MCLARTY: TO NICE TO DO A NOT NICE JOB

As White House Chief of Staff, Thomas "Mack" McLarty was doomed from the beginning. He was a courteous, nice, gentle person who took a bruising job in an ornery town. Courtesy and gentility in Washington get you a kick in the rear.

There is no statutory definition of "Chief of Staff." It's a whole bunch of things including: deputy president, chief policy planner and implementer, head knocker, executioner of bumblers, dispute resolver, cabinet basher, turf partitioner, feeling smoother-overer. The role of chief of staff varies with the different styles and work habits of each president.

Dwight Eisenhower was turned off by domestic politics, and in the quiescent '50s he allowed Sherman Adams and the stronger cabinet secretaries to coordinate the necessary daily decisions of a federal government basically placed on hold. Eisenhower and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, were free to spend their time on foreign and military affairs.

Lyndon Johnson, like Bill Clinton, immersed himself in everything. He was the master planner, plotter and implementer. He would reluctantly delegate some duties figuring that, if he only had more time, he could do them better than anyone else.

Jimmy Carter was a suspicious soul and his attitudes were reflected in his choice of Hamilton Jordan as chief of staff. Jordan knew the political game, but he never fully fathomed how to translate policy into legislation and how to transform his boss into a national leader.

Carter loved the minutiae of policy, but couldn't communicate the basic message. Ronald Reagan hated the details of governance, but could turn the warning label on a pack of cigarettes into a spell-binding address on health policy. He wisely picked the most successful chief of staff of contemporary times, James Baker.

Baker knew the limitations of his president, the limitations of Reagan's policy interests and the limitations of dealing with a Congress half of which was Democratic. Baker had an intuitive sense of Congress and the public's mood. His successor, Donald Regan, had the worst. Regan came from Wall Street. His experience as Secretary of the Treasury did not equip him to perform the myriad of duties involved in the intensely political job of chief of staff. His two years at the White House were disastrous for himself and for Ronald Reagan.

George Bush decided not to pick a Mr. Nice Guy for chief of staff. In fact, he picked the roughest, most antagonistic person one could find, former Governor John Sununu of New Hampshire. If it's wrong to have a chief of staff who's too nice, then it's equally wrong to pick one who is incessantly dictatorial and egregiously overbearing. Sununu not only made the natural enemies that come with the job; he stayed up late making a bunch more for good measure -- both for himself and Bush.

McLarty viewed his job as one of running the White House staff, scheduling the president's time and being around to help the president as his life-long best friend. At the outset, Clinton may well have viewed the position in a similar way. Some presidents have considered themselves as being their own secretaries of state. Clinton thought of himself as his own chief of staff. He was smart, alert, energetic -- everything would flow in and out of the Oval Office. It couldn't work, not in an office as demanding and complex as the presidency.

On the jacket of his new book, Bob Woodward lists the "innermost circle of Clinton's advisers in action." McLarty's name isn't listed. He was not an essential player in the day-to-day decision making in the White House. For a White House chief of staff, this reflects a fatal absence. McLarty was an on-looker, not an instigator, in the words of the political operatives James Carville and Paul Begala.

For Howard Paster, who departed after one year as head of congressional liaison, McLarty "had too little control of the White House operation."

And so last week the sad deed was done. Clinton's lifelong friend from Hope had to go. Hiring friends is a lot easier than firing friends. Washington isn't always a nice place and nice guys finish earlier than scheduled when placed in a bruising job like White House chief of staff.