Guests, and then were going to talk a little bit, and were looking forward to having some of you ask questions as well. The reason im very excited about this book but also about our guests is its a rare thing to be good at Public Service, to be a person of action, and its also a rare thing to be a scholar and to be excellent at the study of something. And tevi troy and Kiron Skinner, both bring that to the table. Tevi was someone who worked in many places in Public Service from the congress to several departments, at the department of labor and department of hhs, but also, very importantly, at the white house which is what these books are about or this book and several of his other books. Hes also, again, an accomplished author whos written in addition to this piece on the white house about intellectuals in the white house as well as Emergency Preparedness in the white house and the use of social media by president s. So i hope you will take the time to listen but also to think about buying this book, fight house. Weve got fourth of july coming up, we have some more obscure events in the summer. Anytime is a good time to learn more about the white house and presidency. Kiron skinner or is also a person of action and scholarly repute. She is someone whos worked most recently in the white house, or in the state department as director of policy, served in a number of other administrations in the advisory and other roles as well as some president ial campaigns. But shes also the toby professor and director of the institute of politics and strategy at Carnegie Mellon university. There shes written books on Ronald Reagan and on Foreign Policy as well. So we really have a great lineup today. What were going to do is jump into the meat of the book. We want you to get a little sense from tevi as to whats in the book, what are the key points, and then i want to turn to kiron to hear her thoughts, and then well going to have a conversation. When i do come to you for questions, you have a number of ways of getting in touch with us. One is to submit questions in the Comment Section at facebook and also with the youtube chat function and, finally, on twitter at hashtag bpc live. So well look for your questions. But lets begin. Tevi, or this is a book, and youve written extensively on the white house, but what i like about the book is, of course, its about personalities and conflicts of important advisers in the white house, but its also a book about the presidency and the white house itself and how that institution has grown. My first question really is you point out that over the period youre talking about, start after fdr, the white house has really become a much bigger institution. It has more staff, its more prominent. And yet advisers there are often maybe younger than cabinet secretaries, but they often have the ear of the president. Tell us about the growth of the white house, its relation to the cabinet. And then, if you can, with the many examples you have in the book, a few of them just to give us a little sense of what some of those conflicts in that area were. Well, thanks, john. Thanks, kiron, for doing this. The book is, as you said, about the growth of the white house staff, the growth of the executive office of the president. Many people dont realize this, but before the fdr administration we really didnt have a white house staff, per se. People sometimes say, well, what about [inaudible] the truth is president s may have had a secretary or two, but in roosevelt you have something called the brown lowe commission, and the conclusion led to the creation of the executive office of the president which now has about 1800 people. Most of those 1800 are career staffers who Serve Administration in, administration out. But theres somewhere between 3400 who are what we would traditionally think of as white house staff. Sometimes a little younger. They have the advantage of what i call proximity. Theyre close to the president , but theyre not necessarily the person with the delegated authority to run an issue. However, their closeness to the president often creates channels for the cabinet secretary challenges for the cabinet secretary who is in charge and this idea of fighting for the white house. The first two president s i look at are truman and eisenhower. These guys are the first two president s to start with the white house staff. They had to think about how they wanted to create their white house staff, how they wanted it to be structured. And both of them, for the most part, were believers in cabinet government. The idea of cabinet government is that the cabinet officers are in charge of the respective areas, and the white house staff can help the president , can help guide, but really its the cabinet officers who are setting policy. And, in fact, eisenhower was known to tell cabinet officers who came to him with problems, hed say this is your area, you handle it, you work it out. That said, i do highlight a couple of instances where you did have cabinet secretaries kind of butting heads with white house staffers or people who seemed to be delegated by the president in a way thats different from what the cabinet government would seem to entail. In the truman administration, he was faced with the issue of whether to recognize [inaudible] today thats not such a political proposition, but at the time it was a big question mark for u. S. Policy. Most of the establishment was against it including George Marshall who was not only a war hero, but he was also the secretary of state and someone who truman revered more than anyone else in public life. Truman knew that he wanted to hear the other side of the issue, so he assigned clark clifford, relatively junior white house aide, to make the case for recognizing israel in a white house meaning