Preet Bharara:

From CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network this is Stay Tuned in Brief. I’m Preet Bharara. President Biden has a new chief of staff, Jeff Zients. He was a Biden’s Covid czar and before that he was a top economic advisor in the Obama administration. Zients replaces Ron Klain who for many is the very model of a chief of staff. Prior to running the White House, Klain had many of the most powerful positions in Washington, including chief of staff to two vice presidents. To discuss these two men and the role of White House chief of staff, I’m joined by author Chris Whipple. He wrote what is perhaps the definitive account of the job and its occupants. It’s called Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. Now he’s out with a book about the first two years of the Biden administration. It’s called The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris Whipple:

Good to be with you.

Preet Bharara:

So before we talk about the two men and the passing of the baton from Ron Klain to Jeff Zients, can you explain to folks based on your research and expertise, how important is the chief of staff? If a chief of staff is terrific, does that help a lot? If the chief of staff is not up to the task, does that doom a presidency? Give us some sense of scale.

Chris Whipple:

Preet, it’s hard to overstate the importance of the White House chief of staff. There’s a reason why the subtitle of my book, The Gatekeepers, was How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency. You could say that, and I argue in the book, that there would’ve been no Reagan revolution without James A. Baker III, his quintessential chief of staff. I think that Bill Clinton might very well have been a one term president if not for his chief of staff, Leon Panetta, who came in and really turned the Clinton White House around. So the White House chief is not only the president’s most important, closest advisor, but at the end of the day he’s the person who executes the president’s agenda and maybe most importantly tells him what he doesn’t want to hear.

Preet Bharara:

How important to the job is time management of the president.

Chris Whipple:

It’s critical. There’s a reason why I called the book The Gatekeepers. This goes all the way back to Richard Nixon and HR Haldeman, his infamous chief of staff who was accused of walling Nixon off from information and people he should see. The truth was the opposite. He was creating time and space for the president to think, which is really important. And it’s going to be all the more important for an octogenarian president running in a bruising reelection campaign. I think Jeff Zients, the new chief, is going to first of all, have to make sure that only the people who have to see the president see him, conserve his energy, make sure he gets his rest and make sure that campaigning doesn’t interfere with governing.

Preet Bharara:

What’s the harder job? Is it White House chief of staff or is it whoever the top communications director spokesperson is?

Chris Whipple:

Well, I may be biased since I’ve spent so much time studying the chief. Suffice it to say that when his successors call him for advice, as they invariably do, James A. Baker III, who again was Reagan’s chief, always says the same thing. He says, “Congratulations, you’ve got the worst blanking job in government.”

Preet Bharara:

What’s the average tenure for a chief of staff to a president? It’s like five minutes.

Chris Whipple:

Yes, five minutes. It’s actually about 18 months. And that’s just, so Ron Klain exceeded the average. In fact, served longer than any other Democratic president’s first chief. He’s very proud of that fact. Nowhere near as long as Andy Card, the record holder who lasted five years and change, but would be the first to tell you that he stayed way too long.

Preet Bharara:

What quality did Andy Card have that he could do that job three times longer than almost everyone else?

Chris Whipple:

Well, again, it was probably a mistake for Card to have stayed that long. I don’t think you can do that job really effectively for more than a couple of years his client has discovered. And certainly, you could argue that Andy Card was in over his head with some of the powerful players who really exercise power in that White House, including Dick Cheney.

Preet Bharara:

Yes.

Chris Whipple:

In fact, Dick Cheney likes to say that White House chief of staff has more power than the vice president. That’s true, except when Cheney was vice president.

Preet Bharara:

Well, that’s an interesting point you make. Is there anything that the public should be concerned about when you have a position in government in the White House that is unelected, that doesn’t go through any vetting process outside of the President and the White House itself? Too much power vested in a chief of staff or is that just the nature of things?

Chris Whipple:

I think that’s the nature of things. I don’t think it’s terribly concerning or should be because in effect he’s an extension, he or she. Someday there will be a female chief. The chief is an extension of the president. He serves at the president’s pleasure. So he doesn’t wield any independent power.

