Page 271 - Leadership Lessons of the White House Fellows

BECOMING A WHITE HOUSE FELLOW

be destroyed as a result of it. I was supposed to have lunch with Wirtz
in his office, which was going to be an end-of-the-year lunch, and I did-
n’t hear from him, so I went to see him. He had the paper in his hand
and he threw it down on the table, and he said in this really aggravated
voice, ‘So you want to put an end to this department, do you?’ I said yes,
and I went over with him what the reasons were, and he just smiled and
said it was a great idea. The fact that we got such support was amazing
to me.”

And so, on January 10, 1967, President Lyndon Johnson took the podium
for his State of the Union Address, and in one section of his speech to the
nation he declared:

I have come tonight to propose that we establish a new department—a Depart-
ment of Business and Labor.
By combining the Department of Commerce with the Department of
Labor and other related agencies, I think we can create a more economical, effi-
cient, and streamlined instrument that will better serve a growing nation.
This is our goal throughout the entire Federal Government. Every program
will be thoroughly evaluated. Grant-in-aid programs will be improved and sim-
plified as desired by many of our local administrators and our Governors. 45

Soon afterward, President Johnson announced that he would not seek
reelection. He became a lame duck, losing the political clout it would have
taken to orchestrate such a massive overhaul, and the historic proposed
merger was all but forgotten. Nonetheless, two former White House Fel-
lows will always remember how close they came to turning a bright Fel-
lowship idea into a lasting legacy.

CHECK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR
Before becoming senior medical correspondent for CNN, Dr. Sanjay
Gupta (WHF 97–98) was—and still is—a practicing neurosurgeon.
Gupta’s Fellowship assignment was as an assistant to First Lady Hillary
Clinton, and he recalls that there was no room for ego in the Office of

45 http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/680117.asp.

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