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September 24, 2007

Bush's prep-school buddy sticks by him in Washington

Dave Montgomerys

Clay Johnson followed George W. Bush to Washington after the 2000 election; now he is the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget.

WASHINGTON -- They first met as 15-year-old classmates at Phillips Academy Andover, an exclusive Massachusetts prep school half-a-continent away from their home state of Texas . It was the start of an enduring friendship that steadily strengthened over the years, from Yale University to their neighborhood in Dallas and ultimately to Austin and Washington.

For 46 years, Clay Johnson III has always been there for his old fraternity brother, George W. Bush. He is still within easy reach today as the one of the few remaining members of a Texas cadre who followed Bush from the Texas statehouse to the White House.

As deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, Johnson is hardly a topic on the Sunday talk shows and has always been far less visible than now-departed members of Bush's Texas entourage, such as political guru Karl Rove and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

But the Fort Worth native's unglamorous title and self-imposed low profile mask what former Bush insiders describe as Johnson's influential and accessible relationship with the president, built largely on the friendship that started in 1961.

"His influence now is probably much broader than his current title suggests," says former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, describing Johnson as "one of the very people" known to have the Bushes over for an occasional dinner after the president "packs up at night" and leaves the Oval Office.

Uncommon access

After amassing a solid résumé in the corporate world, Johnson served as appointments director and chief of staff to Bush when he was governor of Texas . When Bush won the presidency in 2000, Johnson followed his old friend to Washington -- first as executive director of the transition team, then as the presidential personnel chief charged with filling more than 4,000 government positions.

In his current job, Johnson, 61, is the president's point man for the daunting task of making the federal government more effective. He works out of a spacious second-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House and is one of a handful of people who can see the president without an appointment.

"He's somebody who the president confides in and can bounce things off of and know that he can get an honest reaction from Clay," says Dan Bartlett, another Texan who stepped down this year as one of Bush's senior advisers. "Sometimes that's hard to find in Washington ."

In an interview in his office, Johnson acknowledges that he has occasionally "invited myself over for a lunch" with the president, some times socially and other times to "bend his ear" on an official matter.

"A couple of times I have ventured or suggested a few things to him," Johnson said. "He doesn't like to be lobbied, but if you have a good idea, let him know what your idea is, and thank you very much. A few of the ideas he's followed through on ... and sought to implement them. Most of the others, he appreciated my interest but had something else he wanted to do."

Johnson's wife, Anne Sewell Johnson, director of the State Department's Art in Embassies program, is also close friends with first lady Laura Bush, and the two couples get together socially and "stay in touch pretty regularly," Johnson said. Sometimes, Bush will call "spur of the moment" to ask the Johnsons to come over for dinner or for a movie, he said. The Johnsons have also been weekend guests at the Camp David presidential retreat in Maryland .

Decades of friendship

As a close friend and George Bush observer for more than four decades, Johnson is admittedly biased and says that the president retains a strength of character and resolve he has had since his teenage days -- especially now, while under siege politically for his presidential policies.

"He's handling it, in my opinion, so well personally," said Johnson. "He is not a fretter, he is not a hand-wringer. ... He's very positive, very upbeat. ... That's the kind of person he was at 15."

Johnson and Bush were among about 750 students at Andover at the dawn of the 1960s and forged a bond through their home state connection. Johnson came from a wealthy Fort Worth oil and ranch family. Bush's father, future President George H.W. Bush, was then head of a Houston-based oil company, Zapata Offshore.

"There only like about 18 of us from Texas ," Johnson recalls. "We were all homesick, and all of us were in over our heads academically, and I'm sure it wasn't any of our ideas to go away to school. ... You start looking up all the Texans -- you know, misery loves company -- so we all connected with each other."

"To know George Bush is to really like him a lot and we struck up a friendship pretty quickly," Johnson said. They were also "meagerly talented" members of the school basketball team, he recalled.

Another Andover alum, Randall Roden, now a lawyer in Raleigh, N.C., recalls that Johnson, though good-natured, was always "fairly quiet and serious" while Bush was the outgoing prankster.

