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Resident Thinker Given Free Rein In White House: Official Promotes Role of Ideas in Politics (Dan Balz, December 13, 2004, Washington Post)

Pete Wehner has the rarest of White House jobs. He is paid to read, to think, to prod, to brainstorm -- all without accountability. He recalls the words of White House senior adviser Karl Rove when he interviewed for the job: "He said my job is to bug him."

Wehner runs the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives (or the Office of Strategery, as it is known inside the building after a "Saturday Night Live" skit spoofing the president's mangling of the English language). The OSI was Rove's idea, created shortly after President Bush was elected in 2000. It is the smallest unit in the Rove empire, with six employees, and represents the closest thing the White House has to an in-house think tank.

The office, tucked away on the fourth floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, conducts research on the presidency -- looking for historical patterns or analogies to guide the administration's strategic thinking. A current folder on Wehner's desk is labeled: "2d Term/Analysis." It is a compendium of how other presidents often went wrong in their second terms, history Bush hopes not to repeat.

But Wehner also takes Rove's words literally, peppering Rove and other White House officials with e-mails and memos analyzing current trends, highlighting issues that may be ripening or framing arguments to advance the president's policies. Recent works include an analysis of the 2004 election and a memo reflecting on British Prime Minister Tony Blair's comments about freedom, democracy and the Middle East.

Wehner also examined why the 43rd president of the United States has become such a polarizing political figure, after having arrived in Washington with a promise to unite the country and change the tone in Washington. "My view, as I read history, is that almost all consequential figures -- political figures -- are polarizing figures," he said, because they are bold and tackle significant issues. [...]

"Pete really believes in the power of ideas in American politics," Gerson said. "It's the reason he takes such care to make arguments. There are plenty of people at the White House who write talking points. There are very few who make sustained arguments. He doesn't overstate, and his arguments have a lot of integrity."

He is known in the circle of conservative writers and think-tank analysts, but is little known to the wider world compared with White House luminaries such as Rove or national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. But Wehner has the ability to highlight and put into discussion ideas, arguments and issues by the power of his arguments and by his connections.

"One reason Pete really is important is that he has very close relations with both Karl and Mike, and that's two of the five or six most important people in the Bush White House," said William Kristol, editor and publisher of the conservative Weekly Standard, who worked with Wehner at the Education Department.

A small picture of President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby hangs near Wehner's desk. He practically memorized many of Kennedy's speeches, listening to tapes of them when he was younger, and as he described his office, Wehner recalled a quotation from Kennedy in January 1960. The president, Kennedy said, "must reopen channels of communication between the world of thought and the seat of power."

Wehner said he hopes that one legacy of the OSI will be the inculcation of "intellectual seriousness" in the White House.

"I'm not sure you can leave that for another [administration], but this should be an office that engages ideas in a serious way, that approaches criticisms in an intellectually honest way," he said.

Given those ambitions, Wehner was asked whether he finds it ironic or is infuriated that Bush is stereotyped, fairly or not, as a president who is not interested in ideas and is not intellectually curious. "I'm not," he said, "because in the end, the truth wills out."

Bush is changing the political and intellectual landscape, Wehner argued, ticking off the president's education policy that has asserted a strong federal role from a conservative perspective, as well as the concept of compassionate conservatism. Personal savings accounts for Social Security represent another break with conventional thinking.

On foreign policy, he cited Bush's controversial doctrine of preemption -- noting that, during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Kennedy articulated a similar doctrine. Wehner said Bush's determination to spread democracy to the Middle East represents a break with decades of thinking about that region.

"You can't judge those things in real time," Wehner said. "You have to wait and let history make its judgment -- and reality take hold." He argued that Reagan was judged harshly during his presidency but since has been treated more favorably -- and he believes the same will hold for Bush. Wehner said: "I think he's on the right side of history and is on the right side of the important debates of our time, and he's comfortable in that."

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