Christine Todd Whitman had been New Jersey's governor before leading President Bush's Environmental Protection Agency.
But Bush rarely asks for her advice outside her area of responsibility. "Mostly we talk about the dog, about Barney," she said
of the Scottish terrier she gave the president.

Mel R. Martinez, who was chairman of Florida's Orange County before becoming Bush's secretary of housing and urban
development, was recently asked if he had spoken at Cabinet meetings. "Couple of times," he replied. "I was asked to lead the
prayer at one of them, and I did."

Bush's highly credentialed Cabinet members are finding themselves in an unaccustomed role: that of subordinates. As the
administration took office, it was thought that Bush's Cabinet would be unusually powerful because of its impressive lineup of
talent: former governors and senators, veterans of previous Cabinets, top business executives and a popular general. But on
most of the big issues, Cabinet members have discovered they have less clout than lesser-known White House aides.

In a string of politically charged decisions – on the tax cut and education strategy in Congress, U.S. military exercises in
Vieques, embryonic stem cell research, patients' rights, environmental policy, energy policy and key aspects of foreign policy –
White House aides have been the leading actors. In each case, the necessities of politics continue to pull power to Bush's inner
circle in the White House.

"The White House is fixated on building a reelection majority in 2004," said Brookings Institution analyst Thomas Mann. "Given
strategic political considerations, they're not about to delegate out important decisions and policymaking efforts to the
departments. . . You want to centralize it so you can move with dispatch."

For more than half a century, the Cabinet's power has been gradually shifting to a growing White House staffed with trusted
campaign aides. The proliferating Cabinet members – 20 of them under Bush – became administrators of the federal
bureaucracy, carrying out policy but rarely setting it. "Power to develop policy, implement policy and publicly defend policy has
been sucked away from the Cabinet and centered more in the White House," said Bradley H. Patterson Jr., an aide in the
Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford White Houses.

Bush set out to restore some clout to the Cabinet. "I believe the American people want a president who seeks the best people
from all walks of life who are strong, experienced, capable Americans," he said before taking office. Eyeing President Dwight
D. Eisenhower's strong Cabinet model, Bush reinstated monthly Cabinet meetings, more structured contact with Cabinet
members and working groups to link the Cabinet to the White House. He has appeared frequently in photo ops with his
Cabinet heads.

But despite these efforts, power still resides in the White House. Norman Y. Mineta, Clinton commerce secretary turned Bush
transportation secretary, said he enjoys no more or less autonomy that he did under Clinton. "I know that I'm going to be
checking with [White House chief of staff] Andrew Card or somebody before I go off on a toot," he said.

That arrangement means the true decision makers are Card, senior adviser Karl Rove, counselor
Karen P. Hughes and a few other top White House aides. It's a more unified and efficient system than a Cabinet-style government. But it also carries certain risks, particularly the danger that staff, finding
themselves more powerful than the better-known Cabinet members, become victims of hubris.
That is what Clinton adviser Dick Morris found after learning he could boss around Cabinet officials.
"My sense of reality was just altered," he said. "I started out being excited working for the president.
Then I became arrogant, then I became grandiose."

Bush Cabinet members still carry significant power, particularly the first-tier heads of the State, Defense, Justice and Treasury
departments. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, though he has not won the administration over to his more moderate
approach on climate change or missile defense, remains the biggest celebrity in the administration. Powell and Attorney General
John D. Ashcroft are leading the administration's development of an immigration policy.

Bush meets weekly with Powell and fortnightly with Ashcroft, Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill and Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld. Card tries to have lunch weekly with a different Cabinet member. Albert Hawkins, the White House's
secretary of Cabinet affairs, hosts monthly meetings with department staff chiefs and a daily conference call. Each agency
produces a weekly report for the White House, a heads-up on events and issues for the following three weeks. "We obviously
view it as a successful partnership," said Bush deputy counselor Dan Bartlett.

It is possible that the primacy of the White House staff will ease over time, after the administration exhausts its store of
legislative proposals from the campaign. And certainly, Cabinet officers have leeway, either where there is less of a defined
Bush policy or where they can expand on an issue of concern to Bush.

