Issue No. 463 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting revisits Fight House, the page-turning book that chronicles rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump. This Part 2 review features a Pop Quiz! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies) and click here for another double bonus—two 2017 reviews of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.
Author Tevi Troy notes that many White House staffs engaged in “process fouls,” defined as “not going through normal channels, not inviting the right people to meetings, not sticking to your lane, and the like.”
POTUS Pop Quiz! (Part 2 review of Fight House)
Today marks the 22nd day of the Biden/Harris administration. So far, it appears, all of Biden’s White House staff and cabinet members are still at their desks, unlike Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s second White House Director of Communications. He exited after just 11 days in that position!
This is Part 2 of my review of Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, by Tevi Troy. (Click here to read Part 1.) Staff turnover, leaks, and rivalries—fueled by ego, arrogance, and all sorts of character flaws—are sadly the stuff of every White House. It’s disappointing, but delicious reading.
For example, Obama’s brilliant brand and aspiration, “No Drama Obama,” while sincere and noble according to the author, missed the mark many times. Obama’s first term cycled through three chiefs of staff (Rahm Emanuel, William Daley, and Jacob Lew; and four if you count an interim chief) until finally Denis McDonough survived all four years of Obama’s second term.
In Part 1 we spotlighted snippets on Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. So why should you read Part 2 on Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, and Trump? The author quotes Harry Truman: “The only thing new in this world is the history you haven’t read.”
POP QUIZ! Match these eight presidents to the eight statements below. (There will be prizes for perfect scores.)
1) Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
2) Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
3) Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
4) George H.W. Bush (1989-1993)
5) Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
6) George W. Bush (2001-2009)
7) Barack Obama (2009-2017)
8) Donald Trump (2017-2021)
___ A. “Read my lips, no new taxes.”
___ B. “When asked about stories of infighting in the White House, [he] responded that strife did not bother him; he encouraged it. ‘I like conflict,’ he told reporters, elaborating that ‘I like having two people with different points of view. And I certainly have that. And then I make a decision. I like watching it. I like seeing it and I think it is the best way to go.’”
___ C. “[He] was also the first MBA president. As such, he stressed strong management principles and discipline in the running of the White House staff. On the management side, [he] took the theory and practice of management seriously. As [an aide] put it, ‘I have read Peter Drucker, but I’d never seen Drucker until I saw [the president] in action.’ [His] campaign manager…agreed, saying that [he] ‘is the best one-minute manager I’ve ever been associated with.’”
___ D. “As president, though, [his] niceness was part of the problem. Immediately after acknowledging that [he] had the right skills and temperament for his House job, [the author of Organizing the Presidency] also noted that ‘running the White House required a more commanding approach.’”
___ E. A policy adviser “described that initial period as ‘just chaotic. There wasn’t anybody in charge.’ [A media consultant] had a similar view, but also noted [the chief of staff’s] lack of a coherent process. As [he] put it, [the president’s] ‘first White House staff, and the way they constantly went around [the chief of staff]—it was destructive.’ As a result, ‘everybody was freelancing, everybody was promoting themselves, everybody was looking out for themselves.’ [Another person] recalled that things were so bad that ‘There was a piece in I believe the New York Times that basically said this would be a failed presidency. You know, ten days into [the president’s] first term.’”
REMINDER FROM PART 1: 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. 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)
___F. “On the three-part test of ideology, process, and presidential tolerance, [this president] and his team score poorly. The central battle of the administration, the one between [the secretary of state and the National Security Adviser], took place between two antagonists with well-known ideological disagreements over foreign policy. The process challenge was worsened by the lack of a chief of staff to mediate disputes in the administration’s early days, followed by the appointment of a self-admitted ineffective chief of staff…”
___G. This president’s trusted campaign staffer went to work at the White House—where there was a strong culture of congeniality and no leaking. But “…he was more prone to violate some of the rules [i.e. no leaking] he so carefully adhered to during the campaign. In one telling instance during the transition, [he] was approving press releases and noted the announcement of a new White House communications director, the very job he wanted and expected. He was unhappy both with the decision and the way he found out about it: ‘Not only did I not get it, but this was the professional equivalent of being broken up with via a Post-it note. This was messed up.’”
