Page 249 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

BECOMING A WHITE HOUSE FELLOW

Once Mead actually met the candidate, he would try to imagine that person
as a top-flight leader in his or her own field. “If this person is a fire-
fighter,” he said, “could he lead a big department? If he’s a lawyer, could
he be a Supreme Court nominee or the head of a huge white shoe law
firm?” This was a helpful exercise for Mead because he believed that the
most important consideration in selecting a White House Fellow was
competence: the simple ability to do the work at the highest level of the
executive branch of government. Aptitude was a primary concern for
Mead because he and the other commissioners knew—and still know—
that the program’s continued existence hinges on the success of each indi-
vidual Fellow. The commissioners, Mead said, are going to pick only
people they know will succeed, because “your reception in a department
or in a staff job at the White House is really only as good as the last Fel-
low that was in that job. That’s an important consideration, and I
weighted it heavily.”
Next, Mead looked for candidates who displayed the psychological
resiliency to handle high-level work. The questions he and other com-
missioners asked during the interviews were designed to find out just how
far a candidate could be pushed before he or she went over the edge. Dur-
ing a Selection Weekend in the late 1970s, Smithsonian magazine writer
Richard L. Williams was allowed to sit in on some interviews, and he
recorded this exchange between an unnamed commissioner and a Fel-
lowship finalist:

Q: What makes you angry?
A: Who says I’m angry? I’m not angry.

Q: What I’m trying to get at is, What makes you tick?
A: Well, I’m not ticking either. But I get what you mean. . . .
Q: Assume you’re at work on the job. Your assignment, right now, is to
draft a speech the President has to make before a Jewish group,
defending the plane sales to the Arabs. How do you go about it?
A: Um. Well, I start by swallowing hard. And then. . . . 44

44 Richard L. Williams, “Highest, Hardest Achievement for 15 High Achievers,” Smithsonian
August 1978, pp. 38–47.

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