LOS ANGELES, Dec. 22 -- The transition from President Clinton to President-Elect George W. Bush represents not just a shift from Democrat to Republican, but also from owl to lark.
While Clinton enjoys staying up late, Bush likes to be in bed at 9:30 p.m. every day. He even managed to stick to this schedule during much of the campaign. As a morning person, Bush is likely to run the government differently.
In government and business, managerial and planning positions usually attract morning people. On the other hand, the more creative and improvisational -- but less responsible -- jobs fill up with night people. Although morning people often believe deep down that night people are just plain lazy, and "nocturnal activists" complain about the "tyranny of the day people," there are practical reasons for this division of labor.
This diversity of schedules may have originated far back in prehistory.
Daniel McGraw, founder of the Nocturnal Society, says, "Given the critical importance of having someone watch over the fire and guard the home against invaders during the night, it is logical to assume that evolution would provide for individuals whose natural inclination was to be awake after the others had gone to sleep."
In the modern world, there are numerous jobs best done by one or the other. In roles where the amount of time it takes to finish a day's work is highly unpredictable, night people will tend to do better. For example, if there's a big presentation the next morning, a night person could stay eight hours late to debug a computer program or draw storyboards for a commercial.
Similarly, some of Clinton's finest moments came during all-night negotiating sessions over Northern Ireland, or the Middle East when his phone calls encouraged exhausted bargainers to press toward a deal.
Morning people seldom thrive in this kind of role, because their performance deteriorates rapidly during the evening. Larks might claim that all they have to do is come in early then next morning, but no morning person in history has ever gotten to work eight hours early.
Of course, people who have been up all night have a hard time just dragging themselves to the big presentation the next morning where the decisions are normally made.
Throughout the Cold War, presidents religiously started their mornings with a national security briefing. The Washington Post reported in 1994, however, that during 1993, "Sometimes the briefing was canceled four or five times in a week." When word leaked out to the press, Clinton reinstated daily briefings.
Many Democrats blamed the Clinton administration's shaky initial performance on the president's indisciplined use of time. In fact, some Clinton White House insiders even described the early transition days as "a "disaster."
Critics compared the Oval Office in 1993 to a free-floating all-night college bull session with various staffers wandering in and out as their interest waxed and waned. People who assume they are going to stay up late working are often in danger of wasting time before getting down to business. For instance, during finals weeks at many colleges, when students frequently pull all-nighters to prepare for tests, it's traditional for students to devote the pre-midnight hours to practical jokes; water balloon attacks on other dorms, and playing childish games with big red rubber balls.
Finally, in July 1994, Clinton hired the respected former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Leon Panetta, to bring order to the Oval Office. He instituted a key staff meeting every morning at 7:30 and put the president on a fairly strict schedule. One of Panetta's innovations backfired, however. He blocked out for Clinton a 4-hour stretch with no appointments every afternoon. A president with too much time on his hands, though, ended up using period for his trysts with Monica Lewinsky, according to the Starr Report.
While owls tend to be better at dealing with erratically long duties, morning people thrive in a well-scheduled environment. If there's a monthly report that always takes two hours to do, then morning people are very good at coming in at 6 a.m. to pound it out before the 8 a.m. status meeting.
Although Bush is not known for being terribly hard working, he is considered an orderly and efficient delegator. He prefers to move briskly through a well-defined agenda. Democrats frequently criticized him for scheduling only a strictly limited amount of time to consider each clemency appeal from death row inmates. Yet, quick decision-making is a characteristic trait of morning people. They know from experience that agonizing late into the night over a problem won't help them make a better choice.
Bosses who get their best ideas early in the morning tend to be easier to work for. They delegate assignments soon enough in the day to give their staffers time to complete them during regular working hours.
In contrast, working directly for a leader who thinks best at night, such as Winston Churchill or Adolf Hitler, can be exhausting. A minion must stay up late to receive orders from the his boss, then come in early the next day to communicate them to lower level employees who work a 9-to-5 schedule.NEWLN:
