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

by Chris Whipple

“We just didn’t test the system, right?” says McDonough. “That’s management failure one. Management failure two is that the way the government procures technology is to say, ‘This is what we need. Go build it.’ They procure by piece. And each piece, or each step, has to prove itself; otherwise, it doesn’t get paid. And so what we had in the Affordable Care Act was, there’s no general contractor, there’s nobody proofing the whole system. Everybody has their individual piece. The thing turns out to be a piece of shit. And everybody’s saying, ‘Well, what? My thing works.’ Right? And then this guy says, “Well, my thing works—so it must be him or him.’ Right?” The sum of the parts was a disaster. “And I’ll never forget that day, having to explain to the president that the problem is not because so many people want health care, it’s because the site is fundamentally flawed,” says McDonough. It was his lowest moment as chief. “Definitely. Walking down the hallway to tell the president, and not knowing whether I’d be coming back the next day. Yeah.”