Rare thing to be a scholar and excellent the study of something, and tevi and kiron bring that to the table. Tevi was someone who worked in many places in public service, some in congress, to several departments of the department of labor and the department of hhs and at the white house, which is what these books are about, this book and several other books. Also an accomplished author oh has written in addition to thats piece on the white house, piece odd intellectuals in white house as well as Emergency Preparedness in the white house, and the use of social media by president s. I hope youll take the time to listen and to think but buying this book fight house. We have fourth of july coming up. Anytime is a good time to learn about the white house and presidencies. Kiron skinner is a person of action and of scholarly repute, she is someone who is worked most recently in the white house, or in the state department as a director of policy and planning. Served in a number of other White House White house or administrations in advisory and other roles and on president ial campaigns and also the toby over and director of then constitute of politics and strategy at Carnegie Melon University harks written books on reagan and Foreign Policy as well. So we have great lineup today. Well jump into the meat of the poock. We want you to get a sense from tevi what is the book and the key points and then i want to turn to kiron to hear her thoughts and have conversation and then turn to you. What i do come to you for questions, you have a number of wehwehs to get in touch and ones to submit questions in the Comment Section at facebook, and also with the youtube chat function and on twitter at bpc live so well look for you questions. Tevi, this is a book and you have written extensively on the white house. But what i like is of course its about personalities and conflicts and important advisers in the white house and also a book but the presidency and the white house itself. It says a lot how the institution has grown and my first question is, you point out that over the period youre talking about, starring after fdr, the white house has back much bigger institution. It has more staff, more prominent. And yet the advisers are often maybe younger than cabinet secretaries and often have the ear of the president. Tell me about the froth of the white house and the relationship to cabinet and then a few of anecdotes to give us a sense of conflicts. Thanks for doing this. The book is really as you said beaut the growth of the white house staff, the threat get to of the executive office and the president. People dont realize before fdr and franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt we didnt have staff in the white house. President s may have had a secretary or two, but in roosevelt, you had something calls the brown lo commission and the commission had a famous fourword conclusion, the president needs help and that conclusion led the creation of the executive office of the president which now has 1800 people. Most of the 1800 are career staffers who Serve Administration in and administration out and thats 300 to 400 what we think of as white house staff. Million odd people who you correctly note are sometimes younger, have the advantage of what i call proximity. Theyre close to the president but not necessarily the person with he delegated authority to run an issue but their very closeness to the president often creates challenges for the cabinet secretary in charge of the area and for the whole idea of fighting within the white house. So the first two president s look at are truman and eisenhower and the both are the first two president s who start with a white house staff. Had to think how to create their white house staff, wanted to have a structure and boast both of them for the most part believe in cabinet government. The cabinet officers are in charge of the respective areas and the white house staff can help the president , can help guide, put really is the cabinet ofs setting policy and eisenhower was known to tell cabinet officer who came to women if problems and he would say this is your yeah, you work it out. I point out where you did have cabinet secretaries kind of butting heads with white house staffer or people delegated by the president in a way that was different from what the cabinet government would seem to entail. One story i tell in the Truman Administration is that truman was facing the issue of whether to recognize israel. Today thats not such a controversial proposition because its a close al ally of us but at the time it was a big question mark and most of the National Security establish was against it including george marshal, the secretary of state who would revered more than anyone necessary public life. Truman new knew he wanted to hear the other side of the issue and assigned Clark Clifford to make the casimere recognizing israel in a white house meeting where he would run up against marshall. Marshall was not that interested in having a junior white house aide weighing in on the issue and let the president know it. What is delivered doing her, he said but truman said hes here because i asked him to do. Clifford makes the craig for recognizing israel and marshall was angry the lost the argument but he never again spoke to clifford or uttered his name. In the eisenhower administration, john foster dulles, the secretary of state, frequent eisenhower decided to bring in harold strassen to be foreyoure original arms deal width the russias. And he was called the secretary of peace. Irk foster dullless who said what does this make me, the secretary of war . He was trying to underconfident stassen and got rid of hill. You have he spence of people designate bed the president can run afoul of the cabinet secretary and create some tension. Great. So another theme that you address is how a president has centralized authority or not within his white house. Some president s at least wanted to have a chief of staff, a strong chief of staff, a get akeeper who all things would go through the person, others didnt want a chief of staff at