Here before . I am preaching to the choir. I was going to tell you i was looking, the Pulitzer Prize winners were recently announced. There were five books nominated for a pulitzer or won Pulitzer Prizes. I was talking to frank reese, our partner in this and i said i dont know. We must be slipping. We only have three of those five to show and one of those was poetry and we dont do a lot of poetry. I told him we better do well this next year and get all five. Chris whipple is no stranger to awards. Hes a filmmaker, writer, journalist, he started his career in washington dc with richard holbrook, Foreign Policy magazine. He was a correspondent for life magazine. I am very envious. He spent 20 years at 60 minutes, he was that abc news, won multiple emmy awards and peabodys, an investigative journalist, the journalism award, he is executive producer of programs like spymaster, cia and crosshairs and the gatekeepers how the white house chiefs of staff define every presidency which led to this book. One of the chiefs of staff that has been rated one of the three best chief of staff in modern history is that gentleman right over there, jack watson. [applause] jack served in governor jimmy carters administration and went to washington with him, he served as the president ial assistance for intergovernmental relations, secretary of the cabinet before being named chief of staff during the carter presidency and he was in charge of the transition to the reagan presidency so thank you both. You call the chief of staff the second most powerful person in washington but it is a person that is not elected. People dont know the individuals name. How did he get to be the second most powerful person in washington . There is nothing in the constitution about a chief of staff. It was the invention of dwight eisenhower. He appointed a guy named Sherman Adams who was so famously gruff and tough that they called him the abominable knowman. I started with hr haldeman who was nixons white house chief, nixon is a fascinating character because as you know, he became the poster boy for watergate, the worst scandal in American History and jack would tell you and many of his successors would tell you that he really created the template for the modern white house chief, the empowered white house chief who is the president s gatekeeper, the honest broker, we hope, of information that flows to the president and at the end of today he executes the president s agenda. That has been true since haldeman and also been true that every president who strays too far from that template regret it. We can talk about that. Let me add that what a delight it is to be here at the Carter Library where i spent many days digging through the archives and reading jacks memos to the president and reading resident jimmy carter here as well but if the book sheds light on the white house chiefs, that is because of this guy and 16 other living white house chiefs who i tried to channel them and they are honest brokers and i tried to be what is the chiefs day like . It is never the same. Jimmy carter was a very early riser and i always made it a point to be in my office if he was in his office which meant that i was frequently in my office by 6 00 am. Not necessarily meeting with him but there for him, reading briefing papers that would later be discussed with him but white house chief of staff, every day on different things, Pay Attention to how things are getting done following up with the implementation of policy, checking what is going on on the hill, you have a subgroup of people in the white house staff who are responsible for congressional relations, but in our case and some other chiefs cases, we had a little group that would discuss issues on the hill, what is coming up, who is for something and who is against, what do we have to trade to get someones vote, that kind of thing. The difference between then and now is a chasm. It is a chasm of immeasurable magnitude. One of the things president elect carter had you do was map out a strategy, a structure for the white house staff. What were you trying to but it how do you make it work . Let me step back a halfstep and be quick about this. When jimmy won the primary on april 30, 1976, all of us, frank more and i and others had been working very hard throughout the democratic primaries but when jimmy won the pennsylvania primary, Scoop Jackson was very popular with labor, i had a kind of the tiffany and i thought my goodness, this man is actually going to be president , goodness gracious. I wrote him the middle of the address and suggested for passing on to governor carter forgive me for calling him jimmy and i was saying we need to do some transition planning. You have never been in the federal government except as a naval officer, never been in the cabinet, never been in congress, have not been a national figure. Governor carter did not have a national network. He was building it day by day literally from scratch and as many of you in this room will remember, the joke of the day was jimmy who, running for what . He approved of my suggestion. He asked me to start fleshing that out more and i did flesh it out more and on june 9th after the june 8th primaries when he locked the number of delegates he needed to win the nomination he called me from the plane and said i am going to be in atlanta tomorrow at the Biltmore Hotel giving a speech at lunch. Will you fly down with me . I want to talk about the transition planning, that group came to be called the Carter Mondale policy planning group. Preelection transition planning. Charlie brown airport, single engine plane, chris knows the story. We were sitting in a tiny single engine plane almost need to knee wondering if we would do what you outlined. I was really thrilled about it. I had in mind that i would assist whoever prominent person he was going to appoint as head of the transition. I thought it to be a man of National Stature like john gardner. Jimmy said no, you are going