White House Chief of Staff

Historical background

Originally, the duties now performed by the chief of staff belonged to the president's private secretary and were fulfilled by crucial confidantes and policy advisers such as George B. Cortelyou, Joseph Tumulty, and Louis McHenry Howe to presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, respectively. The private secretary served as the president's de facto chief aide, in a role that combined personal and professional assignments of highly delicate and demanding natures, requiring great skill and utmost discretion. The job of gatekeeper and overseeing the president's schedule was separately delegated to the appointments secretary, as with aide Edwin "Pa" Watson.

From 1933 to 1939, as he greatly expanded the scope of the federal government's policies and powers in response to the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt relied on his 'Brain Trust' of top advisers. Although working directly for the president, they were often appointed to vacant positions in federal agencies and departments, whence they drew their salaries since the White House lacked statutory or budgetary authority to create staff positions. It was not until 1939, during Roosevelt's second term in office, that the foundations of the modern White House staff were created using a formal structure. Roosevelt was able to persuade Congress to approve the creation of the Executive Office of the President, which would report directly to the president. During World War II, Roosevelt created the position of "Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief" for his principal military adviser, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy.

In 1946, in response to the rapid growth of the U.S. government's executive branch, the position of "Assistant to the President of the United States" was established. Charged with the affairs of the White House, it was the immediate predecessor to the modern chief of staff. It was in 1953, under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that the president's preeminent assistant was designated the "White House chief of staff".

Assistant to the president became a rank generally shared by the chief of staff along with the other most senior presidential aides such as the White House counsel, the White House press secretary, and others. This new system did not catch on immediately however. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson still relied on their appointments secretaries instead, and it was not until the Nixon administration that the chief of staff took over maintenance of the president's schedule. This concentration of power in the Nixon and Ford White House (whose last chief of staff was Dick Cheney) led presidential candidate Jimmy Carter to campaign in 1976 with the promise that he would not appoint a chief of staff. And indeed, for the first two and a half years of his presidency, he appointed no one to the post.

Average tenure in office

The average tenure for a White House chief of staff is just over 18 months. The inaugural chief of staff, John R. Steelman, under Harry S. Truman, was the president's only chief of staff; Kenneth O'Donnell alone served in the position during John F. Kennedy's unfinished term of 34 months in office. Andrew Card and Denis McDonough each served at least one entire presidential term of office under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively.

Role

Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, loosely describes the role of a White House chief of staff through his interview with former president Barack Obama:

The responsibilities of the chief of staff are both managerial and advisory and may include the following:

• Selecting senior White House staffers and supervising their offices' activities
• Managing and designing the overall structure of the White House staff system
• Control the flow of people into the Oval Office
• Manage the flow of information to and decisions from the Resolute desk (with the White House staff secretary)
• Directing, managing and overseeing all policy development
• Protecting the political interests of the president
• Negotiating legislation and appropriating funds with United States Congress leaders, Cabinet secretaries, and extra-governmental political groups to implement the president's agenda
• Advise on any and usually various issues set by the president

These responsibilities have recently extended to firing of senior staff members. In the case of Omarosa Manigault Newman, who published a tape she alleged was made in the Situation Room of her firing by Chief of Staff John Kelly, the chief of staff said that his decision for her departure was non-negotiable and that "the staff and everyone on the staff works for me and not the president."

Richard Nixon's first chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, garnered a reputation in Washington for the iron hand he wielded in the position. Referring to himself as "the president's son-of-a-bitch", he was a rigid gatekeeper who would frequently meet with administration officials in place of the president, and then report to Nixon on the officials' talking points himself. Journalist Bob Woodward, in his books All the President's Men (1974) and The Secret Man (2005), wrote that many of his sources, including Mark Felt, later revealed as "Deep Throat", displayed a genuine fear of Haldeman.

List of White House chiefs of staff

References

References

1. (December 17, 1934). "New Quarters".
2. (August 20, 1923). "An Appointment".
3. Hassett, William D.. (1958). "Off the Record with FDR 1942–1945". Rutgers University Press.
4. Lyman, Rick. (May 21, 2008). "Hamilton Jordan, Carter's Right Hand, Dies at 63". The New York Times.
5. Michael Nelson. (2013). "The Presidency and the Political System". SAGE Publications.
6. Whipple, Chris (2017). [https://archive.org/details/gatekeepershowwh0000whip_y5l4 ''The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency''] {{Registration required. New York: Crown Publishing Group. {{ISBN. 9780804138246. {{OCLC. 953597729.
7. (August 13, 2018). "Transcript". [[CNN]].
8. [[Bob Woodward. Woodward, Bob]]; [[Carl Bernstein. Bernstein, Carl]] (1974). ''[[All the President's Men]]''. New York: [[Simon & Schuster]]. {{ISBN. 978-0-671-21781-5.
9. Woodward, Bob (2005). ''The Secret Man''. New York: Simon & Schuster. {{ISBN. 0-7432-8715-0.