The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

by Chris Whipple

the throes of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Podesta was so well known for his hair-trigger temper that it was said he had an evil twin named “Skippy.”

Promising to end the war, Nixon had won the presidency by a hairsbreadth, the second-closest popular vote margin in history. There was a widespread sense that the center would not hold, the country more bitterly divided than at any time since the Civil War. Presidential chronicler Theodore White wrote: “The United States faced a crisis equal in magnitude to Lincoln’s in 1860, or Roosevelt’s in 1932. Those crises, however, had been defined—freedom rather than slavery, employment rather than hunger. Richard M. Nixon’s crisis was far more complex; it defied definition…thus it was graver.”

visitor: J. Edgar Hoover, the long-serving FBI director. As Haldeman later vividly recalled: “The president asked me to be present when Hoover paid his respects. Hoover, florid, rumpled, came into the suite and quickly got down to business. He said that LBJ had ordered the FBI to wiretap Nixon during the campaign. In fact, he told Nixon, Johnson had directed the FBI to ‘bug’ Nixon’s campaign airplane, and this had been done.” In truth, no such bug had been planted on Nixon’s plane. Hoover was lying to the president-elect, cleverly exploiting Nixon’s suspicions to enhance his own power. But for the man who was about to become the thirty-seventh president of the United States, this was confirmation of his worst fears about his political enemies: LBJ, the Kennedys, the liberals, and the press.

The president and his chief shared the single-minded focus of loners. Physically awkward and socially inept, Nixon was most comfortable brooding in his private study; Haldeman, a teetotaling Christian Scientist, was so devoted to his work that family and friends were an afterthought.

Haldeman suggested installing a manual recorder, which the president could turn on and off, recording selectively. But Nixon was utterly incapable of operating even the simplest mechanical device. “He just lacked natural grace,” recalls Higby, laughing at the memory of “this tremendously clumsy guy. We tried over and over again. He would erase half the memo that he just dictated and then get all frustrated. So we finally had IBM make a special machine that only had ‘on’ and ‘off.’ And that was an utter failure once again. He’d forget to turn it on. He wouldn’t turn it on right.” As Higby recalls: “So eventually Haldeman said, ‘Well, the only other thing you can do is do a voice-activated system.’ And that is when we put in the system that later became the tapes.” The decision to automatically record every word spoken in the Oval Office meant that, when scandal struck, nothing would be off-limits to congressional investigators. As one Nixon staffer would later note ruefully, “For want of a toggle switch, the presidency was lost.”

only reason he’s into political espionage is because Hoover won’t do it anymore.” Haldeman would defend Richard Nixon to the end. Before the Senate Watergate Committee, the president’s ever-dutiful chief insisted that Nixon had no knowledge of the cover-up and never authorized giving hush money to the burglars. For those untruths, H. R. Haldeman would be convicted of perjury, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice and sent to prison at the federal minimum security facility in Lompoc, California, where he served a sentence of eighteen months. “Son of Nixonstein” read the caption on a magazine cartoon, depicting the fallen chief as the president’s monster. To the press, and to most Americans, Haldeman seemed proof that too much power invested in the White House chief leads to calamity. But that’s not the way Haldeman’s successors saw him. Years later, in January of

Watergate scandal had come about. “The thing that went wrong is that the system was not followed,” Haldeman replied. “Had we dealt with [Watergate] in the way we set up from the outset…we would have resolved that matter satisfactorily, probably unfortunately for some people, but that was necessary and should have been done. It wasn’t done, and that was what led to the ultimate crisis.” “That’s exactly what happened,” said Dean, when I recounted Haldeman’s explanation. (It’s a rare point of agreement between Haldeman and his nemesis, still regarded by Nixon loyalists as their Judas.)

Admitted to Yale on a scholarship, Cheney had distinguished himself as a first-class partier and a fourth-rate student. After three failed semesters, the university told him to take a year off; Cheney went back to Wyoming, where he got a job on a road crew stringing power cables. But upon his return to New Haven, Cheney recalls, “frankly, my attitude really hadn’t changed at all.” After another dismal academic performance, he was told to leave Yale for good. There was worse to come. Back in Wyoming, Cheney had been arrested twice for drunk driving; after one debauched evening in the summer of 1963, he woke up facedown on the floor of a jail cell.