to do it. I said oh no, no. That is a big mistake. Nobody knows me. I dont know anybody. No. That is a very bad idea. He said i know you, you know me. I trust you and you trust me so you are going to do it. He said dont worry about not knowing anybody or being known. Anybody, when you call, once they know what you are doing, will return your phone call. That is how it worked. That didnt sit well with the rest of the campaign. Not only did they return his phone calls but when jack as president carters emissary to official washington started meeting with the Clark Cliffords and the powers that be in washington, he charmed them. Jack can charm the birds out of the trees and you know. Everybody was thinking as one person put it, here they come, shoeless rubes from georgia, Andrew Jackson all over again. Jack watson was there to reassure them if they are like this guy we are fine. Interestingly as you say, theres always as i learned in doing this research from haldeman to the present, theres always this tension between the true believers, the Campaign Staffers and people who are trying to figure out how to govern and we see it time and time and time again and we see it at the present day. It is not new. Jack experienced it. These campaigners, jody powell and others who were working around the clock campaigning from motel to motel, they got wind of the fact that somebody was putting together this transition and hiring people and there was a revolt. What happened at that point was, i think, very telling and very formative for the carter presidency because ham, who famously said if we hire fire ants as secretary of state we will have failed. What happened was jimmy carter really cast his lot with him and the campaigners at that point and it is not that jack was doing phenomenal work preparing the transition, probably the best transition preparation in history and yet what happened at that point was carter came in with ham as the chief of staff, a lot of people thought jack would be the logical choice as the chief and ham became the they facto chief and it wasnt the job ham was suited for. Ham was the most brilliant political strategist who ever came down the pike but he should have in my humble opinion been the karl rove in that white house instead of the chief of staff and 21 2 years in, jimmy carter realized he had to appoint a chief of staff and appointed ham as you know, long story, but ultimately appointed jack for the last year of the presidency. As part of the transition materials, the transition materials were covering National Security and environmental and government reorganization and economic policy, Development Policy and so forth. The piece i wrote what the organization of the executive office of the president. A word about him. Chris is absolutely right when he says that ham was a brilliant strategist. He wrote well, he was a savvy thinker in the political realm. He had written that iconic memorandum for governor carter two years before he ran, for outlining how he would do it. So, ham was the closest person to the president among all of us, ham and jody. Jody was the best White House Press secretary, i think, that a president has ever had, and i dont say that lightly and dont say it because i have not looked at others or because there werent other good ones. In my opinion, there has never been a better press secretary than jody powell. I knew that hams role with the president was going to be an Important Role in the house, strategic adviser, political adviser, tactical adviser. With wham with ham himself, if he were sitting on his stage with us, as i wish he were, he would say i didnt want to be chief of staff. I was not cut out for it. Didnt play to my strengths. And it took us a while to sort of work our way through that. For the first twoplus years of the administration there was not a formal white house chief of staff. And more fundamentally, jimmy carter didnt want a white house chief of staff, and correct me if im wrong but i think it was the example of haldeman, haldeman had become haldeman somehow in jimmy carters mind personifyied watergate and the corruption of the Nixon White House, and he wanted nothing to do with that, and i think he also thought he was he could run the white house himself. He wanted to do what jerry gerry ford had done. Gerry ford had the model of the spokes of the. We five or six or seven advisers with equal access, coming and going, and for ford it was a disaster. Within a month ford realized this was chaotic, dysfunctional. He had no time to think. It was like learning drinking from a fire hose, and he reached out to don rumsfeld and powered him as chief, and that was a month in. But in jimmy carters case it was two and a half years. I agree. The Carter Administration was really warned that spokes of the wheel doesnt work. Dick cheny was telling jack almost every day. He was. And he left when he actually took over and moved in on january 20th, when we moved into the west wing, there was a broken bicycle wheel that the spokes were broken and it was twisted and y she said this is what the spokes of the wheel look is like. He wrote a note dear ham, beware the spokes of the wheel. Dick cheney. Another reason that president carter was reluctant to have a first among equals of chief of staff designated, and that was that he had had for some time very close and personal and professional more professional relationships with about six of us, seven of us. Stew and ham and jody and myself and frank moore, bob, white House Counsel to begin with. And he did not want to interpose any one of us between that group of people and himself. Think that was a factor for president carter. I think that it was not a good decision in my opinion, but it was a decision the president made and it was his to make. But he also is a very detailed person. He wanted to be involved in everything, and in fact, chris, you write the president personally signed off on everything from typos in memos to requests to