The Gatekeepers

I'm going to be taking a break from the blog, but before I do, I wanted to highlight an informative and fascinating book by Chris Whipple: The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, which my sister-in-law Kathy recommended. I learned a lot about how the White House operates and how important the Chief of Staff is to the successful functioning of an administration. The book also prompted me to think about some interesting things, such as the fact that being the smartest person in the room isn't always the clear advantage you'd expect it to be. The author obviously regards Carter, Clinton, and Obama as very smart guys. But Carter wanted to micromanage everything and didn't even have a chief of staff for a couple of years--this caused some serious problems in the White House. Clinton, on the other hand, was tremendously disorganized. And both Carter and Clinton chose as their first chiefs old friends with whom they felt very comfortable, but who may not have had the skills/knowledge necessary to do the job really well or may simply not have wanted to push their friends in the ways they needed to be pushed (Clinton did better with subsequent chiefs Podesta and Panetta). Whether Obama looked at their experience and figured out he should try to avoid their mistakes or he was just smart enough to see what needed to be done is unclear--but he picked Rahm Emanuel with whom he was not close but who knew Washington well and didn't care who he offended as his first chief.  He didn't do quite as well with Daley and McDonough (on whom the author placed the blame for the failure of the health care website). 

I was also interested in how the Chiefs of Staff interacted with the First Ladies--Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton were the most involved in policy issues while Pat Nixon and Laura Bush are not even mentioned and Betty Ford, Barbara Bush, and Michelle Obama--three big personalities--were only mentioned in terms of family issues/concerns. 

Finally, all the chiefs the author interviewed said that James Baker was the best chief of staff ever. Weirdly, Reagan went from him to a really bad one, Donald Regan. Also weirdly, although Bob Haldeman was definitely one of the worst chiefs (he did end up in jail after all), the chiefs all quoted his line about the chief of staff being the "president's son-of-a-bitch." I did hear the author say on Preet Barara's podcast that Mark Meadows was the worst chief of staff ever, so Haldeman has gotten out of the basement! 

Anyway, as all this rambling shows, I thought this was a really good book. If you're at all interested in politics, I think you would enjoy it.