With John Kelly stepping down from his position as President Donald Trump’s chief of staff, the search is on for a replacement. Trump’s top pick, Nick Ayers, who works for the vice president, turned down the job. The appointment holds particular weight as Trump heads into the most challenging year of his presidency with a newly elected Democratic House that’s vowed tougher oversight when they take over next month. These books explore the significance of the role and former advisers’ experience holding it.
THE GATEKEEPERSHow the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every PresidencyBy Chris Whipple384 pp. Crown. (2017)
Whipple chronicles how chiefs of staffs from Richard Nixon’s presidency to Barack Obama’s have influenced each president’s success. He interviewed all 17 of the living men who had held the position as well as two former presidents and covers them in chronological order, starting with Nixon’s H.R. Haldeman, whose tenure was a model for the way the role is viewed today: as a centralized advisory role with oversize power and access.
“WORK HARD, STUDY … AND KEEP OUT OF POLITICS!"Adventures and Lessons From an Unexpected Public LifeBy James A. Baker III with Steve Fiffer496 pp. Northwestern University Press. (2006)
Baker, who was chief of staff twice, first for Ronald Reagan and then for George H.W. Bush, writes about that experience in this memoir, where he “offers a more personal account that implicitly contrasts the past with the present, and is the more telling for its restraint,” according to our reviewer. Baker was drawn to politics by Bush, his longtime tennis doubles partner, when he joined Bush’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1970. Though the campaign failed, Bush helped him get his first Washington job five years later as the secretary of commerce in the Ford administration, and his political savvy caught the eye of the next two Republican presidents.
THE HALDEMAN DIARIESInside the Nixon White HouseBy H.R. Haldeman698 pp. G.P. Putnam’s Sons. (1994)
Haldeman, who served 18 months in prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up, said he shared his diaries from his time in the White House because they “provide valuable insights for historians, journalists and scholars, as well as the general public.” “Set down in dry, deadpan prose, the diaries give the reader a minutely detailed portrait of a White House obsessed with image and spin control, a White House in which paranoia, manipulation, self-pity and cynicism reigned supreme,” wrote our reviewer.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.