For months, the White House under President Trump operated with few real rules, and those were barely enforced. People wandered into the Oval Office throughout the day. The president was given pieces of unvetted information, and found more on his own that he often tweeted out. Policy decisions were often based on whoever had last gotten Mr. Trump’s attention.
.. In two memos sent to the staff on Monday he began to detail his plan, starting with how he wants information to get to the president, and how Mr. Trump will respond.
.. Mr. Kelly’s predecessor, Reince Priebus, sent some similar guidelines around early in the administration, according to two officials, but they were never taken seriously. Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, has been treated with a different level of deference
.. Mr. Kelly has made clear that one thing he will not seek to directly control is the behavior of the president, and there is a good reason for that.
.. Mr. Trump has a history of lashing out at advisers who have publicly conveyed their attempts to impose tighter procedures on him. Just before Election Day, for example, Mr. Trump blew up publicly after a New York Times report that his aides had succeeded in keeping him off Twitter for the final stages of the campaign. He tweeted several times to enforce the point.
.. Despite Mr. Kelly’s fairly deft touch at approaching the president, Mr. Trump has shown signs of rebelling
.. That included his news conference at Trump Tower in which he doubled down on his blame for “both sides” in the racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Va., and his campaign rally speech in Arizona
.. Mr. Kelly had urged Mr. Trump to deliver a more somber, traditional statement the day before. And he and other advisers had urged the president to avoid taking questions from the news media at Trump Tower, a request that the president ignored.
.. In one of the memos, White House aides were told that all materials prepared for the president must go first to Mr. Porter for vetting and clearance. Then Mr. Kelly must sign off on them before they go to Mr. Trump’s desk.
.. given the propensity for some of Mr. Trump’s staff to slip him news accounts from dubious sources that shape his thinking or prompt him to cite unreliable or inaccurate information.
.. Mr. Priebus had tried to take firmer control of that process after Mr. Trump’s first week in office, when Stephen K. Bannon, the recently departed chief strategist, and Stephen Miller, the president’s senior policy adviser, pushed across the president’s desk two orders redesigning the National Security Council, and putting in place the first, court-contested travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries.
.. That process is expected to curtail freelancing and hijacking of decisions by West Wing aides. Mr. Bannon was often accused of taking advantage of the loose process, but Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his daughter, Ivanka Trump, who both work in the West Wing, have also frustrated their colleagues for months by going directly to the president on specific issues.
.. “Let’s assume for the moment that Trump has learned the first big lesson of his first six months, which is that you have to empower the White House chief of staff to be a real gatekeeper,”
.. “What he hasn’t learned, what he has shown no sign of learning, is that governing is completely different from campaigning,” Mr. Whipple said.
The secret agreement John Kelly must make with Trump
White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly needs to draw a red line. Not with North Korea but with President Trump. For the sake of Kelly’s own reputation but even more for the sake of the country, there can be no more presidential improv on the subject of North Korea or military threats in general.
This red line should be both invisible and impregnable. Only Kelly and the president should know it exists, but they should also have a clear understanding: If it is crossed, Kelly will leave. This is essential and, more important, achievable.
Drawing this line is essential because Trump’s bellicose impetuosity must be contained.
.. Mopping up, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s approach was to suggest that Trump should be taken seriously but not literally
.. This atonal cacophony is what happens without message control. But is it realistic to speak of controlling Trump?
.. Let Trump be Trump, when it comes to domestic policy and politics.
.. Just cordon off foreign policy, or the parts of foreign policy that could lead to military confrontation. Instruct the president that statements on those subjects must be debated and scripted.
.. Kelly’s power is at its apex. Trump cannot afford to lose another chief of staff. So the president needs Kelly more than Kelly needs this headache of a job.
And if the general wants to avoid being treated as just another menial fly-swatter, he will seize this moment to assert control, or leave having at least tried.
Leon Panetta: How John Kelly can fix the White House
Retired Gen. John F. Kelly has survived combat. The question now is whether he can survive as White House chief of staff.
.. The elements critical to improving White House operations are pretty basic:
.. 1. Trust. There has to be trust between the chief of staff and the president. Each must be honest with the other and be willing to back the other up on personnel and policy decisions.
.. 2. One chief. If there are too many assistants to the president who have no clear portfolio of responsibility but who can go around the chief of staff to the president, that is a prescription for chaos.
For the chief to be successful, he must control all staff, know what each person is responsible for and working on, and be fully aware of all policy discussions taking place with the president.
.. 3. A clear chain of command. Every staff member needs supervision, and that means having clear lines of authority.
.. 4. An orderly policy-development process. It is critical that there be a system for providing the president with the essential information and options required to make decisions on key issues.
.. It may be difficult to stop this president from tweeting, but at a minimum he needs to tweet based on a policy process managed by the chief of staff.
.. 5. Telling the president the truth. There has to be one person in the White House willing to look the president in the eye and tell him the truth — to tell him when he is wrong and when he is about to make a mistake — and that has to be the chief of staff.
.. No president likes to be told he is wrong. However, to be successful, all presidents have to accept the reality that they are not always right.
.. Whether President Trump is willing to make these changes will in large measure determine not just how long Kelly survives as chief of staff, but also the ultimate success or failure of Trump’s administration.
President Donald Trump’s New Inner Circle
the shake-up amplifies a pattern of Mr. Trump’s when it comes to filling leadership positions: he places an outsize value on the opinion of those who have served in the U.S. armed forces, even if he lacks a longstanding relationship with them. Mr. Kelly said he had never met the president, nor did he know anyone who knew him, before he was offered the job as homeland security secretary shortly after the 2016 election.
.. Asked if high-profile aides such as Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner would also report to Mr. Kelly, Ms. Sanders said the new hierarchy “includes everybody at the White House.”