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy G. Thompson, for instance, built on Bush's interest in addressing the uninsured
by coming up with a proposal that states be allowed to trim some optional Medicaid benefits and use the savings to expand
health coverage for the poor. O'Neill faced down White House aides who objected to his choice of Peter Fisher as
undersecretary for domestic finance. Martinez has acted on his own to kill several Clinton-era housing programs, including one
that funded gun buybacks. And Mineta defended his turf by getting White House budget officials to increase the aviation
budget.

Still, when Bush has strong feelings on a subject, Cabinet secretaries can find themselves on the sidelines. With Bush's
education legislation, House members and senators were unimpressed with the public remarks by Roderick R. Paige, the
former Houston schools superintendent tapped to run the Education Department. Bush's domestic policy adviser, Margaret
LaMontagne, handled much of the development of education policy with other White House aides, while White House official
Sandy Kress negotiated the legislation with Congress. "It became evident that Sandy Kress was the go-to guy," said a Senate
Democratic aide. Paige "soon receded into the background."

The most public embarrassment for a Bush Cabinet officer came when Whitman went to Trieste, Italy, in March and declared
that the administration would consider carbon dioxide a pollutant to be limited. The EPA administrator had checked with top
White House aides, who signed off on the position, which came straight from Bush's campaign. About three weeks later, the
White House reversed its stance on carbon dioxide. Whitman has told friends about her disagreements with Bush over global
warming.

"I don't think anyone who's ever been a governor would ever tell you that once you're in that position that there aren't certain
moments of frustration, when you want to say, 'Hey, I've been around a while. I've done these things. Let me go,' " Whitman
said recently. "However, I've been very cognizant that I'm not the final decision-maker. The president – he is the one who was
elected."

Most every member of Bush's Cabinet has learned not to take on the president – or the president's aides. O'Neill, after some
early public remarks doubting the rationale for Bush's tax cut, quickly got in formation. Ashcroft's Justice Department has
ceded to the White House counsel's office the task of initial interviews of potential judicial nominees. In President Ronald
Reagan's White House, by contrast, "DOJ would come over and say, we have a vacancy here and we recommend so and so,'
" said a former Reagan administration official.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's pick for head of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was passed over in favor of
a Bush ally, and Bush's energy policy was coordinated by Vice President Cheney and White House aides. As part of that
effort, Cheney's task force pulled back for review an EPA-Justice Department initiative begun under the Clinton administration
to sue coal-fired power plants charged with violating the Clean Air Act. "It's extremely unusual to have a high level of political
intervention in enforcement actions," said David M. Gardiner, an EPA official during the Clinton administration.

When domestic steelmakers sought protection from cheap imports, the White House made clear to U.S. Trade Representative
Robert B. Zoellick, an ardent free-trader, that the administration would protect U.S. producers.

At HHS, Thompson has watched Bush aides take the lead on many top issues, including patients' rights, prescription drugs and
stem cells. It was not Thompson but Bush and adviser Joshua B. Bolten who struck the compromise with Rep. Charles
Whitlow Norwood Jr. (R-Ga.) on patients' rights. It was Bush counselor Hughes – not Thompson – who appeared most
prominently on television after Bush's stem cell decision. Asked for an instance when the White House has ceded the lead to
HHS, an HHS official said: "I don't think we've come to one yet."

Rumsfeld has broad autonomy in developing a new strategy for the military. Given the problems Rumsfeld has encountered in
promoting a major restructuring of the armed forces, however, the White House may be content to keep its distance from the
project. "I think the White House knows the defense review is a mess and a no-win situation and is happy to let it be contained
in a Cabinet agency," said conservative publisher William Kristol.

Bush's Cabinet members, for the most part, understand their role – implementing, not deliberating, administering, not deciding.
"I think the president looks to each of his Cabinet secretaries to carry out the primary mission and vision of each of the
departments," said Mineta, a friend of labor unions whom Bush relied on in averting airline strikes. "I'm the secretary of the
Department of Transportation," Mineta said, "but I'm still only staff to the president of the United States."

                                 © 2001 The Washington Post Company