Stuart Spencer, Ford’s reelection campaign manager, recalls that every time the president gave a speech his poll numbers plunged. “Ford would go out on the road and the tracking data would go like this,” he says, pointing his thumb to the floor. “We’d stay in the White House playing president, and his tracking data would go like this,” he says, pointing his thumb up. “So I go to Cheney and say, ‘We gotta change our strategy.’ ” “He was giving these very dull, terrible speeches,” recalls Cannon. “And one day they wrote a line in a speech and the sentence was, ‘And I say to you, this is nonsense.” And they made a note in the speech: with emphasis. And Ford read it aloud: ‘And I say to you this is nonsense—with emphasis.’ And Cheney says, ‘Well, that’s another thing we can’t do—write instructions in the speech text.’

Carter had acquired but pointedly eschewed any inclinations in that direction.” Jordan was a precociously brilliant political strategist, and a perfect complement to the pious, high-minded candidate. “Carter, who wanted to be simultaneously above and a part of politics, saw it only as a means to an end,” writes Bourne. “Jordan…enjoyed politics and had little compunction about doing what was necessary to win.” In 1972, two years before Carter launched his almost laughable campaign for president, Jordan composed a fifty-nine-page memo, spelling out how and why he would win, a blueprint that would become legendary: I believe that you should attempt to develop the image of a highly successful and concerned former Governor of Georgia and peanut farmer living in a small rural town, speaking out on the pertinent issues of the day. Once your name begins to be mentioned in the national press, you will not lack for invitations and opportunities to speak to major groups and conventions. “He had the most brilliant strategic mind I ever encountered,” says Gerald Rafshoon, who would join the Carter White House as communications director. Irreverent, self-deprecating, and rakish, Jordan had a loyal following. James Fallows, Carter’s twenty-five-year-old speechwriter at the time, says Jordan’s dirt-behind-the-ears persona was appealing. “He was often portrayed as being the undisciplined rube, sort of the Burt Reynolds or Dogpatch

foul, and Carter was forced to accept a compromise plan. The former one-term governor was learning by total immersion. “I’ll never forget one time I was talking to Brzezinski about Carter,” recalls Brent Scowcroft. “And he said, ‘He’s wonderful. I can give him 150 pages to read at night—and he reads it. He makes marginal comments.’ And I said, ‘Zbig, that’s a terrible thing for you to do. Because he doesn’t have time for that.’

Regan was headed for a reckoning with Nancy Reagan. In January of 1987, the president was in the hospital recovering from a prostate operation. Regan was eager to schedule a presidential press conference as soon as possible. During a phone call with Reagan’s chief, Nancy objected—then finally relented, snapping: “Okay, have your damn press conference!” Regan replied, “You bet I will!” Then he slammed down the phone. When Baker heard about the incident, he knew Regan was finished. “He hung up on the first lady!” Baker recalls, still incredulous, thirty years later. “That’s not just a firing offense. That may be a hanging offense!”

As the Iraq Republican Guards fled along the so-called highway of death, a debate erupted in the media. Should the U.S. military go all the way to Baghdad and topple Saddam Hussein? Powell says that during the first Gulf War, the idea was so untenable it was never talked about. “We were never going to Baghdad,” he says. “It was never discussed. It never was anything that entered the president’s mind. He had no desire to occupy an Arab state, and he wanted to accomplish what the UN resolution called for, and to restore the legitimate government of Kuwait. And that’s what we did.” That opinion was unanimous among the president’s advisers, including Cheney. It would be less unanimous just over a decade later—when some of the same advisers debated whether to invade and occupy Iraq during the presidency of Bush’s son, George W.

conduct is arrogant. It is rude. It is intolerable.” Sununu was also shirking his role as honest broker. His penchant for playing prime minister led him to screen out policy proposals he didn’t like. Cabinet secretaries complained so bitterly that the president set up a post office box at his home in Kennebunkport—a back channel for messages that would otherwise get spiked by the chief.

Caught in the crosshairs, Sununu proceeded to make himself an even bigger target. At a bill-signing ceremony on the White House lawn, he shouted at a Washington Post reporter: “You’re a liar. All your stories are lies. Everything you write is a lie!” The press was now in full pursuit of Bush’s defiant chief of staff.