Preet Bharara:

We have not had a female chief of staff?

Chris Whipple:

Never.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a little bit nuts.

Chris Whipple:

It is. It’s long overdue. And interestingly, Preet, in my book I tell the story about going to see Ron Klain at nine months into the Biden presidency, it was a low point. Biden had just gone through months of futility trying to get Build Back Better passed. He went off to Glasgow without anything to show for it. Ultimately, get to the point here about a female chief. But anyway, Klain was thinking about resigning and I said, “Really? Who do you think would your replacement might be?” And I mentioned a couple of names and he said, “I have a feeling Joe Biden might want to appoint the first woman.” Well, here we are two years later. That turns out not to be the case, but it’s way overdue.

Preet Bharara:

Just as a measure of how significant a job it is, there’s one chief of staff to former President Obama, Rahm Emanuel. Can you remind people what Rahm Emanuel’s job was before he agreed to become chief of staff?

Chris Whipple:

Well, yes, Rahm, there’s a great story I tell in The Gatekeepers. It’s the opening chapter of how Rahm was… Rahm, of course, had been in Congress. He was in line to be the first Jewish speaker of the house. He didn’t particularly, nobody goes looking to become chief of staff. Nobody applies for the job. Emmanuel went and he met with all the living or many of the living former White House chiefs of staff came to show him the keys to the men’s room, as Dick Cheney put it. Cheney who had been Ford’s 34 year old White House chief. They’re all gathered around this table. And Ken Duberstein says to Emmanuel, “Never forget that when you open your mouth it’s not you, but the president who’s speaking.” To which Rahm immediately replied, “Oh, blank!”

Preet Bharara:

I don’t think he said blank.

Chris Whipple:

The famously profane Rahm Emanuel.

Preet Bharara:

It’s also a funny dynamic. And then let’s talk about Ron Klain for a bit. I worked in the Senate for a while, and I will tell you, and you must have seen this, and I’m sure you’ve written about it, members of the Senate and the House and leadership took some umbrage sometimes at how they thought they had to treat and address or be addressed by White House chief of staff and famously among staffers, I won’t say who the senator was. There was a senator who was annoyed that he had to deal with a “mere staffer”. Can you explain that dynamic?

Chris Whipple:

Yes, well, yes. I mean, and that’s one reason why, I mean it’s, chiefs of staff, by and large are never the most popular people on Capitol Hill because one of the primary responsibilities is to tell people, “No. No, you cannot see the president today. No, he’s not going to champion this bill or that bill.” In fact, Dwight Eisenhower’s, chief of staff, Sherman Adams was known as the Abominable No Man.

Preet Bharara:

That’s a pretty good nickname.

Chris Whipple:

And so that’s why, as Jim Baker likes to tell people, that’s why the White House chief of staff walks around with a target on his front and on his back. That’s just the nature of the beast.

Preet Bharara:

So let’s talk about Ron Klain. Can you give him a grade or can you assess him in his effectiveness generally speaking, and specifically, describe his relationship with the principal Joe Biden?

Chris Whipple:

Yes. There’s a reason why great White House chiefs of staff are hard to come by and it’s because it’s a very rare skillset which Ron Klain had, which is White House experience. He’d worked for nine, count them, nine previous Democratic Chiefs. He had knowledge of Capitol Hill and relationships there. He had political savvy. He had managerial acumen. He had a world class temperament, and not least, maybe most importantly, he had a three decades long relationship with the boss. And what that enables a White House chief to do is tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, which is again, the most important thing a chief can do. So only the great ones have all of those skills and Jim Baker would be one, Leon Panetta another. Certainly, you just have to put Ron Klain in their company.

Preet Bharara:

Your description made me think about the succession of Trump chiefs of staff. Did Trump ever have a chief of staff who have the ability to tell the boss what he didn’t want to hear?

Chris Whipple:

No, he never did.

Preet Bharara:

Not one?

Chris Whipple:

Not one of them. I think Kelly, John Kelly his second chief, tried and ultimately failed. And Kelly famously predicted when he quit that, he said, “That if you appoint a yes man to replace me, you will be impeached.” And that’s exactly what happened.

