Unlike his immediate predecessors in the office, Eisenhower entered the Presidency with some very definite ideas about staff work. The key aspects of his theory involved organization, efficiency, and keeping as many burdens as possible off the President’s shoulders. Eisenhower, of course, had had extensive experience with military staff and he brought this experience into the White House with him. The President was convinced that his staff operation was never understood by its critics— the politicians, political scientists, and reporters. In response to some writers who suggested that the chaotic state of the Roosevelt staff might be better for the Presidency than the precision of the Eisenhower staff organization, he noted: “I have been astonished to read some contentions which seem to suggest that smooth organization guarantees that nothing is happening, whereas ferment and disorder indicate progress,”
Organization was the key to the Eisenhower staff operation and Sherman Adams was the key to the organization. As one respondent mentioned at the end of my interview with him, as if to reinforce and summarize what he had said, “You will have to give key attention to Adams in our study.” He was the key to the whole thing and he managed everything with a firm hand. Adams inherited Steelman’s title, The Assistant to the President, but his job was entirely unlike Steelman’s. Adams was, in every sense of the term, a Chief of Staff. He was at the top of the clearly structured hierarchy of the Eisenhower White House Office staff and this was the way Eisenhower wanted it. According to Adams, Eisenhower “never specifically defined my responsibilities or outlined their limits except when I was acting on an explicit directive from the President, my duties and responsibilities were implied rather than stated.” Eisenhower and Adams were both sensitive to the charge that Adams made decisions for the President, but, even the dust jacket to Adams' own book describes him as “the man who probably exercised more power as a President’s confidential adviser and co-ordinator than any other individual in modern times.”
Adams presided over a highly structured staff. Each man had a special job which took all or most of his time: appointments, patronage, press, minority Group matters, economic policy, legislative liaison, speech writing, cabinet secretary, checking bills and Executive Orders for legality, and many more. A complex set of new titles were developed and generally indicated where one stood in the chain of command. Old titles were discredited. For instance, the Rosenman-Clifford-Murphy post of Special Counsel was stripped of most of its duties only the routine legal work was Left. The Eisenhower staff men rarely received an assignment outside of their speciality and they all reported directly to Adams and received their instructions from him. When they had particularly difficult problems, they took them to Adams and he made the decisions. It must be added that he also took the responsibility for them.
It would be impossible to begin to go into detail within the limits of this paper On the work patterns of the main body of the White House staff. Their basic job was to reduce the President’s load. An important motto was that nothing should go to the President’s desk if it could be handled elsewhere, and, if it had to go to the President, it should be condensed to a one page memo. Adams developed a reputation among other staff. members as an expert draftsman of these one page memos. Memos were not supposed to go to the President’s desk until the “O.K., S.A.” was affixed. Moreover, the memo should include recommendations. One staff member recalled that he once went to Adams with a problem which was potentially explosive for the White House. “Adams listened and said, 'Well, what do you want me to do about it?' You were wasting his time unless you had a recommendation.”