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

by Chris Whipple

Now, in another time of crisis, Duberstein spoke first. “Always remember,” he said, looking at Emanuel, “that when you open your mouth, it is not you but the president who is speaking.” Emanuel stared back at him. “Oh, shit!” he said.

“You’ve got to slow down, and listen,” he said. “You’ve got a lot of smart people who are in that building with you. And you’ve got to resist the temptation to always have the answer. Slow down, listen. You’ll learn a lot and you’ll make better decisions.”

Some of the great blunders of modern history have happened because a chief of staff failed to tell the president what he did not want to hear.

And Haldeman, the consummate advance man, would take an important lesson to the White House: The president’s time is his most valuable asset.

“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.”

Nixon saw the White House as a Fortune 500 company, with the Oval Office as the corner office, and Haldeman as chief operating officer.

Our actions should portray the President as the President. He must be perceived as a leader; strong (sometimes tough), but fair…it is all well and good to have Americans “like” their president—but it is even more important that they respect him….Every day that we delay action is a day lost forever…we only have so many competent people and a limited amount of time. We can’t do everything. And shouldn’t try. • Speeches should be sent back when they aren’t good. • Deadlines should be set. • People who don’t perform well should be told so or fired. • There should be some pain for screwing up; not rewards. • When people bring minutia to you, you should say it is crap and shove it away.

As Kevin Mattson wrote, in “What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?”: 1979. A good year to pronounce the American century dead….Just as in Vietnam, America felt defeated by a third world country. Except here the damage was harsher for those at home….The age of limitless, low-price gas—what better symbol of American power than that?—had ended. As gas supplies dwindled, prices rose, and so would the general inflation rate up, up, up into double digits. The prosperity of the 1960s—when economic abundance raised tides and floated most boats—had collapsed…Americans looked like citizens occupying an empire in its final days.

On a legal pad, Baker noted: “About to inherit worst economic mess of any Pres. in 50 years. So first order of business—get a handle on the economy! Second: Our international position has deteriorated badly. (1) defenses weak (2) Our word is no longer trusted—because our diplomacy has been uncertain. RR [Ronald Reagan] wants to see flag of liberty flying once again around the world. Thinks U.S. has a special mission in lifting that banner.”

The most successful managers are those that are secure enough to surround themselves with extremely strong-willed, talented people.”

“You do not serve your president well if you are just a yes man,” explains Baker. “That’s not what presidents need; that’s not what presidents want. One of the things I am most proud of is that all of the presidents I have worked for have said, ‘Jim Baker was able to tell me what he really thought, whether I wanted to hear it or not.’ You have to be willing to do that. You have to be willing to speak truth to power.”

And Reagan was prepared to cut taxes, by making deals with Congress. Unlike many of his followers, the president was more interested in putting points on the board than in toeing some ideological line. “He knew when to hold ’em; he knew when to fold ’em,” says Baker. “He was a great negotiator. Reagan always said, ‘I’ll take eighty percent of what I want, and come back later for more.’ He never understood the diehards who would go off the cliff with their flags flying.”

Bowles’s first goal as deputy chief was to take control of Clinton himself. “The biggest asset you have is your president’s time,” he says. To figure out how that asset was being used, Bowles conducted a “time and motion” study of the president. “We went back and took all of the president’s old schedules and then we got the reality—because people record what the president actually does. We color-coded it: Foreign policy was red, economic policy was blue, and so on. The president wanted to focus on X, Y, and Z. By color-coding just what they had laid out, you could see that he wasn’t focusing on X, Y, and Z. And since there was a whole rainbow of colors every day, you could say: ‘Hey, how are you going to get a single message out when you’re doing six messages every day—or three messages every day? That’s crazy.’ ”

The entrepreneur–investment banker defined the job in corporate terms. “I always thought of the president as the CEO,” he says. “He’s the one that sets the agenda. It’s his presidency, not yours. And the job of the chief of staff is to be the chief operating officer—to make sure that if he sets the goals, you set the objectives, the timelines, and the accountability to make sure that what he wants done is done, when he wants it done, and is done right.”

“The truth is you can go to war a lot easier than you can do things domestically,” says Daley. “And that’s an irony of the situation we’re in. It is very easy to go to war. It is very difficult to affect things domestically because you must go to Congress.” To get anywhere with his agenda, Obama realized, something would have to change. He plunged into his reelection battle, hoping to change Congress.

McDonough will never forget the look in the president’s eyes after the first presidential debate in 2012, when he was outperformed by Mitt Romney. “He felt like he had let us down,” he says. But then resolve kicked in. “He was, like—I am determined as hell to get where I want to go. And it’s in a way that I’ve never seen—in sports, in life, in politics.” He chuckles, in disbelief. “This guy is, like, he knows where he’s going and he’s going to get there! We’ve all played sports with these guys. They’re not looking at the scoreboard, man. They’re just going to pummel whoever the f*ck is in front of them. And then they’ll figure out the score after that.” Sure enough, Obama pummeled Romney in the next debate and went on to win reelection.

“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.”