From the West Wing to the Wilson School

Sitting beneath an orange and black banner adorned with the words “In the nation’s service,” Bolten leaned across the table and described his first month of teaching at his alma mater with the careful deliberation of a man whose words have been often scrutinized.

“It’s an ideal way to go out of a government experience: to come to a great university and have a chance to reflect,” he said in an interview with The Daily Princetonian last week. “Of all the things you could possibly do, I couldn’t imagine a better way to go out.”

Bolten entered a secret bunker on Sept. 11, 2001, back when he was a deputy chief of staff at the White House, and he has even seen shoes fly at a sitting president over the course of his decades of public service. Now Bolten teaches WWS 481: Charting the Nation’s Fiscal Future, a weekly undergraduate seminar, and will teach two graduate courses in the spring.

“On the first day, I said to the students that my aspiration was to teach them the class I would have wanted to take before I became a senior government official,” he explained. “The federal budget is central to almost all public policy decisions.”

The class he teaches this term relates most closely to his experience as the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a position he held from 2003 to 2006. When Bush offered him the position, he initially turned it down, Bolten recalled with a laugh, saying he was “not mean enough.” Bush replied, “Sure you are.”

Three years later, in March 2006, that confidence was reaffirmed when Bush named Bolten to succeed Andrew Card as chief of staff. The move was made as the administration was dogged in particular by criticism of its handling of the war in Iraq and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Several of the students in the seminar said their favorite parts of the class so far have been Bolten’s personal anecdotes about his time in government. Bolten, however, noted that his experiences and stories are not the core element of the course.

“They can add some color and life to the substance, but you also have to be a little careful that you don’t let the anecdotes take over,” he explained. “I’ve actually wondered about the right balance. Sometimes you actually have to exercise self-discipline.”

Amit Mukherjee ’10, a student in Bolten’s class, said Bolten is “pretty non-partisan” when teaching.

“He tries to stay away from Bush’s policies and defending them,” Mukherjee explained. “He’s more likely to tell anecdotes that we find really interesting rather than bring up political issues that Republicans or Democrats would argue about on party lines.”

Aside from teaching, Bolten said he enjoys staying on campus three or four days per week taking part in panel discussions and giving talks, as the University has requested that he be a “practitioner in residence.” Last week, he spoke with Karl Rove, senior adviser and deputy chief of staff in the Bush administration, at a special tea hosted by the James Madison Program. He said he has also spoken to Ivy Club members at a roundtable discussion and has plans to go to Tiger Inn this week.

Of Bolten’s many outside projects, the ones that are unpaid elicit the most passion from him, he said, as opposed to the consulting and advisory board relationships to which he devotes only a few days per month. Bolten is involved with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, which his father helped to create, and serves on the board of the ONE Campaign, an advocacy organization that works to combat extreme poverty and preventable disease.

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Smiling, Bolten counted off with his fingers the ways he was involved with AIDS initiatives as White House deputy chief of staff, as OMB director and as chief of staff. He cited the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) as one of the Bush administration initiatives he is most proud of. And even after he left the White House, he continued his involvement with the project, traveling to Namibia last spring to find a recipient for PEPFAR funds.

Bolten grew up in Washington with a father who worked for the CIA. He said he was “fairly certain” before college that he wanted to spend at least some of his career in public service. “The Princeton environment when I was an undergrad, and I suspect even moreso now, was very conducive for generating a passion for public service and public policy issues,” he added.

During his undergraduate years, he was the Honor Committee chair, his class’ sophomore-year president and Ivy Club president. He also studied in the Wilson School, finding a mentor in professor emeritus Walter Murphy, a distinguished constitutional scholar who, Bolten said, helped him find “a passion for the intersection between law and public policy.”

To this day, Bolten carries around an annotated pocket-sized version of the Constitution.

“It tells me who holds what powers,” he explained. “I always try to have a copy … on me.”

But his most memorable moment since returning to Princeton has not been discussing constitutional powers, or even discussing the federal budget, he said, laughing. The U2 concert he attended a few weeks ago at the Meadowlands Sports Complex with his niece, a University undergraduate, and a few other students was “definitely most memorable,” he explained, adding that he welcomes the change of pace that comes with substituting life in politics with life at the University.

“I served every day in the Bush administration for eight years,” he noted. “Being in a reflective environment is quite a privilege.”