all or a very loose operation. Sometimes revved to as the spokes on the wheel theory where many people have access the president. Tell us about that organization of the white house and how it affected some of the conflicts in the book. You mention the chief of staff. People assume the chief of staff is always there and its not the case. He first from inept one was adams under eisenhower and then a back and forth writ wasnt clear that the chief of staff was going to be a recurrent position in the white house hierarchy. After eisenhower you had ken who did idea waugh said, spokes on the wheel. Did not have a chief of staff, and then nixon has very prominently hr hadman as chief of standard who is a very kind of in the swept administration, kind of ranged against nixon in the imperial presidency and you first had ford who had a chief of staff, don rumsfeld but he called hmm the staff coordinator and then judgmenty carter didnt want to have a chief of staff and that led to challenges. So the Carter Administration starts without a chief of staff, relook cant dicome around to bringing in jordan that didnt work out and then you have jack watson the chief of staff. He butted heads with Hamilton Jordan during the campaign of 1976 because watson was good charge of the transition and all the campaign people, like you see today, and even the modern era were worried the transition people were going to take the jobs so watson becomes chief of staff and when Ronald Reagan wins he meets jack watson and says to him from what i have you had had this position earlier, i might not be in this position right now. Meaning if carter hadwith a chief of star early on he wouldnt have had an ineffective presidency and may have won a second term. The chief of staff is an Important Role. Under the Reagan Administration you have james baker as recorded one of the best chief of staffs ever and when we comes in and see what a good chief of staff can do you had a chief of staff consecutively in every administration since. That doesnt mean there arent problems. Don regan replaced jim baker as chief of staff, not nearly as effective, didnt get along nearly as well with mrs. Reagan who was important and during the irancontra scandal he hangs occupy on mrs. Reagan and jim baker who was the previous chief of staff hears and says hanging up on the first lady, thats not just a firing offense, thats a hanging offense. And indeed, while don regan was no hangs he was fired. So the chief of staff is an important portion but sometimes that get involved in the conflict. Great. So, if i ask you to give advice to a president , an incoming president , and especially with respect to how you deal with conflict in the white house, is it a thing that is necessary . Do you need to manage . Is it go to have a little . What would you say, depend on who the president is . Whats your big advice for a president really able to run a white house well, knowing there are potentially these very strong conflict outside detail in the book and some examples from the book would be great. Sure. So, theres a continuum. On one side you have absolutely no conflict and that leads to group think. You saw in the johnson administration, johnson didnt want to hear opposing voices on the vietnam, majorrized people who tried to raise countervailing voices and some people at the state department who were uncomfortable with the vietnam policy and they formed a little group to discuss alternative policy options but were so nervous that johnson might fine out they call he themselves the nongroup and met secretly so johnson wouldnt be aware of and if it take revenge on them. So that is group think and that ties much conflict aversion. On the other hand, too muff conflict and i think of the Ford Administration, yep you have kind of a wild uncontrolled white house and you have people leaking to the press and people not able to trust one another and the Ford Administration is audit was like this because everybody thinks ferry ford was a niles but this niceness reincluded him from taking tough stephs to controlled the fighting and a man who was a friend of ford who was a very thin skinned and ego centric fellow and his nick name was sob and to the jurors it stands for sweet old bob. We know it didnt stand for that and he did as well. Ford was very reluctant to control hartman and hartman would control the president ial in box from his office which is the antiroom to the oval so he even shared a bathroom with ford, which is a usual breach of protocol. He would control the in box. I he saw something go in president in become he dont know would up it out and leak it to novak and then if the saw something he want he would slip it into the in box and this is untenable, not manageable, and in fact they thought they had to do something about it and gerald ford was close to hartman and didnt want to do anything but the deputy chief of staff named dick cheney who became the chief of staff, the youngest chief of and a half president ial history but cheney was assigned with figuring out how to deal with hartman and the kind of booted hartman out of the anteroom next to oval and knew he cant say to ford can we get ridoff your friend but the said you need a room for quite contemplation, ford agreed and then they made that anteroom the ford con september playing room and hartman found he was another of an office. So hartman didnt stay in the white house orbit but no longer had the office from where he was being so problematic so sometimes you need to take steps that are not necessarily what the president is willing to articulate what he wants in order to address it. I would say in that continuum from group think to extreme choose, somewhere in the middle is a comfortable soap and sometime you have a president who is willing to survive a little chaos or actually engender a little chaos in order to get better results, and this the famous stories of bill clinton who loses the Midterm Election in 1994 because his staff hat drifted too far to the left. He knows he needs alternative voices and brings in an advicer charlie, dick morris, who was a long standing