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

by Chris Whipple

“What in the world happened to Cheney?” had become almost a parlor game among the chiefs. One theory was that he had been transformed by his experience as the powerful CEO of Halliburton. Others thought he had gone to the dark side in the 1980s, running secret “continuity of government” exercises (war games that simulated nuclear Armageddon).

“The executive branch of the United States is the largest corporation in the world,” the adviser, H. R. Haldeman, would reflect years later. “It has the most awesome responsibilities of any corporation in the world, the largest budget of any corporation in the world, and the largest number of employees. Yet the entire senior management structure and team have to be formed in a period of seventy-five days.”

Nixon knew the presidency could be a “splendid misery,” as Jefferson put it,

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.”

Nancy would later insist she meant that “Ronnie’s condition was probably more serious” than she was willing to say on the phone. But according to Regan, the “delay” was due to the best-kept secret of the Reagan presidency: the first lady was consulting an astrologer. Nancy had dabbled in astrology since 1965, encouraged by her friend the Hollywood talk-show host Merv Griffin; but after the assassination attempt in March of 1981, she started leaning more heavily on her “friend,” a psychic named Joan Quigley. It fell to Mike Deaver, in consultation with Nancy, to make sure that Reagan’s schedule was in favorable alignment with the planets. During the first term, the secret was so closely held that not even Jim Baker’s staff was aware of it.

In Tokyo on a state visit in January 1992, Bush was at a dinner given by Kiichi Miyazawa when he suddenly turned pale and slumped over onto his host. When he regained consciousness, Bush discovered that he had vomited on himself and the prime minister. Skinner, who had not accompanied Bush, watched the bizarre episode on TV.

Never had such a serious presidency been perceived to be so unserious. In May, while awaiting takeoff on Air Force One at the Los Angeles International Airport, the president was given a haircut by an upscale hairdresser known as Christophe. The episode quickly turned into farce. The New York Times reported that Clinton had shut down two of four runways for hours while being pampered by a hairstylist to the stars. (In fact, the haircut caused no delays.) It became a feast for the tabloids, and more fodder for his Republican enemies.

“The next thing I knew I get a call to go up to Camp David and meet with the president. So I got in a helicopter and flew up with Al Gore and Tipper. And they take me to the president’s cabin there. And I’m in a room—it’s Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore and Tipper Gore, and me. And I knew at once this was not going to be a fair fight!” Panetta lets out a loud laugh. “I said, ‘I’m really valuable to you as OMB director. We’ve got your economic plan in place.’ And the president told me something that I’ll never forget. He said, ‘Leon, you can be the greatest OMB director in the history of the country, but if the White House is falling apart, nobody will remember you.’

Bowles’s deputy, Podesta, was put in charge of managing the Lewinsky “cells”—staffed by lawyers, communications people, and others—while Bowles kept Clinton focused on governing. “John oversaw all of that operation. I thought he was unbelievably talented in areas where I was unbelievably untalented,” says Bowles. “I did not like dealing with the investigations; I just hated it. And John was just great at it.” Podesta—who called himself the “secretary of shit”—would be responsible for trying to prevent the looming impeachment and conviction of the president of the United States.

Podesta and Bowles also had to shore up their troops. “It was critical to keep the staff from feeling like the bottom was falling out,” says Podesta. “At some level that’s being a battlefield commander. You’ve just got to keep your troops focused on what the goal is on a day-to-day basis. Keep the discipline strong, intimidate when you need to—and let somebody cry on your shoulder when that’s appropriate.”

The motorcade raced to the airport, where heavily armed Special Forces skirted the tarmac and the engines of Air Force One were already spinning. As the presidential plane took off, Card faced his first real test as chief of staff. Bush was hell-bent on returning to Washington, D.C. But Card knew that was a presidential order he would have to defy. “President Bush was adamant. He even used terms like ‘I am the president of the United States,’ ” Card recalls. “I was trying to be cool, calm, and objective. I had the Secret Service very firm with me. I had the president of the United States very firm with me.” Bush was in Card’s face, furious, screaming at his chief. Card gently pushed back. “I just said, ‘Mr. President. I really can’t recommend that. We have to know more about the nature of the attacks and if others are coming.’ ” Bush finally acquiesced to a detour, agreeing to head for Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana; so began the daylong odyssey that would take the president, Card, and their entourage to Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska. They finally returned to the capital that evening. “As we’re coming in to land at Andrews Air Force Base,” Card recalls, “we’re all looking out the windows, and you could see the faces of the pilots of the fighter jets that were accompanying Air Force One. And then you could see the smoke billowing out of the Pentagon, and I remember the president saying to me, ‘That’s the face of war in the twenty-first century.’ ”

“The most important thing a chief can do, and I learned this from Jim Baker’s book,” he says, “is establish clear lines of responsibility. As a result, you get clear accountability. There’s no accountability without clear responsibility.”