gatekeepers matter

Now, in addition to all the books chronicling recent presidents and their national security advisers, we have a valuable book looking at recent presidencies by telling the stories of their chiefs of staff. Journalist and documentary filmmaker Chris Whipple has written The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define every Presidency.

Whipple notes that presidents with weak chiefs of staff had problems, especially chaos and conflict. Strong chiefs managed the flow of information, saving the president from minutiae, and better assured completion of decided policies. He starts his book with Bob Haldeman of the Nixon Administration, arguing without trying to prove that the spokes of the wheel approaches by Kennedy and Johnson didn't work well. I don't agree with that, but I am persuaded that Nixon had a good system [for flawed policies] and Jimmy Carter, who was his own chief, failed in part because of that arrangement.

The book makes it easier to assess the Trump system, with a nominal chief but several others vying for primus inter pares. If history is a reliable guide, things don't look good for the Trump White House.