[Random-bits] NYT on Josh Bolten

[James Love]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: NYT on Josh Bolten
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2003 21:33:21 -0500
From: James Love <james.love@cptech.org>
To: ip-health@venice.essential.org

Josh Bolten (with Edson and Rove) were deeply involved in the Doha para 6
negotiations, on behalf of PhRMA.  Here is a NYT profile on Bolten.  Jamie


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/06/national/06LETT.html

WHITE HOUSE LETTER
An Invisible Aide Leaves Fingerprints
By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Josh Bolten is the White House aide you've never heard of who has his
fingerprints all over President Bush's new $600 billion economic plan, the
legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security and just about
every other domestic policy concocted in his powerful little corner deep in
the West Wing.

Mr. Bolten, 48, once made a lot of money working for Goldman Sachs and grew
up in northwest Washington as the son of a Central Intelligence Agency
officer who worked in the directorate of operations, the agency's covert
espionage arm. Perhaps taking a lesson from his father, he declined to be
interviewed for this article, saying he liked his life undercover.

Still, Mr. Bolten can't hide his revealing title — White House deputy chief
of staff for policy — and a growing reputation as the hub of the
administration's domestic agenda, which is increasingly set by a small
handful of West Wing aides under the command of Karl Rove, the president's
chief political adviser, and Andrew H. Card Jr., the White House chief of staff.

"You can't point to a lot of things and say this was the inspiration of Josh
Bolten and Josh Bolten alone," said Mr. Rove. "But you could to every piece
of policy and see his fingerprints on the process. He's got a very agile
mind where he's thinking through, `What would a president want to know?' "

Mr. Bolten's job description sounds inside-the-Beltway boring — to
coordinate the ideas coming out of two competing White House entities, the
Domestic Policy Council and the National Economic Council, but it is the
crux of his power. As a result of this role, Mr. Bolten is the one who
oversees the 45 minutes that Mr. Bush has scheduled for "policy time" on
most days the president is in Washington.

Mr. Bolten is in charge of parceling out those precious minutes, usually in
the afternoons. He decides what is discussed, when it is to be discussed and
who is invited. If it is to be an education topic, Mr. Bolten includes
Education Secretary Rod Paige as well as Margaret Spellings, the president's
chief education adviser. If policy time is to focus on the economy, Mr.
Bolten makes sure to invite Mitchell E. Daniels Jr., the president's budget
director.

But tellingly, at least in a town where presidential face time is power, Mr.
Bolten always attends, no matter the topic. So do Mr. Card, Mr. Rove and
Nicholas E. Calio, the departing White House liaison with Congress. Vice
President Dick Cheney has a standing invitation, as do Ari Fleischer, the
White House press secretary, and Dan Bartlett, the communications director.

"I really view him as underrated in the outside world," Mr. Bartlett said of
Mr. Bolten, "but highly valued inside the West Wing."

Mr. Bolten's beliefs about the economy and other domestic policies are a
mystery, as is the substance of any advice he gives to the president. Like
any dutiful White House aide, he would readily say that Mr. Bush's views are
his own. But at Goldman Sachs, the investment banking firm where he worked
for nearly six years in the 1990's, Mr. Bolten was considered a pragmatist
who liked tax cuts, and not a supply-side true believer, as are many of the
economists who have influenced Mr. Bush's economic programs.

"He's one of those people, though, who is on message and loyal to a fault,"
said Senator Jon Corzine, Democrat of New Jersey, a former co-chairman of
Goldman Sachs. Mr. Bolten worked for a short time as Mr. Corzine's chief of
staff at Goldman Sachs, but spent most of his time based in London, as the
firm's chief lobbyist at the European Union's headquarters in Brussels.

At the White House, Mr. Bolten is known for his calm disposition — "I'd use
the word `sweet' if it didn't make me look odd," Mr. Rove said — as well as
his long hours. Although Mr. Bolten manages to arrive at an early-bird White
House barely in time for the 7:30 a.m. senior staff meeting, he often stays
until midnight. But these days Mr. Bolten has a girlfriend, and Mr. Rove
reports that "he's gotten better about going out to dinner and trying to
have a reasonable life."

Mr. Bolten, who was the issues director of Mr. Bush's presidential campaign,
graduated from St. Albans, the exclusive private boys' school in Washington,
and Princeton and Stanford Law School. On Hanukkah, he brought in dreidels
and gold chocolate coins for the entire senior staff.

"He's the explainer of all things Jewish to the White House," Mr. Rove said.

Mr. Bolten owns a house in Key West, Fla., which his mother inhabits for
months at a time, bought back in his Goldman Sachs days. (Mr. Bolten's most
recent financial disclosure form lists assets of as much as $4 million,
which pales compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars that senior
people like Mr. Corzine made at the firm. But Mr. Bolten was not a Goldman
managing director, and he was not at the firm when it went public.)

When Mr. Bolten was growing up, he was instructed to tell his friends that
his father worked at the Defense Department, not the C.I.A. He owns two
motorcycles, a Harley-Davidson and a Victory. Also, he recently grew a
beard, an unusual act in the Bush White House, and he likes to bowl.

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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040


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James Love, Consumer Project on Technology
http://www.cptech.org, mailto:love@cptech.org
voice: 1.202.387.8030; mobile 1.202.361.3040