when dwight d. eisenhower was elected in 1952, harry truman opined that his successor would quickly learn that a general has more power than a president. <u+201c>poor ike,<u+201d> said truman. <u+201c>when he was a general, he gave an order and it was carried out. now he<u+2019>s going to sit in that big office and he<u+2019>ll give an order and not a damn thing is going to happen.<u+201d> the anecdote comes by way of the late peter drucker in one of his many books on the theory and practice of management. it holds a timely resonance for president-elect donald trump. though mr. trump has never commanded armies, as a business leader he presides over a corporate structure whose clear chain of command is more like the military<u+2019>s than either are to the presidency. in other words, if campaign slogans are to be translated into policy, mr. trump will need to adapt to a very different type of executive leadership. and here the most important of the many decisions he will have to make about his administration is whom to pick as his chief of staff. the chief of staff position dates to 1939 under fdr, but even so recent a president as jimmy carter did without one for parts of his administration. today the responsibilities have grown to the point where it is often called the second-toughest job in washington. this is an understatement. james a. baker iii, who served as ronald reagan <u+2019>s chief of staff for reagan<u+2019>s first term, describes the post this way: <u+201c>an effective white house chief of staff must be tireless, fearless and selfless. the job has a brutal work schedule that requires long hours of work. sometimes days can go by with little more than occasional catnaps. you must have nerves of steel [and] self-doubt is not a good requirement for the job.<u+201d> during his campaign for the white house, a president runs with a vice president as his partner. but once in office the chief of staff serves as his real no. 2, at least when it comes to running the day-to-day operations of the white house<u+2014>and pushing his president<u+2019>s priorities through congress. the responsibilities run the gamut. they include imposing order on a white house where each department is obsessed with its own narrow agenda; mollifying the bruised egos of cabinet officers and congressmen, as well trying to dent the egos of others who get in the way; and deciding who and what will go to the president<u+2019>s desk (and which bucks should be forced down to lower levels for decision). then there<u+2019>s sweating the details on legislative deals with congress and, above all, telling the president the hard truths no one else will and that presidents themselves may not want to hear. one more thing. in addition to being cast as the heavy when a difficult job has to be done, the chief often plays the role of target. mr. baker puts it this way: <u+201c>you have to take a lot of javelins aimed at the old man.<u+201d> in the days since tuesday<u+2019>s election, shock has shifted to speculation over who will serve in a trump administration<u+2014>and especially whom he will pick for chief. one name immediately put forward is reince priebus, the republican national committee chairman who stuck with mr. trump through thick and thin. others report that the leading candidate is steve bannon, the breitbart news chairman brought in to revive mr. trump<u+2019>s campaign in august. politico carried a story floating the idea of mr. trump<u+2019>s son-in-law, jared kushner, for the job. rather than speculate about names, the wall street journal asked five former chiefs representing five presidents<u+2014>ronald reagan, george h.w. bush, bill clinton, george w. bush and barack obama <u+2014>what qualities president-elect donald trump should be looking for in the man or woman who will serve as his chief of staff. it starts with the obvious: personal chemistry. different presidential styles demand different kinds of chiefs, they say. but all agree that if the president and his chief of staff don<u+2019>t trust one another, it<u+2019>s not going to work. <u+201c>the chief of staff has to reflect and sometimes complement the strengths of the president he serves,<u+201d> says william daley, the chicago native who served as bill clinton<u+2019>s commerce secretary before becoming barack obama<u+2019>s chief in 2011. <u+201c>a chief of staff has to reflect the president<u+2019>s governing style,<u+201d> mr. daley says. <u+201c>as president you can<u+2019>t just say <u+2018>i want this<u+2019> or <u+2018>do that.<u+2019> a president has to lead the american people to where he wants to go, and the chief of staff needs to help him get it done.<u+201d> joshua bolten served as chief of staff for the last two years of the george w. bush administration. he says the trump team came to him for advice about two months ago, and he was impressed by their professionalism. while mr. bolten agrees that personal chemistry is important, he suggests that government experience is more important, because a chief of staff<u+2019>s main task is to get a president<u+2019>s agenda through. <u+201c>if i had to take a risk,<u+201d> he says, <u+201c>i would rather risk the relationship not working out than risk inexperience.<u+201d> the chief of staff, he says, is like a consigliere. <u+201c>you have to be able to tell the president you serve the truth,<u+201d> mr. bolten says. <u+201c>i found i was better able to play the role of trusted counselor if i spoke mostly to the president in private and as little [as possible] in the presence of others.