Editor's Letter

Curious George

At the age of 33, George Stephanopoulos has survived a grueling presidential campaign and the many crises of his first year in the White House; as the second year begins, he appears to be more essential than ever to the president. Though it is no longer his job to put the spin on every detail of every scandal, Stephanopoulos nonetheless became an important part of the damage-control team when the story of the Clintons' involvement in the Whitewater Development Company turned out to be a legal, political, and public-relations mess. As Marjorie Williams points out in her profile on page 146, to a man who suffered through the Gennifer Flowers flap and the torturous disclosure of Clinton's draft record "Whitewater must have a depressing familiarity indeed." Once again, the president's staff was trying to cope with a crisis in which they didn't have all the facts.

Judging from accounts, Stephanopoulos takes a lot of heat from his boss, especially when the going gets rough, but he also seems to have a unique ability to get Clinton to confront the tough choices—as well as to make the president comfortable with tough decisions. Top aides before him have played similar roles. F.D.R. 's close adviser Louis McHenry Howe, who was said to have "slept at the foot of the president's bed," was the only person who could tell Roosevelt "No. " And until he fell from grace over a vicuna coat (a gift from a Boston businessman), Dwight Eisenhower's top aide, Sherman Adams, was known as "the Abominable No-man."

There is one obvious reason why, in Clinton's Rhodes-scholar-laden administration, this particular Rhodes scholar has such clout: his loyalty. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton know that Stephanopoulos will defend them to the last ditch. But, as Williams writes, "in all really important staff relationships, between a principal and the one or two aides who work most intimately with him, there is at least some quality of a marriage, some deep fit between psyches." And it is on this level that Stephanopoulos is indispensable: as the yin to Clinton's yang, the control freak who has all the discipline the president is lacking, the man who brings an aura of sanctity to the task of political compromise.

Editor in chief