___ H. The First Lady’s influence in the White House was often profound—especially for this president, who joked at the Gridiron Dinner, “[My wife and my chief of staff] tried to patch things up the other day. They met privately over lunch—just the two of them and their food tasters.”
ANSWERS. Click here for the answers (and the prizes!), posted on my Book Bucket webpage.
I hope these teasers will inspire you to read the book. As I mentioned in my Part 1 review, these mini-case studies in leadership, administration, team-building, and team-denigrating are must-read. Politics aside, CEOs and senior leaders would do well to study the good and the bad—and look in the mirror often.
Why my mirror metaphor? Richard “Dick” Darman, director of the OMB under Bush 41, gets roughed up in this book—and it appears with good reason. “His bragging about how he had forsaken private sector opportunities for public service led one unimpressed participant to joke that he was pulling his ‘St. Dick’ act.” I found that insightful—recalling that dozens of nonprofit CEOs over the years have gone out of their way to remind me that they had successful (i.e. well-paying) careers first in the marketplace.
ONE MORE THING…that I’ve never noticed in writing more than 450 book reviews: Tevi Troy’s word choices are perfect and precise. I always read with pen in hand and so I began circling the rich and memorable vocabulary that punctuates his points. Examples: politesse, priggish, propinquity, sobriquet, sycophancy, and declension. (On declension, “Winston Churchill himself once famously mocked [U.S. Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles: ‘Dull, Duller, Dulles…’”)
While feasting on this book and the descriptive word choices, I had ongoing conversations with my new Echo Show (my favorite Christmas gift). “Alexa! Definition for ‘malleability.’” Her answer: “capable of being shaped, as by hammering or pressing”—the perfect definition for the sharp-elbowed culture of White House relationships! (Read this!)
More gleanings from the author’s government glossary: schadenfreude, symbiosis, interlopers, internecine, obsequiousness, puerile, stratagems, putatively, and spelunking. (LOL! One Ford senior advisor went around the chief of staff directly to the Oval Office for “inbox spelunking!”) And this: leakers would “use an absurdly big word, a word from the hoary depths of the dictionary, like ‘inchoate’…” and thus the leak would be blamed on a staffer who pridefully used such words!
As you watch the Biden/Harris administration in action (and wonder who leaked what), remember this wisdom from Ecclesiastes: “There’s nothing new on this earth. Year after year it’s the same old thing. Does someone call out, ‘Hey, this is new’? Don’t get excited—it’s the same old story.”
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) Author Tevi Troy noted that many White House staffs engaged in “process fouls,” defined as “not going through normal channels, not inviting the right people to meetings, not sticking to your lane, and the like.” Any process fouls in your organization recently?
2) Fight House notes that “Andy Card used to tell staffers that ‘George W. Bush is the most disciplined person I know.’ This discipline, Card would explain, extended to his exercise, his religious worship, and his management of the White House staff.” Who’s the most disciplined leader you know? Why?
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George Shultz’s Pop Quiz for Ambassadors!
Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook
Maybe…we should add another name to the core competency of the Drucker Bucket? “We don’t just give lip service to management—we are disciplined students of great leadership and management thinkers like Peter Drucker, Ken Blanchard and others [like George Shultz].”
The U.S. statesman George Shultz died on Feb. 6 at age 100. Media tributes have abounded, rightfully, including a column from Fight House author Tevi Troy who noted that Shultz was “one of only two Americans (along with Elliott Richardson) to hold four cabinet-level positions—serving as Secretary of State, Treasury, and Labor, as well as director of the Office of Management and Budget.”
Troy adds, “By legend, he maintained a one-page resume, leading to the ‘George Shultz Resume Rule,’ which I often share with job-seekers: ‘George Shultz had a one-page resume. If he did it on one page, so can you.’”
His tribute also shared this: “The State Department was also the source of the most legendary George Shultz story. Shultz would call all newly minted advisers up to his office before sending them off on their new postings. He would walk the ambassadors over to the globe he had in his office, and tell them, ‘I'm going to spin the globe and I want you to put your hand on your country.’ After each ambassador earnestly pointed to the country to which he or she was headed, Shultz would correct them, explaining that their country was the United States of America.”
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JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. If clients and donors think of your branding as “Dull, Duller, or Dullest,” you’re overdue for a refresh. Check in with Jason Pearson at Pearpod Media (branding, digital, print, and video).
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