Preet Bharara:

Twice.

Chris Whipple:

Yes. Mick Mulvaney became his chief, that was the first impeachment and the second was under Mark Meadows. Mark Meadows is the chief of staff Trump wanted all along, the ultimate sycophant. I describe him in my book as not so much a chief of staff as a kind of glad-handing maitre’d. There was no command.

Preet Bharara:

That’s not very nice, Chris.

Chris Whipple:

Well, there was no command or no matter how sketchy or unconstitutional or illegal that Meadows wasn’t happy to carry out. So I anointed him. There used to be stiff competition for the worst chief of staff in history, but Meadows owns it now by a country mile.

Preet Bharara:

Meadows does, interesting.

Chris Whipple:

Yes, I think so. Even more so than Don Regan under Reagan, his second hapless Imperial Chief and HR Haldeman who went to prison.

Preet Bharara:

You said a few minutes ago that chiefs of staff to the President tend not to be very popular on Capitol Hill. My sense is they’re not always very popular even within the White House, in part because of the nay saying aspect of the job. My sense is that Ron Klain was quite popular if by no other measure than when he announced he’s leaving. All sorts of folks came out of the woodwork to say nice things about him. Is that unusual and is that genuine?

Chris Whipple:

Yes, I think it is genuine. And I think, actually, Ron Klain disproves the theory that Richard Nixon espoused many, many years ago that your chief of staff ought to be a perfect son of a bitch. HR Haldeman-

Preet Bharara:

What does that mean?

Chris Whipple:

HR Haldeman was that, no question about it. But Ron Klain was the opposite. And he’s proof that you don’t have to be a son of a bitch. You can be popular. He had the ability to not only to manage up, namely the president, but to manage down and to inspire loyalty and actually have a great working relationship. That’s one reason why the Biden White House was so leakproof and relatively drama free was because of Klains’ collegial style.

Preet Bharara:

Should the chief of staff have strong substantive and strategic views? Or should the chief of staff be a mediator between and among views of other people in the White House and in the cabinet?

Chris Whipple:

He can be both as long as he understands his role as chief of staff is not to put his thumb on the scale. So Ron Klain, I think, has strong political views, but I don’t think he ever really pressed them on Biden. I think he was very much a by the book, here are five arguments for option A and here are five arguments for option B, to which Joe Biden would often say, “What about C? What about B and a half?” He was very lawyerly and, of course, he is a superb lawyer, Klain. Clerked for Byron White, Byron “Whizzer” White.

Preet Bharara:

On the Supreme Court.

Chris Whipple:

Yes. But he understood that the White House chief of staff has to be the classic honest broker of information. Once you start pushing your own agenda, some of the not so great chiefs have done that. The John Sununus, Sununu under George H W Bush, Regan under Reagan, that never ends well.

Preet Bharara:

Am I right that chiefs of staff were not all that powerful in the past because White Houses outside of the president were not that powerful, that a lot of the power and authority in the federal government was wielded by the cabinet members. And there’s been criticism of the shift of power away from the cabinet and towards the White House. Can you comment on that?

Chris Whipple:

Yes, I think you’re right, Preet, that it really began, if you had to pick a place, I’d say it really began in the Nixon White House. And the irony about HR Haldeman is that while he became the poster boy for Watergate and wound up in prison for that, ironically he’s the guy who wrote the template for the empowered White House chief of staff. And there’s just, I think, no question about it that there really hasn’t been any such thing as “cabinet government” since the Nixon White House. Power resides in the West Wing. And that’s been true for many, many years.

Preet Bharara:

One former chief of staff of some repute you haven’t mentioned yet and I wonder if you have an evaluation of John Podesta.

Chris Whipple:

Podesta was a first rate chief. He had a temper and so he could be a son of a bitch from time to time. But Podesta was, I would say that Podesta was very effective. And in fact, that Joe Biden would do well to take a page from the Clinton/Podesta playbook when dealing with the current GOP House because when Newt Gingrich embarked on his scorched earth political strategy impeaching Clinton for Monica Lewinsky and setting his hair on fire every day, Clinton basically ignored him. And with Podesta’s help as chief of staff, he went about the business of governing. And I think that would be a good model for Biden.

