White House staff is exhausted per WaPo

Peter Baker of the Washington Post offers a description of the White House staff as being worn down and fatigued.

Key staffers have been on the job over five years working 16 to 18 houor days seven days a week without a real break. There has been little turnover. Even when at home they are tied to the office by cell phones and blackberries.

"By the time you get to year six, there's never a break . . . and you get tired," said Ed Rollins, who served five years in President Ronald Reagan's White House. "There's always a crisis. It wears you down. This has been a White House that hasn't really had much change at all. There is a fatigue factor that builds up. You sometimes don't see the crisis approaching. You're not as on guard as you once were."

To Rollins, the uproar over an Arab-owned firm taking over management of some American ports represents a classic example. Bush and his staff did not know about the arrangement approved by his administration, and after congressional Republicans revolted, issued an ineffective veto threat that only exacerbated the dispute, which climaxed with the collapse of the deal last week. "This White House would not have made this mistake two years ago," Rollins said.

Bush's problems go beyond the fatigue factor. An unpopular foreign war, high energy prices and the nation's worst natural disaster in decades have dragged his poll ratings down to the lowest level of any second-term president, other than Richard M. Nixon, in the last half-century. Lately it seems to many in the White House that they cannot catch a break -- insurgents blow up a holy shrine in Iraq, tipping the country toward civil war; Vice President Cheney accidentally shoots a hunting partner; a former top Bush adviser is arrested on theft charges.

As in all organizations, thin one is a reflection of the man at the top. Bush expects loyalty from his subordinates, and does not like turnover. At the same time, a good superior will recognize when the subordinates need rest and relaxation. Bush appears to not recognize the limitations of his subordinates.

If you combine fatigue at the top of the government with inexperience and lack of qualifications for workers at lower levels, then the failures of the Bush administration over the last year and a half become easily understandable.

Unfortunately, they are in a marathon and still have three years to go.