where he would be joining up with marshall. Marshall was not interested and let the president knew it, he even said whats clifford doing here. But hes here, general, because i asked him to be here. The u. S. Obviously does recognize israel, but marshall was so angry that he lost this argument that he never again spoke to clifford or uttered his name for the rest of his like. Real quick story in the Eisenhower Administration is John Foster Dulles was the secretary of state, again, we have this is a frequent tension between secretary of state and white house people, and eisenhower decided to bring in harold stanton, former minnesota governor, to be negotiator on an arms deal specifically with the soviets. And the New York Times had a laudatory ed editorial when he came on board. This really [inaudible] foster dulles, and he was constantly trying to undercut him and managed to get rid of him. Even though these two prime ministers believe president s believed in cabinet government, it can sometimes 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 wanted to have a chief of staff the, a strong chief of staff, a gatekeeper who all things would go through that person, others didnt want a chief of staff at all or wanted a very loose operation, sometimes referred to as the spoke on the wheel theory where many people have access to the president. Tell us a little bit about that organization in the white house and how it affected some of the conflicts you highlighted in the book. Yeah, im glad you mentioned the chief of staff. People assume the chief of staff was always there, and that is not the case. The first one is under eisenhower, but they have this back and forth under the next three or four administrations where it wasnt clear if the chief of staff was going to be a recurring position in the white house hierarchy. After white house you had kennedy who did not have a chief of staff, and then nixon had very prominently h. R. Haldeman as chief of staff who was a kind of imperious fellow. And in the subsequent administration, kind of reacted against nixon and the imperial presidency, and ford, who had a chief of staff it was don rumsfeld but he called him staff coordinator. And jimmy carter, he didnt want to have a chief of staff, and that led to all kinds of challenges. So the Carter Administration starts without a chief of staff, reluctantly they come around to bringing in jordan who was strategist, that doesnt work out well, and then eventually you have jack lawson who had butted heads during the campaign of 1976 because watson was in charge of the transition, and all the Campaign People like you see today, the transition people were going to take their jobs while they are working to get the president elected. So watson eventually becomes chief of staff and is pretty good at it, so much so that when Ronald Reagan wins, he moves jack watson and says from what i hear, if you had had this position earlier, i might not be in this position right now, meaning if carter that had gone with him early on, he wouldnt have had lost the presidency and may have won a second term. So the chief of staff is an Important Role. Under the Reagan Administration you have jim baker who is widely regarded as the best chief of staff ever. And once he comes in and he does a really good job and you see what a good chief of staff can do, you basically had one consecutively in every administration. That doesnt mean that there respect problem arent problems. Jim bakers replacement did not get along are nearly as well with mrs. Reagan and, in fact, during the iran contra scandal, hangs up on mrs. Reagan when she is telling him to do something he doesnt want to do. Thats not just a firing offense, thats a hanging offense, said jim baker. He was fired, he didnt last much longer after that. But the chief of staff is an important position, can help control conflict, but at the same time sometimes they get involved in conflict as well. Great. So i asked you to give you 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 thats necessary . Do you need to manage it . Is it good to have a let . What would you say . Does out it depend on who whats your big [inaudible] knowing potentially very strong conflicts that, again, some examples from the book would be great. Yeah, sure. So, look, 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 vietnam. In fact, there were some people at the state department who were uncomfortable with the vietnam policy, and thaw formed a little group they formed a little group to discuss alternative policy options, but they were so nervous that johnson might find out about in that they called themselves the nongroup, and they met secretly so johnson wouldnt be aware of it and take revenge on them. That is way too much conflict aversion. On the other hand, in this i often [inaudible] before the administration, then you have kind of a wild, uncontrolled white house, and you have people leaking to the press, you have people not able to trust one another. And the Current Administration was like this because everyone thinks gerry ford, what a nice guy, but i think his niceness precolluded him from taking tough steps. A friend of ford who knew hum before he became president who was a very thinskinned and i go centric fellow. His nickname in the white house was s. O. B. ,. [inaudible] he used to joke that it stands for sweet old bob, but with we know that it didnt stand for that and he did, i think, as well. And ford was very reluctant to control hartley, and hartley would control the president ial inbox from his office which is the anteroom to the oval. Is so he even shared a bathroom with ford, which is unusual. What he would do by controlling the inboxes, if he saw something he didnt like, he would pull it out, and he would slip are it to political