Johnson and Bush decided to room together at Yale and were also members of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. After graduating, Bush went to business school at Harvard while Johnson received a master's degree from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Johnson then began a corporate journey as an executive at PepsiCo's Frito Lay, Wilson Sporting Goods and Citicorp. He was also president of Neiman Marcus' Horchow Mail Order and chief operating officer of the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Bushes and the Johnsons lived two blocks apart in Dallas from the late 1980s until the mid-1990s, when Bush ran for governor and recruited his old classmate into his statehouse administration.

Hunting inefficiency

In his current job, Johnson leads the President's Management Council and is charged with overseeing a goal-oriented transformation of the federal bureaucracy. By teaming with federal employees, the OMB has taken aim at more than 1,000 federal programs over the past four years, displaying accomplishments and rankings on Web sites called expectmore.gov and results.gov.

Johnson acknowledges that "we haven't slain all the dragons yet" but says the assault is nevertheless paying off in ways big and small. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has reduced improper rental assistance payments by 60 percent -- at least $2 billion -- since 2000. The Government Printing Office, which suffered cumulative financial losses of over $100 million in the 1990s, now has a surplus.

Johnson's favorite anecdote is the "feeder mice" story. Staff workers at the Chickasaw National Recreation Center in Oklahoma were raising feeder mice for reptiles and birds of prey on exhibits. They discovered that outside vendors could provide the mice cheaper, resulting in a $15,000 savings that was applied to trails and other park improvements.

About 80 percent of the programs now have clear goals, compared with only about half when he started the job, says Johnson. The agency is also leading by example. In 2005, the OMB was ranked as the best place to work in the federal government in a non-partisan outside survey.

Tom Schatz, president of the Citizens Against Government Waste, a conservative watchdog group, give Johnson high marks, calling him "the right person for that position." The public accountability program, he said, "has been very helpful in the effort to make the government more accountable."

The Johnson family has been part of the Fort Worth landscape for nearly a century. His father, Clay Johnson Jr., a rancher, died in 1985. His 97-year-old mother, Betty Brown Johnson, and a sister, Elizabeth Johnson, still live in Fort Worth .

Johnson and his wife of 38 years have a residence in Austin and hope to return to Texas someday. But while other Texans who came to Washington with Bush are already packing up, Johnson says he expects to stay in the administration until Bush leaves office in January 2009. He was briefly mentioned as a possible nominee for Secretary of Homeland Security when rumors circulated that current Secretary Michael Chertoff might replace Gonzales as attorney general.

Johnson dismissed the speculation and said he is content to stay in his current role as Bush's dragon slayer against bureaucratic bloat. But he adds: "If the president wants me to do something else, I will do whatever he wants."

Newsroom researchers Marcia Melton, Cathy Belcher and Stacy Garcia contributed to this report.

He's somebody who the president confides in and can bounce things off of and know that he can get an honest reaction from Clay.

CLAY JOHNSON III

Current title: Deputy director, Office of Management and Budget

Principal responsibilities: Making the federal government more effective

Born: March 22, 1946, in Tarrant County

Family ties: Family came to Fort Worth in the early 1900s from Corsicana . Father, Clay Johnson Jr., a rancher, died in 1985. Mother, Betty Brown Johnson, 97, still lives in Fort Worth .

Education: Phillips Academy Andover, 1961-64; bachelor's degree, Yale University, 1968; master's degree, Sloan School of Management at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1970.

Corporate career: Executive positions at Citicorp, Wilson Sporting Goods and Frito Lay. President of the Horchow and Neiman Marcus Mail Order companies, 1983-91. Chief operating officer for the Dallas Museum of Art, 1992-94.

Government career: Gov. Bush's appointments director, 1995-99 (worked for $1); Gov. Bush's chief of staff, 1999-2000; executive director, Bush-Cheney transition team, 2000-01; assistant to the president for personnel, 2001-03; deputy director for management, Office of Management and Budget, 2003-present

Personal: Married for 38 years to Anne Sewell Johnson, director of the State Department's "Art in Embassies" Program. Two twin sons, Robert and Weldon Johnson, both assistant coaches at Cornell and joint owners of LetsRun.com, a leading Web site for serious runners.

What you may not know: Once spanked Barney, the presidential Scottie, for clawing at the carpet in the Oval Office. "I was just trying to look out for the taxpayer," he explains. Low-profile but known among Bush aides for his wry humor. Once distributed tacky Christmas ties at a senior staff meeting. "We wore them -- I'm not sure proudly," recalls former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer.

Presidential nickname: "Big Man"