The Roosevelt White House Office, 1939-1945
The most impressive characteristic of the Roosevelt White House Office is the extent to which Roosevelt himself dominated its every activity. The staff was in a very personal sense an extension of the President. If the staff appeared at times to be on the brink of chaos and assignments to be without reason or purpose, no one questioned his motivations and his direction. Roosevelt initiated the assignments frequently giving instructions in great detail. He personally checked to be sure that every assignment was carried out (staff members testify that he never forgot an assignment) and the final reports were made directly to him. The Roosevelt professional staff was larger than his predecessors had enjoyed, but not so large that he could not personally be available to all staff members whenever they needed his attention. There was never anything resembling a hierarchy on the FDR staff.
As Richard Neustadt has perceptively observed, Roosevelt’s pattern of relations with his staff were motivated by “a concern for his position as the man in the White House.” He was also an action oriented President with “a strong feeling for a cardinal fact in government: that presidents... act in the concrete as they meet deadlines set by due dates.” The Roosevelt staff members had to be jacks-of-all-trades, prepared to tackle any domestic or foreign assignment. There was no spot on the Roosevelt staff for anyone because he was a specialist on some subject of interest to the President, and no staff members developed special areas in which they had pre-emptive influence.
Roosevelt felt a special need, perhaps in part because of his own physical limitations and the restrictions those limitations placed on his activity outside of the White House, to have differing points of view available to him before he made decisions. He frequently gave two or more staff members the same assignment and delighted at their rivalry. In so far as I can tell, this disconcerting practice did not produce any permanent hard feelings among the staff members, although it did contribute to occasional “jockeying for position.”
The implementation of Reorganization Plan No. 1 in 1939 did not radically change the Roosevelt White House Office. Three Administrative Assistants (six had been authorized) were added immediately and a fourth was added the following year. Roosevelt continued his practice of borrowing staff from executive agencies and departments and was reluctant to put them on his own payroll, even after that became politically feasible in 1939. One of the borrowed staff members noted that he worked in the White House for four years before being placed on the White House Office payroll in 1944.
The big changes in the White House Office under Roosevelt had taken place in 1933-34. This was when the borrowing process was started and the expansion which actually took place in presidential staff at that time was a more significant one than the addition of the three Administrative Assistants in 1939. As one Roosevelt staff member said, FDR had to have additional staff in 1933 “because the people began to look to the President as they never had before writing to him, calling him. A big change in the Presidency brought about change in the staff. The President was doing more. He had to have more help.”