Working for the White House

By 1969, the Society’s revenues had increased to the point where they covered its costs, more or less, so that I no longer had to make up shortfalls out of my own pocket. But my personal life was getting totally out of control due to the ever-growing workload imposed by the Society and THE FUTURIST. I was still desperately trying to hang on to my paid job, and I knew that a choice had to be made. Finally, in the spring of 1969, I made it: I quit my paid job and began working full time for the World Future Society, hoping that somehow I could survive financially until the Society could afford to pay me something.

Quitting my paid job immediately relieved the day-to-day stress, but it also meant that I was living on my savings, which were meager indeed. They would soon run out and, with a wife and three children, I would be forced to give up my work for the Society. I did not know of anyone who would be willing and able to take on the work I was doing without compensation. That meant the Society would likely collapse — or, at best, survive only as a shadow of what we had envisioned.

In the months that followed, my savings steadily dwindled. By early 1970, I thought I would have to surrender to economics and get a paying job. Then, to my complete surprise, Charles Williams got me a temporary job at the White House.

Williams had left the National Science Foundation to become staff director of the White House’s new National Goals Research Staff. President Richard Nixon had established the Goals Staff on the recommendation of an advisor, Daniel P. Moynihan, who wanted the United States to become more future-oriented in its public policies. Nixon’s former law partner, Leonard Garment, became the director of the Goals Staff, and Raymond Bauer, a Harvard political scientist, was engaged as a consultant to mastermind the preparation of the group’s initial “report to the Nation.”

I was duly sworn in as a U.S. government employee and given a private office in the Goals Staff’s suite in the New Executive Office Building, located close to the Executive Mansion and connected to it by a tunnel.

I came in late on the project and spent only two months working for the Goals Staff — mainly writing a section of the report entitled “Basic Natural Science” — but my government salary brought some financial relief during a time when I did not have any other source of income. In addition, I got an ego-boost every time a secretary made a telephone call for me: Instead of being just an unemployed journalist I had suddenly become “Mr. Cornish of the White House.” I could imagine people jumping up and saluting whenever I telephoned!

Yet, oddly, during my two months working for the White House, what impressed me most was the weakness of the institution. Americans really do live in a democracy, which means that the White House functions at the whim of its boss, the American People. If they care little about anything other than their immediate self-interests, it’s almost impossible for the White House to care about the long-term welfare of the nation, let alone the world. So U.S. presidents and their staffs become obsessed with trying to discern what “the people” want between now and the next election rather than what might really be in the people’s long-term interest.

From conversations with my Goals Staff colleagues, I learned that the Goals Staff was generally distrusted by the political leadership at the White House. The scuttlebutt was that Ken Khachigian, a Republican speechwriter, had been sent over to “Republicanize” the report. Khachigian’s office was right next to mine; he seemed like a nice fellow, and I never had any trouble with him. Williams told me, years later, that Khachigian was an exemplary employee and never tried to bias the report for political purposes. Still, the fact was that I had received a warning to watch my step politically.

I mention this because dispassionate thinking about the future is not easy in a highly politicized environment. So ever since then, I have wondered how a nation’s leaders can get the benefit of nonpartisan analyses of world problems and potential solutions — as well as the latest analyses of public opinion — so that presidents can make wise decisions that will lead to peaceful long-term progress and not just provide immediate political benefits.

The Goals Staff report, entitled Toward Balanced Growth: Quantity with Quality, was duly published, but it had, at best, lukewarm support from the White House and attracted little attention. After all, 1970 was an election year.