columnists. And then if he wrote something that he wanted to get to the president , he would ship it in without going through the staff secretary process. This was untenable, not manageable and, in fact, they decided they had to do something about out. Gerald ford was close to hartley, he didnt want to do anything about it, but the deputy chief of staff was a guy named dick cheney, who later became the youngest chief of staff in president ial history, but he was assigned a way to deal with the hartley problem, and one thing he did was booted hartley out of that anteroom next to the oval. He knew that he couldnt go to ford and say can we we get rid of your friend, he said, prime minister, you need mr. President , you need a room for quiet contemplation, ford agreed, and they needed that anteroom and hartley found that he was out of the office. So hartley didnt stay in the white house orbit, but he did stay in the orbit, but he no longer had that office where he was so problematic. Sometimes you need to take steps that are not necessarily what the president is able to articulate what he wants. I would say from group faith to extreme chaos, somewhere in the middle is a comfort zone. Sometimes you have a president whos willing to survive a little chaos or engender a little chaos in order to get better results. And this payment story is famous story is of bill clinton who loses the Midterm Election in 1994 because his taffe had drifted too far to the left. He knows he needs alternative voices. He secretly brings an adviser nicknamed charlie we found out later it was dick morris who was a longtime consultant to [inaudible] and charlie brings in these memos that are trying to drift clinton back towards the center. Clintons aides eventually e find out, they leak it to the new yorker that dick morris is advising the president , and people like stephanopoulos, George Stephanopoulos and harold ickes, among the more liberal white house aides, are [inaudible] morris the entire time hes in the white house. And stephanopoulos whose memoir an excellent book, by the way he talks about how much he dislikes morris. But at the end he even notes that clinton, by bringing in this outside force, got better results from his staff. Sometimes the president recognizes there are benefits in fostering a little bit of chaos in order to get better [inaudible] thanks, tevi. I think youve given a pretty good sense of some of whats in the book. Theres a lot more for the audience with, so 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 i want to remind you as the audience that were going to be coming to you for questions, submit in the Comment Section of facebook, the youtube chat function and through twitter at the handle hashtag bpc live. So, kiron, you have all sorts of experience and scholarly work in this lawyer. First, some in this area. First, some broad thoughts for tevi about the book, and then if you want to share some of your experiences in the trump or Reagan Administrations, well love to have that wed love to have that. First of all, id like to thank you for the work that you do across the political divide to bring us together to talk about these policy tissue issues policy issues. And tevis book, to me, is just a great demonstration of what you stand for and believe in. Hes looking at democrats and republicans in the white house, how they addressed in a scholarly way, not making judgments along ideological lines. That being said, i would like to ask tevi about his, and comment on, the model that he is sets up for his analysis. He talks about three big factors that govern his work as he looked at the white house. One, he a talked about ideological fighting. He was interested also, second, in administrative and Decision Making 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 and say 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 mentioned evans and novack many of us are old enough to remember those amazing columns, and we waits for what they were going to say next and the scoop. But when you think about the role of leakers in the Public Policy process, do they do something thats important for outcomes . Or are they just a nuisance, and do they corrupt and corrode and destroy the democratic process . Those are two big areas id like to have a conversation about. Thats great. Thank you for your careful read, kiron, and for your scholarship which ive enjoyed over the years. So i think you correctly note that i have three levers in the book that president s have in their purview to address. Comity. If you have a team that get along ideologically, you are going to see less fighting because they generally [inaudible] number two is process. If you have a process whereby people can get their voices heard and is have their thoughts expressed to the president even if they dont win at the end of the day, they have a fair process, theyre more likely to lock arms at the 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. And the third is president ial tolerance. If the president is tolerant of infighting, then youre going to have more of it. If the president doesnt want to see it [inaudible] obama had the famous 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 melissa [inaudible] he didnt like something hed written about her, and he wrote a blistering email to many of the white house staff complaining about the way she was treated, and she thought that somebody leak ared on her. And obama calls her in to the oval office which isnt that unusual because shes deputy chief of staff, but she doesnt know why. He says to her that was quite an email you sent. And she was shocked that the president even bothered knowing about emails, but it sent a very clear signal, i dont want to see these kind of shenanigans in the white house. So those three are the levers