political consultant to clinton and had been a republican political consul tap at times in his career, and charlie brings in these memos that are trying to drift clinton back towards the center. Clintons aides dont like it and find out who charlie is, and leak to the press and the new yorker that dick morris is advice toking the. And people like George Stephanopoulos and other lib rallying white house i. E. D. Es are going at it hammer and tongue with morris the spire time he is in white house, and stephanopoulos, his memoir talk about how much he dislikes morris but he notes that clinton by bringing in the outside force got to getter result from his staff. So sometimes the president recognizes there are benefits to fostering a little chaos to get better results. Thanks, teviment you have given a pretty good sense of some of what is in the book. Theres certainly more reason to go out and buy that book. Im going to do two things. Im going to turn to kiron in one second but first i want to remind you well be coming to you later for questions and how you do that, submit your questions in the Comment Section of facebook, you can do so in the youtube chat function and through twitter at the handle, bpclive. Kiron you have experience in this area. First, some broad thoughts but the book and then if you want to share your experiences in the the trump or Reagan Administrations wed love to hear that. Id like to thank you all at the Bipartisan Center for doing this book event and for the work you do across the political divide to bring us together to talk about big policy issues, and tevis book to me is just a great demonstration of what you stand for and believe in. Looking at democrats and republicans in the white house, how they interact in a scholarly way; not making judgments along ideological lines. That being said i would like to ask tevi about and comment on the model he sets up for his analysis. He tacks about three big factors that govern his work as he looked at the white house. One he talked about ideological fighting. He was interested also, second, in administrative decisionmaking process, and then finally, he talked about just the broader category of infighting. Im interested, tevi, if you could take a higher altitude to look inside which variable do you think has the best outcome for Public Policy in the white house . Id like to start there. I think thats a fascinating way of looking and framing what goes on in the white house. Relatedly, im interested, since you henningsed evan and novak, many of us old enough to remember those amazing columns we waited for what they were going say next and for their scoop. What you think about the role of leaking and leakers in the Public Policy process. Do they do something that is important for outcome . Or are they just a nuisance and do they corrupt and corrode and destroy the democratic process. Those or two big areas id like to have a conversation about. That is great. Thank you for your careful read and for your scholarship which i enjoy over the years. So, i think you correctly note i have three levers in the book that president s have in their purview to address conflict, number one is ideological comity. If you have a team that gets long ideologically youll see less fighting because the agreeing. Number two the process. I you have process whereby people can get their voices heard and have their thoughts expressed to the president , even if they dont win at the end of the day they had a fair process, theyre more likely to lock arm ted end of the discussion and say, okay, the president decided. I had my chance and were going to accept this as the president s policy judgment. The third is president ial power. If i. Ing willing to see more infighting and tolerant of innighting youll have more and if a practice in con tsa says i dont want to see it and the latest example is obama, no drama obama he made it clear he did not want to see infighting in the white house and theres a great story i have in the book of didnt like something that was written about her and she wrote a blistering email to many of the white house staff complaining about the wail she was treated and thought that somebody leaked on her. Obama called her into the oval office which is not that unusual because she is deputy chief of staff and, but the she doesnt know why and he says that was quite an email you sent and she was shocked the president bothered knowing but emails she was sending but sent a very clear signal i dont want to see this kind of shenanigan in the white house. So those three are the levers a president has to control. In terms of which one has the best policy result, i think its hard to say. I think ideological alignment is helpful because then you know where the president wants to go with them. Reagan for example, peggy noonan said even though was fight neglect reagan white house, the idea of reagan rules, meaning that people knew generally where reagan wants to good and so even though people might have fought over titles or stature, the fact that where they were going in a general policy direction was well i think the process one is extremely important. The administration which i worked was the george w. Bush administration and process was extremely important and anyone that committed what was called a process that went round the process and circumvented. Then president ial powers set the tone. If you force me to rank them i would put the process first, and i think with respect to your second question but the press, i think the press plays an Important Role. I think we need to have a press that lets us know what is going on, and i think we know more about fighting in the white house today than we did in previous eras because in part theres the press and you mentioned evans and novak. With each fight i look at in the book i went and looked up to see if evans and novak wrote any columns an that fight and they invery invariably did and the publisher of the book, alex novak, and i think you he leaked the fact i was looking at his fathers columns and he was the preface to the book. I think the press plays an Importan