Issue No. 461 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting highlights a page-turning book that Joe Biden should read—chronicling rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump. And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for my 2020 Book(s)-of-the-Year and Top-10 picks.
“Washington has a ladder that goes up and down, and those you kick beneath you on the ladder might—will—kick back harder when they are on an upper rung.”
The Infighting Scorecard (Part 1)
Let’s hope Joe Biden’s first White House staff meeting this week didn’t replicate the chaos of President Carter’s crew. According to Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, “On the very first day of the Carter administration, the staff had no idea who should run meetings.”
With no designated chief of staff (per Jimmy Carter’s preference), the power plays were palpable—but no leader emerged. A staffer asked Hamilton Jordan (who ran the Carter campaign), “Should we have a staff meeting every day?” Jordan’s response, “We’ll have a meeting when there’s something to meet about.”
Whoa! Tevi Troy, bestselling author and former White House advisor, wrote this page-turner a year ago—and I couldn’t put it down. But caution: this book’s main characters will disappoint you (red or blue). The author says there is “nothing new under the sun” and “infighting has been constant in every presidential administration since George Washington.” Ditto the Trump White House—nothing new.
Thus “Fight House,” unfortunately for the American people, is more descriptive than “White House.” Think dysfunction, chaos, confusion, and rivalries. It’s sad, really—but very juicy reading!
These mini-case studies in leadership, administration, team-building, and team-denigrating are so insightful, I’m splitting my review into two issues.
PART 1 OF 2: PRESIDENTS TRUMAN TO NIXON
“The president needs help” was the four-word summary from the Committee on Administrative Management, convened by Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945). They suggested that Congress fund six “executive assistant” positions. The criteria: people “possessed of high competence” who had a “passion for anonymity.” No leaking? How’d that work out?
So Congress established the Executive Office of the President in 1939. Shocking, but true—that staff of six has mushroomed to more than 1,600 people today, according to the author. Yikes. Here’s a taste of staff rivalries over the decades:
HARRY TRUMAN (1945-1953). Truman employed a “spokes-on-the-wheel” staff structure (“in which aides reported to a centralized hub in the form of the president himself”—no chief of staff). Truman was a listener more than a reader—he preferred oral briefings, not memos. The rivalries between the cabinet secretaries and the White House staff were just warming up—yet Truman rarely addressed conflict.
News Flash! I’m guessing that more than a few Joe Biden staffers began writing their White House memoirs this week! The memoir wars in Fight House is a repeating theme—and Tevi Troy’s research is vast. The 34 pages of endnotes and book references may bust my book budget.
For example: Clark Clifford, Truman’s special counsel, battled with General George Marshall (Secretary of Defense and Secretary of State). Clifford’s memoir: “Not only did he never speak to me again after that meeting, but, according to his official biographer, he never again mentioned my name.”
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER (1953-1961). “If Truman liked order, his successor Dwight Eisenhower loved it. The mercurial Truman saw order as professionally necessary. Eisenhower saw it as a way of life.” Ike on Truman: “…he didn’t know any more about government than a dog knows about religion.”
One of the first presidents to have a chief of staff, Ike “also believed in cabinet government and gave his department heads leeway to run things as they saw fit.” Troy notes that by increasing the White House staff from 32 to 50 it exacerbated conflict and rivalries. A larger staff created more temptation “to run the departments from the White House.”
In a fascinating three-page appendix, the author includes “The Infighting Scorecard” chart—listing a “trio” of the “three leading causes of staff infighting common to the modern presidency and most organizations,” he says. (Assignment: create a scorecard for your organization!) The chart lists the presidents on the left and these categories across the top:
• Ideological Discord (low to high)
• Process (tight to loose)
• Tolerance for Infighting (low to high)
• Result
Ike’s scores? Where Truman preferred a “relatively non-contentious environment,” Eisenhower “preferred not to see conflict, but was willing to set some up to get better results.” (Tune in to my Part 2 issue and you might be surprised how Obama and Trump fared on the scorecard.) For more on Eisenhower, click here to read my November 2020 review of How Ike Led.
JOHN F. KENNEDY (1961-1963). Tevi Troy notes that the “modern celebrity culture began to influence the world of politics” during JFK’s term. The chapter’s LOL subtitle: “Passion for Anonymity on the White House Staff? Not So Much.” He says that the best-known feud was between VP Lyndon Johnson and Attorney General “Bobby” Kennedy (JFK’s brother). The “drama and fury” would “make for an excellent Netflix series,” Troy writes.
Attn: Kamala Harris! The vice president position “to outsiders, is a position of great prestige, but to a power player like Johnson, the former Senate majority leader, it was a comedown.” Johnson was miserable as VP. “I detested every minute of it,” said LBJ who had a phone installed in his office for direct calls from the White House, “but the phone rarely rang.”
The shocking nicknames that the Kennedy team used for LBJ were beyond the pale. The author’s five-page appendix of “White House Nicknames” is eye-opening: “Professor Leaky,” “Director of the Sanitation Department,” “ABC News Commentraitor,” and more.
The LBJ/Bobby Kennedy “dynamic shifted again after Kennedy’s assassination, and Bobby ended up serving unhappily under the thumb of the man he tormented.” The lesson to all future White House staffers: “…tread carefully. Washington has a ladder that goes up and down, and those you kick beneath you on the ladder might—will—kick back harder when they are on an upper rung.”
