Each administration has also contributed an increased workload to the next. The Roosevelt staff members worked hard and for long hours but between periods of high pressure they had moments in which to relax. For the Kennedy-Johnson staff members there have been few moments for relaxation. Every day is a high pressure one. Every assignment is urgent. Each mistake is costly. The workload of the President and of his staff has increased enormously since 1939. Even when measured in such simple terms as the number of telephone calls and to pieces of mail coming into the White House each day, the workload in 1967 is staggering.
The size of the staff has also increased to some extent especially in the number of men backing up the front-line staff men. However, the size of the staff has not expanded as rapidly as the workload. Moreover, in order to serve the President effectively, the personal staff has to be relatively small. Even in the Eisenhower Administration, where staffing practices permitted a larger staff than the other four Presidents found useful, the total number of staff members seldom exceeded twenty-five and the respondents in this study agreed that additional staff members in their respective offices would not have been useful.
The increasing workload has made the question of effective staff services for President. Johnson in 1967 much more important than the question was for President Roosevelt when he received the report of the Brownlow Committee in 1937. The data presented here would seem to indicate that the availability of expanded staff services has not significantly altered the basic nature of the if Presidency. The “personalized” Presidency has clearly survived the expansion of the staff. In the one instance in which staff organization and practices had a significant impact on the nature of the Presidency itself, the Eisenhower Administration, the President himself deliberately decided to operate his office in that fashion. He made the choice. The people reelected him for a second term. More important, his decisions were not binding on his successors and they were free to interpret the Presidency and develop it as they saw fit.
During the past three decades then an expanded personal staff in the
White House Office has not prevented the President from being “both in law and conscience... as big a man as he can.” In fact, the White House Office staff gives the President a chance to overcome the many limitations on the Presidency to an extent that his own personality can be felt as fully as possible in the office and in the government. The staff has not helped to narrow the gap between the President’s authority and his responsibility but it has helped to make the responsibility bearable, the endless chain of decisions easier, and ths consequences of them a bit