The Young Master of the White House

In addition to his speakerphone, George Stephanopoulos’ crowded office contains a number of icons. Some are modern. Several, in black and white, are of a martyred President. Another is of a living one. And then there are the literal icons: sad-eyed saints presented to Stephanopoulos, son and grandson of priests, by others in the Greek Orthodox community. The saints stood close to a higher being. None of them had speakerphones, but most of them suffered for expressing what they believed were wishes from above.

From almost the moment George Stephanopoulos joined the Clinton campaign, he was able to speak for the candidate. Even though he was not from Arkansas, even though he was 14 years Clinton’s junior, the pessimistic, MTV-ready congressional staffer bonded with the affable Governor. Along with a few other close aides, he saw Clinton through the long primary season. Says Kiki Moore, a former campaign aide and now Democratic National Committee spokeswoman: “You learn a lot about a person late at night on an airplane flying back to Little Rock, Arkansas, from New Hampshire.” He also helped mold the reactive, counterpunching style that made Clinton victorious but appears to be misfiring when applied to the Whitewater affair.

While Moore and other campaigners, including Stephanopoulos’ War Room co- star James Carville, maintained their distance from the White House after the campaign, the younger man’s path led toward ever greater identification with his boss. “George has an innate knowledge of the President’s thought process,” says Moore. It is Stephanopoulos who underlines Clinton’s press summaries every morning. And it is he who serves as the President’s “policy body man,” hovering near him throughout the day, providing continuity and calculating each issue’s relative importance. Says press secretary Dee Dee Meyers: “He’s the place where all things come together. He is the one person, more than ((chief of staff)) Mack McLarty or ((presidential counselor David)) Gergen, who doesn’t lose the forest for the trees.” Although Clinton does not see Stephanopoulos as a peer — “he’s not an alter ego,” cautions another aide — Meyers maintains that Clinton “trusts him more than anyone else.”

And when he’s not at Clinton’s side, Stephanopoulos is usually speaking for him where it counts. “George has no operational responsibilities, which frees him to kind of go from ball to ball according to what is hot at the moment,” says a colleague. In meetings without the President, he can exercise final say over issues involving the media, the public “message” and scheduling. And he often acts as Clinton’s proxy on more substantive issues. At a meeting last week on entitlements, a bevy of heavy hitters including Gergen, domestic policy assistant Carol Rasco and budget chief Leon Panetta, argued back and forth. Says one who was there: “When George spoke, it wasn’t part of the debate. It was time to close your notebook.” No one has suggested that Clinton invested such power in a dummy or straw man. Like the President, Stephanopoulos has a sovereign command of policy issues. Unlike him, thanks to his tenure as floor assistant to House majority leader Richard Gephardt from 1989 to ’91, he also understands the Hill. “He knows the Speaker,” says a colleague. “He knows the Leader. When the time comes to pass legislation, he knows what it will take to get it done.” Despite a well-documented left-of- center tilt (during his House years he could be spied reading Salvadoran dissident novels on the subway), Stephanopoulos is untainted in the ideological wars that sometimes split the Administration. “He has an agenda, but with Clinton, he’s reached the top and is going to insure that he serves his master,” says an observer. Of his loyalty, another quantifies the accepted wisdom: “On a scale of 10, I’d say he was about a 9 1/2.” Clinton repays him by listening, even when his aide proffers unwelcome advice. Three months ago, when both the President and First Lady were resisting the idea of a special Whitewater prosecutor, Stephanopoulos helped champion it. “He had his head knocked off several times,” said an official, “and kept going back.”

He now finds himself in that same prosecutor’s cross hairs, which is sure to launch widespread speculation about what character flaw got him there. The cool impatience that helped lead to his removal last May as White House communications director is not reserved merely for the Fourth Estate. Says an Administration colleague who claims to both like and respect him, “George sometimes gets this look on his face like you’re wasting his time talking to him. He’s brilliant, but he doesn’t know everything.” Of course, he may not know that. And accurately or no, many continue to feel he suffers from a moral arrogance. In this, of course, he is not alone. The Clintons have been accused on more than one occasion of adopting a philosophy in which the ends justify the means. Since their motives are pure, the thinking goes, their actions are probably unassailable. That may be one area in which George Stephanopoulos would be better off not to identify with the boss.