play on the White House Tennis Court. Carter could not perform his president ial duties and also run the white house staff. He famously hated typos. He famously sent memos back with corrections on everything. Jack and i had have what talk about this a long time but you said to me, the didnt schedule the White House Tennis Court . Host i believed him until i found the memo. I was digging in the archives and there it was, you must consult personally with the from schedule time on the White House Tennis Court. So but anyway, at one point, as jack said, to me, jimmy carter was the most intelligent profit the 20th century. Craig ran graham said so. Tip oneill said he was the most intelligence president. Jack he could consume amazing quantities of information and assimilate them and use them. But i was having a conversation with Brent Scowcroft at one point, bush 41s amazing National Security adviser, and he said, you know, zbiey and i were talking and he said, love this guy. Can give him a 50page memo in the afternoon and i get it back the next morning with notes in the margins on every page. And scowcroft said, thats the worst thing you can possibly do. He done have time for that. Jimmy carter, i think, got bogged down in the minutiae. In fairness, as stu will give you chapter and verse and im sure jack could, too, on all the legislation that was passed early in the carter more legislation than any president since lbj, but he couldnt prioritize. You need a chief of staff to prioritize, to make sure that the narrative is consistent, make sure that everybody is on the same page. None of that is happening clearly in the present day, but he suffered from not having a white house chief from day one, and in my opinion, jack would have been a great one. One of the things when you start out your book you talk about what seems like just the most logical kind of meeting in advance of an administration taking office, and that is bringing former chiefs of staff together and in this case it was to get rahm emanuel. Yeah to bring him up to speed and had most of the chiefs of staff there to give him advice. Jack, you were there what was it like, the meeting . It was funny. December 5, 2008, josh bolton, who was the president s chief of staff, outgoing president chief of staff, george w. , gathered the group and maybe 13 or 14 of thus, i think, sat around the table in the chief of staffs office, having breakfast and talking. Rahm was sitting next to me at the meeting. We just went around the table and each one of us made a brief, very brief, statement of some little piece of advice that we thought was helpful or that would give some guidance, some of it humorous, a lot of it humorous. An example, when it got around to dick cheney, you will remember he was the Vice President and in and a hell of a chief of staff for gerry ford. For gerry ford. The chief of staff i meant when we were elected. When it got around to dick, who was at the end of the table, almost the very end, dick is an interesting man. He leaned forward like this and he said, i have one piece of advice. Keep your Vice President under control. [laughter] the other piece of advice i loved was kens he was reagans final chief, and he is a great storyteller. And anyway, he looked very gravely at rahm and said, never forget that when you open your mouth its not you who is speaking but the president of the United States to which rahm said, oh, blank, and brought down the house. But there was some serious advice. We did the same thing, incidentally, in december just this past december, and all of us had gathered at the invitation of dennis mcdonagh, president obamas laster chief and it was a luncheon meeting, a similar format, and Reince Priebus was there as the chief designate and all of us he was serious him had thought about it. Had some questions he brought to ask us. So this was a meeting he was not doing as a pro forma thing. He obviously came to the meeting intending to listen and to ask some questions, which he did. I will also say that i think i can speak for every one of the former chiefs in the room when i say all of us knew, given the nature and the character and the personality of the president that he was about to serve, that he was going to have a Herculean Task as chief of staff because issue in order for the chief of staff to operate effectively, in order for him or her, as some time in the future, to do the job, the president has to empower the chief to do it. He has to make clear to everyone that the authority and responsibility delegated to the chief are clear and unequivocal, and getting that kind of delegation from president trump, to his chief, obviously hasnt happened yet. Well in fact i think in some of the comments that have been made about the book and following that, the sorts of things of chiefs of staff looking at executive orders. Vetting them ahead of time and that sort of thing, that would be normal process. No competent white house chief would allow an executive order on immigration, which was a key Campaign Pledge to go out into the world scrawled on the back of an envelope and not vetted by the departments in charge of enforcement. But so its been rookie mistake after rookie mistake. Jack, im sure, will be a diplomat but i have to say that this is the most dysfunctional white house in modern history, hands down. Ineptitude that is off the charts. And but as jack says, ultimately donald trump has to decide whether he wants to have a grownup in the room. We have seen seems to me we have seen white houses that this is a whole new level but we have seen white houses torn by struggles. The Reagan White House jim baker really faced he was under attack from the socalled true believers, the hard right ideologies in that administration. He had family to deal with. Nancy reagan was famously the personnel director. Michael devery, dep the chief deputy chief was packly family. Baker was savvy enough for form alliances with nancy and mike deaver and then when