ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 15, 1996 TAG: 9612160090
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder/Tribune
When President Clinton was dawdling about picking his national security team, incoming chief of staff Erskine Bowles issued a stern order.
``Give me the names, or you're a dead man,'' said a presidential aide, mimicking Bowles' blunt approach as he leaned on Clinton - a procrastinator of the highest order - to make up his mind.
Bowles, 51, will take over as White House chief of staff - sometimes called the second most powerful job in Washington - in January.
He's soft-spoken, has a North Carolina drawl and his big round glasses give him a bookish appearance.
But he's tough, say his friends, and already has a reputation of a Dr. No. In a White House where the president's temper is feared, Bowles has the guts to tell Clinton the hard truth.
``They'll never eat my brother alive,'' said Hargrove Bowles 3rd, a stockbroker in Greenville, S.C. ``He's plenty savvy. He's quiet, but he's strong.''
Bowles has two rules for the staff: Never show up late, and never change the subject.
A businessman, he is credited with bringing a CEO's time-is-money philosophy to an unwieldy White House in Clinton's first term, when he became Leon Panetta's deputy chief of staff.
The gregarious Clinton used to have an open-door policy, but Bowles helped put him on a strict stopwatch and limited interruptions so the president could get more done. And he knows Clinton's thinking habits. The day he wanted Clinton to make up his mind about the national security team, he sent him out golfing - alone.
Clinton decided that night who would get the vital State and Defense department jobs .
Bowles is the one Clinton turned to in Chicago to dump political guru Dick Morris. Though Morris faced reports he'd had an affair with a prostitute, he hoped he could hang on. Bowles spent hours with him in a hotel suite, gently but firmly explaining that he could not remain on the president's team.
One Bowles story is lore, though his office declined to confirm it:
A senior administration aide asked him for advice on how to deal with a problematic staffer.
``Fire him,'' said Bowles. The official was shocked at what sounded like a coldhearted answer.
``Fire him,'' said Bowles. ``That's what we do in the business world.''
But when Clinton's pick for surgeon general, Dr. Henry Foster, ran into trouble in the Senate, Bowles was a loud voice arguing that if the White House was sticking with him, it must be all the way.
Bowles, a millionaire, didn't want to leave his home in Charlotte, N.C., and resisted Clinton's pleas to take the reins of the West Wing when Panetta returns to California.
But in the end, he decided he had to answer the president's call.
A Columbia University grad and Wall Street veteran, Bowles got to know Clinton in 1992 when he raised money for the Democratic presidential candidate. A devoted golfer, he became a frequent guest of Clinton's on the links. Clinton tapped him to head the Small Business Administration before he was brought in as a Panetta deputy.
Bowles' wife was a college classmate of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
LENGTH: Medium: 66 linesby CNB