Jim Baker’s rule—that principals rarely succeed in the job—had proved true again. “The people who don’t succeed as White House chief of staff are people who like the chief part of the job and not the staff part of the job,” says Baker. “You’ve got to remember that you’re staff even though you’re powerful.”

work to resolve them.’ ” Skinner should have known he was in for a rough year: On his first day as chief of staff, George Bush threw up on the prime minister of Japan.

(In the classes they shared, Reich raised his hand a lot and often had the right answer; Hillary raised hers all the time and always had the right answer; Clarence Thomas never raised his hand; and Bill rarely showed up.)

about that. It could make it stronger, you know.’ ” Reich, who would become Clinton’s secretary of labor, sensed trouble. “The chief of staff cannot be a dear old friend,” he remembers thinking when McLarty accepted the job. “It’s too difficult for the chief to tell the president no. It’s also difficult for the chief of staff and his boss to see and understand clearly their respective roles and not to let the past intrude on the present.”

Emanuel, just thirty-three, was already a legend for his rich vocabulary of four-letter words, and for his willingness to walk over hot coals, broken glass, or worse to get a job done. People who disappointed him could expect the unexpected: like a dead fish, which Emanuel famously sent in a box to a pollster who betrayed him. The Luca-Brasi-sleeps-with-the-fishes treatment was just for openers. Bob McNeely, the White House photographer, marveled at his modus operandi: “He twisted arms. He threatened people. He called ’em names. There was a little bit of the Lyndon Johnson treatment: ‘We’ll close every post office in your district.’

The first lady wanted to set up the governing equivalent of a War Room—the brutally efficient campaign headquarters run by Carville and Stephanopoulos. As Woodward recounts it, the president then stood up and began yelling: “ ‘I’m leaving and I’m going to Tokyo,’ he shouted. He turned to McLarty and the vice president. ‘Mack and Al, you two, I want it solved. I want it done before I get home.’

Though his eruption carried an emotional punch, it paled compared to Hillary’s withering analysis. There was no denying the critique—most pointedly, a scalding indictment of McLarty. At crucial moments like this, Hillary was often the de facto chief of staff.”

But now Stephanopoulos had fallen out of favor with the president, blamed for cooperating on Bob Woodward’s critical book The Agenda.

Panetta knew the White House was run informally, but he had no idea how informally. “I went to Mack and said, ‘I’d like to see your organizational chart for the White House staff.’ And he said, ‘You know, Leon, I don’t believe we have one of those.’ And I said, ‘Oh, shit.’ That’s when I knew I was in deep trouble! I had to basically organize the White House using little boxes. My army training helped me well because I basically established a kind of chain of command on the staff, who reported to who, and built the staff based on that organization chart.”

Panetta also knew how to roll with Clinton’s famous nocturnal habits. “I remember it was two thirty, three o’clock in the morning, and I get a call from the president and I said, ‘Holy cow, what’s going on?’ And he said, ‘Leon, are you watching Fritz Hollings on C-SPAN?’ And I said, ‘Are you kidding me, Mr. President?’ I said, ‘Nobody in the country is watching Fritz Hollings on C-SPAN right now. Everybody’s asleep, and you should be asleep too.’ ” Bowles, who got his share of midnight calls, says they were

Frustrated, Bill Clinton was lashing out at those around him, but Panetta knew the storm would pass. “The president wanted to get rid of Stephanopoulos, and he wanted to get rid of Rahm—he thought they were both leakers,” says Panetta. (Emanuel had also, inevitably, stepped on the toes of powerful figures on Capitol Hill.) “He wanted to get rid of the press secretary, Dee Dee Myers.” Panetta stalled for time. “What I did was I said, ‘Look, let me look at the operation.’

But Bowles refused. “I told him, ‘Hell no, I wasn’t going to fire him,’ ” he says. “The president would say, ‘Why not?’ And I’d say, ‘Because every time you come out of that Oval Office and you’ve got some new thing you want us to do, and I can’t get the bureaucracy to do it, you know what I do? I give it to Rahm. And two days later he comes back and it’s done! There are twenty dead people back there—but it’s done!’