Preet Bharara:

So Jeff Zients is coming in. What can we expect from him? How do you think he’ll fare? How do you think that will go?

Chris Whipple:

Jeff Zients is a managerial genius. Under Barack Obama when the Affordable Care website blew up and nobody knew how to fix it Zients was the guy they called. Dennis McDonough called him and he fixed it. He came in and he ran the coronavirus response team and he got 220 million Americans vaccinated in a 100 days. He makes government work. He lacks Ron Klain’s political savvy and he also does not have the three decade long relationship with the boss. So I think it’ll be a challenge. For example, it’s hard to imagine Jeff Zients sitting down with Joe Biden and second guessing Biden, a strongly held political view of Biden’s or strategy. But he has to do it. That’s why they pay the White House chief, the big buck.

Preet Bharara:

Big bucks!

Chris Whipple:

Actually, they don’t. I think that’s another story.

Preet Bharara:

I think he has money otherwise.

Chris Whipple:

Yes, he does.

Preet Bharara:

Do you have any understanding of whether he had to have his arm twisted? You said nobody seeks it out. I imagine he didn’t seek it out either, but he felt a duty to answer the call to service.

Chris Whipple:

Yes, I suspect the latter. Although, Zients is the kind of guy who never shrinks from a managerial challenge and he may well have happily accepted this offer. I know he was Ron Klain’s choice. I suspect he was Joe Biden’s choice. I think they worked very well together against Covid. But again, you think about what Klain and Biden faced between a once in a century pandemic and a crippled economy and global warming, and Vladimir Putin, in a way you could say now comes the hard part. An octogenarian running for reelection with having to avoid a recession, control inflation, keep NATO unified, face down MAGA, it’s a daunting challenge.

Preet Bharara:

Last question for you, Chris, before we let you go. In your new book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, tell folks briefly what your major takeaway was in writing that book.

Chris Whipple:

Well, I think it’s a political thriller in three acts, as was the Biden, as is the Biden presidency with no ending yet. And the first act was this unbelievably fraught transition that almost didn’t happen. And I have new reporting about that. The second act was the first year of the presidency, which was a real challenge. Lots of problems overshadowed by the botched evacuation from Afghanistan. And the third act was, in my view, the turning point of the Biden presidency, February 24th, 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine Biden rose to that challenge, rallied NATO and the West, went on to pass a string of successful legislation, defied the odds in the midterms, goes into his third year with real momentum. And I think he was uniquely equipped for this moment in history facing down Vladimir Putin and a threat to democracy, not only in Ukraine, but in the West.

Preet Bharara:

Chris Whipple, thanks for your contributions to scholarship. Thanks for your insights. Thanks for being on the show. And sorry that you’re stuck in a wind tunnel.

Chris Whipple:

My pleasure, Preet. I hope things, I hope it warms up!

Preet Bharara:

For more analysis of legal and political issues making the headlines become a member of the CAFE Insider. Members get access to exclusive content including the weekly podcast I co-host with former US Attorney, Joyce Vance. Head to cafe.com/insider to sign up for a trial. That’s cafe.com/insider.

If you like what we do, rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. Every positive review helps new listeners find the show. Send me your questions about news, politics and justice. Tweet them to me at Preet Bharara with the hashtag ask preet or you can call and leave me a message at 669-247-7338. That’s 669-24PREET, or you can send an email to letters@cafe.com. Stay Tuned is presented by CAFE and the Vox Media Podcast Network. The executive producer is Tamara Sepper. The technical director is David Tatasciore. The senior producer is Adam Waller. The editorial producers are Sam Ozer-Staton and Noah Azulai. The audio producer is Nat Wiener. And the CAFE team is Matthew Billy, David Kurlander, Jake Kaplan, Namita Shah and Claudia Hernandez. Our music is by Andrew Dost. I’m your host Preet Bharara. Stay Tuned.