A president’s ideas matter, but without the right people in place to make them a reality, they will never be more than wishful thinking. Competent management requires both vision and execution. As Tevi Troy explains in his new book, Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, a White House lacking one of these will experience chaos. One lacking both is destined to fail utterly.
Troy, an historian and the author of two previous books on presidential history, begins his tale with the beginning of the modern White House staff structure in the administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The rise of the first truly massive administrative state in America led Roosevelt and his people to reimagine the way the chain of command should work in the executive branch.
Once, the cabinet was the true decision-making body, confirmed by the Senate, advising the president on policy choices, and largely running their departments as they saw fit. The cabinet was composed of some of the most eminent leaders in the president’s party, forming both his brain trust and his cadre of managers.
At the same time, there had always been unofficial advisors who had the president’s ear. From Andrew Jackson’s so-called “Kitchen Cabinet” to Harry Truman’s poker buddies, to Donald Trump’s children and son-in-law, presidents have sought advice from outside the cabinet structure, usually to the annoyance of the party regulars who were thereby sidestepped. Under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, though, the unofficial was made official, and the power shift from the cabinet to the White House staff began in earnest.
Chain of Command
With the power went the rivalries, and no White House has been free of the squabbles that are inevitable when powerful people fight for influence. Troy describes the tumult of Truman and Eisenhower administrations as this new hierarchy began to take shape and cabinet secretaries were effectively sidelined, especially those in the newer, less policy-driven departments. In their place rose a series of advisors, led typically by the White House chief of staff.Whether to have a chief of staff is a major conflict in itself in the early part of the period Troy studies. What seems unremarkable today was once a contentious decision. The question of centralizing the chain of command in the White House staff changed with the political winds. Richard Nixon promised a return to the cabinet system and away from the Kennedy and Johnson administrations’ constantly feuding non-cabinet power centers. Instead, he centralized power even further in the hands of the national security advisor and the chief of staff.
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