Even under normal circumstances, being the White House chief of staff sucks. But the fact that you’ve taken President Donald Trump’s offer after he humiliated your predecessors — Reince Priebus and John Kelly — and after multiple candidates, including the vice president’s chief of staff, have scattered as if blasted in the buttocks with grapeshot when approached about the vacancy, proves that you’re either dim or you’re not paying attention.
The turnover of Trump’s cabinet and top advisors, the crew that you’re supposed to help manage, exceeds that of any modern administration’s first two years. And even after this shakeout, his cabinet still contains an alleged grifter (Wilbur Ross), rookies (Elizabeth DeVos and Ben Carson), and one certified loafer (Elaine Chao). The job of chief of staff exists so the president can delegate the chief managerial decisions to you so that he, the president, can steer the country’s course. But as we’ve learned from the Priebus and Kelly, Trump doesn’t like to delegate. And when he does delegate, he often makes the mess at hand even worse than it was, as he did during the 2016 campaign when he directed lawyer Michael Cohen to channel hush money to paramours Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, according to federal prosecutors.
The job of chief of staff entails managing access to the president, herding the cabinet, mediating internal White House power struggles, and hiring and firing underlings. My advice will not eliminate the torment that goes along with the job; it can only lessen it. Your first order of business should be to acquire a historical perspective on your new job, and the best cheat sheet I know is “The President’s Chief of Staff: Lessons Learned,” a 1993 paper by George Mason University professor James P. Pfiffner.
The job of chief of staff didn’t exist before President Dwight Eisenhower moved into the White House, Pfiffner writes. Prior to Eisenhower, presidents were their own managers. But having coordinated victory in Europe with a huge management structure, the military-minded Ike wanted the same for his presidency. “I think of [Sherman] Adams as my chief of staff, but I don’t call him that because the politicians think it sounds too military,” Eisenhower said.
Having a chief of staff gave Eisenhower the option to dodge responsibility and dump decision-making back on cabinet officers. Adams decided who got face time with the president and who didn’t. Being a powerful presidential gatekeeper like Adams comes with liabilities, though, Pfiffner notes. If you become an “abominable no man,” you become hated by the entire cabinet. Consistently defend the president and you become “a lightning rod” for attacks aimed at him. Keep the Cabinet away from the president, and they’ll hate you. Leave the gate to the Oval Office open, and the president will sack you. It’s really hard to win, which is why so many chiefs measure their service in months, not years. During the Obama administration, the president went through five chiefs, making the job almost a temp position.
As Trump’s chief of staff you will end up doing more flak-catching than previous chiefs, because he delights in flying the ship of staff low enough to attract the ack-ack of artillery. He says outrageous things that demand interpretation. He back-tracks. He lies. Often, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Sure, official Washington will secretly blame Trump for his fiascos, but they need to work with him so they’ll rip you publicly because it’s the job of the chief to clean up the mess after the debauchery is over. As Pfiffner indicates, members of Congress will come to hate you, members of Trump’s administration will despise you, and the press will set your hair on fire.
Trump will make your impossible job even more impossible because in his heart of hearts, he doesn’t want a chief of staff. He would rather run the presidency the way he operated the Trump Organization, with a hive of worker bees reporting directly to him. A president who wants to be his own chief should not automatically be considered crazy. President John Kennedy did not have a chief of staff. President Lyndon Johnson didn’t, either. President Richard Nixon installed strong chiefs (H.R. Haldeman and Alexander Haig) with the idea that they would run domestic policy while he attended to international affairs. President Jimmy Carter ran the show himself for the first 909 days of his presidency before finally surrendering the overseer job to Hamilton Jordan, and chiefs have run the White House ever since.
If Trump doesn’t want a chief of staff limiting access to him by appointment only, as Kelly tried to do — keeping his the Oval Office door shut to prevent walk-ins, and disciplining his telephone time — then why is he shopping for a new chief anyway? Trump’s management style requires that he keep people in positions of authority as a sort of backstop so that he can blame them when things go poorly. He views chiefs as short-term hostages to be discarded after their credibility and effectiveness have been depleted (see the arc of Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer). You’ll do fine if masochism runs in your family and you don’t mind having the life-force drained out of you daily. Having raised rebellious children or worked as a guard in a Supermax prison might also come in handy. Trump will make everything that goes wrong in his White House your fault. And then he’ll sack you.
Helping to run the White House, even when the president you’re serving is a berserker, can boost your ego beyond the Van Allen Belt. That’s the upside. The downside is that all the power you’re now flexing is a lot like that Porsche 911 you rented from Hertz on your last vacation. The minute you turn in your keys the world will treat you like just another chump. Shafer’s first law of employment states that you should never take a job without planning an escape first. Having taken this awful job, commence your search for a better job that will accept this position as an enhancement of your credentials.
Jack Shafer is Politico’s senior media writer.