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You can’t do that if you got eight or nine guys sitting around saying, “Well, you go tell him.” —Dick Cheney, chief of staff to Gerald Ford If it’s between good and bad, somebody else will deal with it. Everything that gets into the Oval Office is between bad and worse. —Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff to Barack Obama
“Our job is not to do the work of government, but to get the work out to where it belongs—out to the Departments,” Haldeman began. He continued: “Nothing goes to the president that is not completely staffed out first, for accuracy and form, for lateral coordination, checked for related material, reviewed by competent staff concerned with that area—and all that is essential for Presidential attention.”
As Ford wrote later: “I concluded he was right. The ‘spokes of the wheel’ approach wasn’t working. Without a strong decision-maker who could help me set my priorities, I’d be hounded to death by gnats and fleas. I wouldn’t have time to reflect on basic strategy or the fundamental direction of my presidency.”
In Rumsfeld’s view, decisions were dead on arrival unless they were translated to every relevant department.
Watson began furiously drafting memos to Carter, posing questions he would face as president-elect. “What decisions are going to be forced upon him, what decisions is he going to inherit that he needs to be informed about, what initiatives does he want to take right out of the batter’s box—and in order to do that, what does he need to know? What information does he need to have?”
Because presidents have too many things to do. They need someone to organize issues for them, to organize decisions, to bring the politics and the policy together, to have outreach to interest groups, to make sure that relations with Congress are going as smoothly as possible, to make sure the scheduling is done in the most logical way, to set priorities. That can’t be done by the president himself—however smart or wise he is.”
Roles of C of S (acc to Jack Watson) 1) Resolve disputes that don’t need to go to the Pres. 2) Be an HONEST BROKER. Make sure everything completely staffed out. 3) C of S is place where policy and politics come together. (make sure the political aspect—the p.r. aspect—is looked at.) 4) Administer the place. Run it.
Orderly schedule & orderly paper flow is way you protect the Pres. Well designed system. Got to be brutal in scheduling decisions. Most valuable asset in D.C. is time of RR Need to have discipline & order & be discriminating *DON’T USE THE POLICY PROCESS TO IMPOSE YOUR POLICY VIEWS ON PRES.
He was chief of staff, and if he didn’t know, he should have. A good chief of staff has sources everywhere. He should practically be able to smell what’s going on.”
“So many people walk into the Oval Office with an agenda and say, ‘Mr. President, this is in your best interest,’ ” Duberstein explains. “And your job is to figure out why it’s in their best interest first and the president’s second.
The president had become the “mechanic-in-chief,” put in the position of tinkering instead of being the president who had a moral voice, who had a vision, who was going to lead them on this journey. The economic plan wasn’t about budgets and numbers, she said. It was a values document. It was to help working people and small businesses….That’s what we should be talking about, she added. “I want to see a plan.” She wanted everybody involved. “As we develop these policies, we have to decide how to explain them.”
From now on, Haldeman is the Lord High Executioner. Don’t you come whining to me when he tells you to do something. He will do it because I asked him to and you’re to carry it out….I want discipline. It’s up to Haldeman to police it….When he talks, it’s me talking, and don’t think it’ll do you any good to come and talk to me, because I’ll be tougher than he is. That’s the way it’s going to be.
What Leon proves is you don’t have to be a bully or an attack dog to be an effective chief of staff. You just have to be very smart. You have to know when to be tough, and also when to let the reins be a little looser. Because the people around you have to have some degree of autonomy or else they’re not going to do well.”
“As Don Rumsfeld told me, ‘You’ve got to be prepared to be fired,’ ” Bowles says. “ ‘Because if you’re not, then you’re not going to give him the right advice. And the right advice is not always yes.’ ”
“The power of the chief of staff is derived,” says Bowles. “If you have the trust and the confidence of the president, you have all the power you need to get what you need done. If you’ve lost the confidence of a president, people smell it, feel it, know it within seconds—and you become an overblown scheduler.”
“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.”
“I broke the job down into the care and feeding of the president; policy formulation; and marketing and selling,” recalls Card. “You have to make sure that the president is never hungry, angry, lonely, or tired, and that they’re well prepared to make decisions that they never thought they’d have to make. You have to manage the policy process and make sure no one is gaming the president. And the last category is marketing and selling. If the president makes a decision and nobody knows about it, did the president make a decision?”
“Budgets are not about numbers,” says Lew. “They’re about values. It’s about what do you believe in, in a world of limited resources—what are the things you’re going to double down on, and what are the things you’re going to do less of.”
“As the president says, ‘Plan beats no plan.’
