Single point accountability
Bush believes in what is known in business as single-point
accountability. "He does not want to know that a committee or a
consortium is working together to coordinate a solution," Daniels
says. "He wants one organization, or one person, to have
responsibility; he wants to know who he can call. I can't tell you how
alien this is to the federal government, which is marvelous at evading
it."
To monitor the people or organizations responsible, Bush keeps track
of certain details—ideally, not so many that he becomes a
micro-manager, but enough to keep those he is managing alert. From
9/11 until January of 2002 many officials who had no direct connection
to the war on terror lost contact with Bush. When he began meeting
with them again, he had "a stream of informed questions about the
innards of their departments," Daniels recalls. "He makes it his
business to know a little bit about everything."
Bush knows that following through can require patience. This is new
for him: when he was with the Rangers, and in his father's White
House, he was just learning patience. Though he may still see the
fundamental issues in black and white, he can now wait to achieve his
goals. "He gives things time to work," Rice says. "He understands,
probably better than his advisers, that there is a rhythm to things."