THE CLINTON WHITE HOUSE is more spectacularly “on-message” than any administration in memory. For example, every single person working there, from economist Gene Sperling down to the lowliest receptionist, has exactly the same worry about Bob Dole’s proposed 15 percent tax cut: It will “blow a 500-billion-dollar hole in the deficit.” Not “create a gap.” Not “open a shortfall.” Nope . . . “blow a hole.” And if you are wondering what the election is about, you can be sure that whether the speaker is George Stephanopoulos or Ann Lewis, the answer will be the same: “Opportunity, Responsibility, and Community.”
If this sort of thing is worthy of praise, then much of it must go to communications director Don Baer, the former political correspondent who was hired away from U.S. News & World Report to serve as director of speechwriting. He has held the top communications post for the past year. A lanky North Carolinian, with thinning hair and gold-rimmed glasses, Baer occupies a windowless and much-visited office in the West Wing. While Baer describes his job as “using all the tools of the presidency to convey the message,” his White House co-workers say the job goes further than that.