LYNDON B. JOHNSON (1963-1969). Troy reveals that rivalries in the LBJ era were “president-focused rather than staff-focused. Rivalries were not based on who had access to the president as much as who the president targeted.” Often an active participant in staff conflicts, Johnson’s bullying style exacerbated the drama.
Where Ike and JFK each had two secretaries, Johnson needed five to keep up with his herculean output. He worked two shifts every day (6 a.m. to midnight, with an afternoon nap). LBJ: “An eight-hour man ain’t worth a damn to me.” Press Secretary George Reedy termed the White House “an indoor stadium hosting a perpetual track meet.”
“All of this berating and mood swinging came from Johnson’s own sense of inadequacy.” He hated leaks. (Read my review of Robert Novak’s 662-page memoir, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington.) “Johnson even suggested building a wall between the West Wing and the Old Executive Office Building to separate reporters from staff physically.”
What’s your style: reader or listener? LBJ’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara “was famously impatient, eschewing oral briefings.” Why? “Because I can read faster than they can talk.”
The author weaves insightful commentary on leadership styles and a leader’s tolerance for conflicting views—“a recurring problem in White House management.” Without a forum for dissenting views at least three things will happen: leaking, behind-the-back whispering, and “writing unfavorable memoirs.”
And this is tragic. According to sources I researched, one out of every 10 Americans who served in the Vietnam war (1955-1975) was a casualty. A total of 58,148 were killed and 304,000 were wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Could we have lessened the pain? The author’s last page in the LBJ chapter notes the Johnson vs. Kennedy conflicts. He concludes, “In this very real sense, America’s most unpopular war was shaped by one of American politics’ bitterest rivalries.”
RICHARD M. NIXON (1969-1974). Nixon supported a strong cabinet-led government, yet “distrusted the federal bureaucracy and wanted to keep decisions under his and his closest aides’ control. Maybe this is all you need to know: “In the Nixon administration, people ended up in prison.” Yet, “Nixon was also one of the most experienced people ever to become president.” The author labels Nixon the “feud stagemaster.”
When the first Biden senior official exits the job “to spend more time with my family,” remember this: “Al Haig recalled that Kissinger was very tough on his staff—he drove away over a third of them in the administration’s first nine months.”
In numerous White House administrations, including Nixon’s, the grab for power and prestige is often about office space, size, and proximity to the Oval Office. In the Nixon administration, a wall was built in Bryce Harlow’s first floor West Wing office, removing his private bathroom, so Henry Kissinger’s adjoining office would be larger. (Page 72 is a must-read. LOL! Fortunately, the author had a full inventory of **** marks!)
Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter’s National Security Advisor, had a private bathroom. Carter’s VP, Walter Mondale, wanted a private bathroom but was denied the perk. Staffer (and Carter’s cousin) Hugh Carter unsuccessfully attempted to drop the perk of White House cars transporting senior staffers around the city. Jody Powell nicknamed him “Cousin Cheap.” One think tanker mocked the suggestion: “Do you want them to hitchhike? Catch a bus?”
What—No Memoir? I found one high-integrity person in this Nixon chapter that details the Kissinger-Rogers turf wars. William Rogers, who served as Attorney General under Ike and Secretary of State under Nixon, submitted a resignation letter “free of recrimination or argument.” The author adds, “Rogers continued to maintain his silence long after leaving government, refusing to write a memoir, as, he rightly observed, it is ‘hard to write interestingly without being critical of people.’”
PART 2 OF 2: PRESIDENTS FORD TO TRUMP
Watch for my Part 2 review of this book (President Ford to President Trump) next month, perhaps on President’s Day. Learn why Reagan’s former chief of staff, James Baker, said of then current chief of staff Donald Regan (who hung up on Nancy Reagan), “That’s not just a firing offense. That may be a hanging offense.”
To order from Amazon, click on the title for Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, by Tevi Troy. Are you a listener? Listen to the book on Libro.fm (9 hours).
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) Donald Trump is now a member of a very exclusive fraternity described in the book, The President’s Club (read my review). Former presidents, CEOs, staff, and board members can have positive or negative impact on organizations. Do you have a strategy for keeping your former team members informed and raving fans?
2) Is your staff structure a “spokes-on-the-wheel” approach or do you have a chief of staff? Is it working? Click here to read or view more about The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, by Chris Whipple. Warning! Bill Daley got shingles from stress after serving as Obama’s chief of staff.
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Biden Gets 100 Days, You Get 90!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
New U.S. President Joe Biden, and his staff, should read my pick for 2010 book-of-the-year: The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels, by Michael Watkins. (Read my review.)
Watkins writes, “The president of the United States gets 100 days to prove himself; you get 90.” The first chapter plowed new ground with five propositions on transitioning to a new job. “Too often…the new leader behaves more like a virus…”
The author says there are four kinds of organizations (or departments). Which one did you inherit in your last transition? His acronym, “STARS,” describes the four: Start-up, Turn-Around, Realignment, and Sustaining Success. A successful CEO of a Turn-Around may fail at a Realignment. How would you label the U.S. during this presidential transition?
Here’s one more must-read book on passing the baton: Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change, by William Bridges. (Read my review.)
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Does your shop have a new leader? Is everyone on the same page—using the same carefully-crafted elevator speech? Need help? Check in with Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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