<u+201d> this way, he said, others on the president<u+2019>s team would not see him as a rival or threat. it also meant he could be more frank with the president if he didn<u+2019>t have to worry about how others might take it. almost all the chiefs interviewed noted that running a business, even a business as large and successful as the trump organization, is very different from running a white house. as a candidate mr. trump boasted about having a lean operation, and his campaign pitch<u+2014>that he was the outsider to shake up washington<u+2014>plainly resonated with the american voter. yet if he really hopes to drain the swamp, the outsider president may need an insider chief of staff with the knowledge and experience to get it done. <u+201c>you can<u+2019>t just take your business experience and expect it will work at a white house,<u+201d> says mr. daley, if only because running large bureaucracies is different from running a company. john sununu agrees. <u+201c>much of the job is learning how to move legislation and move legislators who don<u+2019>t want to be moved,<u+201d> says the former governor of new hampshire, who was chief of staff for most of the george h.w. bush presidency. <u+201c>the skills needed to do this are an interesting amalgam of being direct and showing patience.<u+201d> for this reason mr. sununu says he<u+2019>s partial to governors. <u+201c>leading in public, and managing a white house in public, is very different thing from making decisions in the relative privacy of a business office.<u+201d> one of the key differences, says mr. sununu, is time. <u+201c>time moves very fast in a white house,<u+201d> and there<u+2019>s no room for on-the-job training about politics. the chief of staff holds one of the core white house appointments that <u+201c>will help president trump push through his agenda in his first 100 days.<u+201d> mack mclarty, who served as president clinton<u+2019>s first chief of staff, came to his post with credentials most other chiefs haven<u+2019>t had. first, he had known the president back in kindergarten in hope, ark.<u+2014>before the young mr. clinton and his family moved to hot springs. second, like mr. trump, he<u+2019>d run a family business. mr. mclarty makes a similar distinction between business execs and presidents<u+2014>and the pressures of time. <u+201c>it<u+2019>s a different rhythm,<u+201d> he says. <u+201c>the first thing you learn in the white house is that decisions there are made at a far more accelerated rate than in the private sector. the range of subjects is also much broader. one minute you<u+2019>re talking about domestic policy, and the next it<u+2019>s the king of saudi arabia.<u+201d> he thinks mr. trump has an advantage most businessmen do not. <u+201c>this is a guy who is used to being in the public eye,<u+201d> he says, <u+201c>appearing on television, being interviewed and giving press conferences.<u+201d> whatever team mr. trump ends up with, plainly it will be different from what he<u+2019>s used to as a businessman. the trump organization, for example, is a privately held company in which mr. trump serves as president and chairman. it<u+2019>s dominated by family, with daughter ivanka trump, son donald trump jr. and son eric trump all executive vice presidents. obviously this worked for him during the campaign. but the federal government is far more vast, and the first thing president trump will learn in the oval office is how many in the federal government<u+2014>especially in congress<u+2014>don<u+2019>t work for him, even if they do happen to be republicans. in a streamlined organization such as the trump organization or the trump campaign, it<u+2019>s not that difficult to see the main man. but the chiefs suggest this may not work as well at a white house, where a president needs a good gatekeeper<u+2014>not least because the demands on a president<u+2019>s time and attention are practically limitless. access to the president is a tricky thing, says mr. bolten. you have to be careful that you don<u+2019>t scare off people who have a legitimate right to see the president. but you also need discipline, and a good part of that discipline is deciding what issues merit presidential attention. <u+201c>i always thought that the chief<u+2019>s job was to make sure the issues that were really up to the president got to his desk, and that he had the full range of argument from his staff so he could make a decision. the other part of the job was to force decisions that should be made lower down.<u+201d> mr. daley makes a point about the nature of the decisions that get to a president<u+2019>s desk. <u+201c>what comes into the oval office are not the good or easy decisions,<u+201d> he says. <u+201c>the easy decisions are made elsewhere. the things that make it to the oval are always the hard ones.<u+201d> in the end, the chiefs agree that when president-elect trump makes his pick, he will need to find someone whom he not only trusts and is comfortable with but who has the political savvy and know-how to help make the trump agenda a reality. it<u+2019>s a huge<u+2014> yuge!<u+2014> responsibility that comes with large powers a chief must not let go to his head. mr. mclarty said mr. baker summed it up best when the latter advised him that while <u+201c>the title chief of staff sounds regal, the best ones will always remember that the most important word in that title is <u+2018>staff.<u+2019> <u+201d> mr. mcgurn, who writes the weekly main street column for the journal, served in the white house of george w. bush.
hail to the chief (of staff) - wsj
william mcgurn