Special Assistant to the President Keith Boykin '87 has taken some of the stress out of his busy White House schedule. Now he only works 12 hours a day.
After Bill Clinton's inauguration, Boykin rode his bicycle from his apartment to work at 5:30 every morning. He stayed there until he felt he was done, usually after 7 p.m.
"That was very short lived," Boykin said in an interview from his office. "It's just impossible to try to keep up with so much that's going on and be there all the time."
Now he sleeps in and leaves just enough time for the five minute bike trip to get to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue at 7 a.m.
Boykin was hired for his current post, Director of News Analysis, by former Communications Director George Stephanopoulos after serving as Midwest press manager for the Clinton/Gore election campaign.
"In the campaign you do work more than 12 hours a day, and I was very comfortable with that," Boykin said. "But that was for a fixed period of time. A four-year time frame is a little more difficult."
Boykin administers the Office of News Analysis in the Communications Department. His job was unaffected when Clinton removed Stephanopoulos as head of that department in late May.
Clinton brought in White House veteran David Gergen as his chief spokesman and Mark Gearan took over the Communications Department. Boykin declined to discuss the shuffle at the top of his office, but said he continues to work with Stephanopoulos in addition to new boss Gearan.
As an undergraduate Boykin majored in government, ran on the track team and served as editor-in-chief of The Dartmouth. He worked in Michael Dukakis' 1988 campaign of and graduated from Harvard Law School just over a year ago.
Every morning Boykin meets with communications officers and representatives from each White House department, keeping the Clinton team informed of the each day's schedule of media events, preparing them to watch and participate.
"I don't actually keep up on everything that's going on out there," Boykin said. "At the beginning of the administration, I made an attempt to try to be on top of everything, and I realized that's impossible. There's much too much happening all the time."
"What we review are newspapers from all around the country -- sort of the opinion leader papers that are likely to affect the news coverage by the smaller papers and TV and the other broadcasting media.
Boykin is homosexual and has caught the President's attention on the issue of gay rights.
He helped set up a meeting between the President and gay and lesbian leaders and drafted a statement Clinton read before the gay and lesbian march on Washington. He contributed in discussions of policy formulation on gays in the military.
Boykin said he first considered himself homosexual when he was at Harvard Law.
"I guess at Dartmouth the thought never occurred to me. If it had occurred to me, I'm sure that the environment would have had some impact on my decision to come out," he said.
He said he hopes there has been a positive trend at Dartmouth since he left towards more openness concerning the gay and lesbian community.
"There was definitely a much more positive environment at Harvard than at Dartmouth," he said.
Boykin said the political science he learned in the classroom at Dartmouth did not prepare him for what he is doing now.
"What you learn in school is mostly theoretical, different from what you do in practice," he said. "I think I learned more from working at The D, about a number of things I've done in life, than from anything in any particular class."
Boykin studies the national media so Clinton can make the most of opportunities provided by the press. But has the coverage of Clinton been fair?
"That's the job of the reporters themselves to determine," Boykin said. "There have been times when the coverage has been more unfavorable than at other times. It's our job to make it as favorable as possible -- not just because we want to put a good spin on the stories."
"It's because we are really doing good things, trying to improve the lives of real Americans," Boykin said. "It's important that people know what's going on in their government. The more people know, the more likely they are to be supportive."
