening room.

Kenneth O'Donnell, 36. White House Appointments Secretary. Supervisor of JFK's schedule, logistical organizer, and political sounding board. Known as the "Wolfhound," the "Cobra," and the Iceman." Frequently abrasive, notoriously taciturn, and ferociously loyal.

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For her social secretary, Jackie selected Tish Baldrige....Baldrige's father had been a Republican congressman from Omaha, Nebraska, so her rightward political leanings were even stronger than Jackie's. Baldrige had initially opposed JFK for president, calling him "that floorflusher Kennedy" (she doubtless meant "four-flusher") and wearing a large "Vixen for Nixon" campaign button.

But after Jackie offered the White House job following the Democratic convention, Baldrige was an instant convert....
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And after picking up this book looking for other types of information, I became drawn into these descriptions of how they really ran things -- different ways to organize and accomplish ...
-- [excerpt] - The Eisenhower White House worked along a military model, with tight discipline, tables of organization, and lines of command that funneled decisions through a strong chief of staff. ...Kennedy and his advisers assumed that forceful subordinates such as Chief of Staff Sherman Adams and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had made the decisions. "President Kennedy was under the mistaken impression that was shared by all the liberal Democrats around him that Eisenhower was not in charge," said Douglas Dillon. "That was 100 percent wrong. Eisenhower did not advertise the fact that he decided everything."

Kennedy took a distinctly improvisational approach to his "ministry of talent." He slashed the size of the White House staff and literally reinvented the wheel, situating himself at the hub, with numerous spokes radiating out to his men. "I can't afford only one set of advisers," Kennedy told Richard Neustadt, who counseled him on White House reorganization. "If I did that, I would be on their leading strings."

To maintain control, Kennedy grasped all the strings himself. The aim, said Neustadt, was "to get information in his mind and key decisions in his hands reliably enough and soon enough to give him room for maneuver." Kennedy often gave the same assignment to several people,....Kennedy said he wanted the "clash of ideas" and "the opportunity for choice." In his compartmentalized fashion, Kennedy preferred to operate one on one, or in small "task forces" assigned to address specific problems. Not only did Kennedy insist on direct access to all his top advisers and cabinet officers, he felt free to dip into the bureaucracy and jump official channels to quiz experts on particular issues. He was the first president, said CIA official Richard Helms, to "deal up and down the line."
[end excerpt] --------------

{all excerpts from the book Grace And Power, by Sally Bedell Smith.
Copyright 2004. Random House Inc., New York.}

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