The former RNC chairman was the low-key leader Trump thought he needed, but quickly viewed as too weak to serve him.
Bill Clinton chose his boyhood friend Thomas “Mack” McLarty, a pliable figurehead, because he wanted to function as his own chief of staff. Richard Nixon chose the crew-cut enforcer H.R. Haldeman to instill fear and deliver the bad news that Nixon himself often shrank from imparting.
.. In Priebus, Trump first tried the kind of low-key, steady hand that what’s left of the GOP establishment thought he needed as a novice politician.
Surely the longest-serving national chairman in the Republican Party’s history, who had held the Republican Party together through fractious years and helped it reclaim the presidency, could be a calming, rational manager in the White House.
.. Priebus had repeatedly beseeched Trump to modulate his message and play well with the other candidates in the crowded Republican field. Trump, who has always been his own chief strategist, communications guru and political director – and who was winning by running his way — saw that as a sign of weakness, and responded accordingly.
.. In retired Marine Corps General John Kelly, Trump has now turned to the kind of military strong man he thinks he wants, one he hopes will kick keisters and take names. But the president might want to be careful what he wishes for. There is a model for that kind of chief of staff, and it’s probably not one that Trump would be comfortable with.
.. “Wouldn’t it be awful if Sherman Adams died and Eisenhower became president?” There will never be any doubt about who’s the real boss in the Trump White House.
.. Each day brings fresh evidence that the most unpredictable, undisciplined figure in this administration is the president himself. The very manner of Kelly’s surprise appointment – announced without warning in a presidential tweet – might give any new chief of staff pause.
.. But if he is to be an effective quarterback, his president has to give him the ball. It seems far from clear that Donald Trump is willing to share the football with anyone. Will Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump report to the president, or to Kelly? Scaramucci has already said he answers directly to Trump. What does that portend for Kelly’s authority before he even takes the job?
.. But when Ford left office, his powerful chief of staff, Dick Cheney, got a going- away present from his own aides: A bicycle wheel mounted on a piece of plywood with every spoke between the hub and the rim broken – except one.
.. Donald Trump’s rise, if not his presidency, represents everything that Reince Priebus had argued against in the wake of his party’s 2012 electoral defeat, when he commissioned an autopsy for the Republican National Committee that concluded the party had to attract younger, more diverse swing voters if it were ever again to be competitive in presidential elections
Kelly’s first task: Stabilize the West Wing
Privately, White House aides and others close to the administration acknowledged it won’t be easy. Even without Priebus, the West Wing remains fractured, with advisers competing for influence over the president.
“I think this is the best and last shot,” said one person close to Kelly. “This is it.”
.. Kelly is expected to nonetheless try to exert his authority early, including by limiting access to the Oval Office, according to people briefed on his plans. Kelly wants to have more of a pecking order among the staff and a more “traditional” approach, one White House official said.
But others in the White House said it’s too early to make predictions. “Everything is up in the air. Anyone who tells you they know anything is lying,” a White House official said.
.. But there is nonetheless concern at the White House about Kelly’s lack of experience with Congress.
“He doesn’t have the relationships over there,” one aide said.
Kelly has built relationships with several top White House aides in recent months, including chief strategist Steve Bannon and senior adviser Stephen Miller, who have played a central role in Trump’s immigration crackdown.
.. One of the people close to Kelly said he likely won’t have much in common with communications director Anthony Scaramucci, the fast-talking former New York financier.
Asked to name any similarities between the two men, the person said, “They’re both Catholic, but that’s probably about it.”
.. Kelly is expected to make his first staff change at the White House on Monday, when he’ll bring in Kirstjen Nielsen, his chief of staff at DHS.
.. previous stints as the senior military assistant to former defense secretaries Robert Gates and Leon Panetta as highly relevant experience — a role one described as a “mini gatekeeper.”
.. “He has little tolerance for chaos and people who don’t follow orders.”
.. Kelly will also have to be able to take on the president — something few administration officials are expected to do as much as the White House chief of staff.
“He will have to be willing to look the president in the eye and tell him when he is wrong,” Panetta said on Saturday. “He can’t just be a yes man.”
“Whether John can succeed depends on whether President Trump can change.”
.. “A friend said to me recently, ‘John’s morals will be under assault from the moment he enters the role.’
.. earlier in his Marine Corps career Kelly was a congressional liaison and in his last military post — as head of the U.S. Southern Command — he had to regularly deal with political, diplomatic and economic leaders in Latin America.
“But can he succeed where Priebus failed?” he asked. “Trump likes to be his own chief of staff.”
President Trump Names DHS Secretary John Kelly to White House Chief of Staff
Kelly earned the respect of the president as the head of his Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as the pair shared a deep respect for the rule of law and order.
.. The president has appeared several times with Kelly to recognize the importance of the armed forces.
After the president received a sword during the United States Coast Guard commencement ceremony this May, Kelly joked, “use that on the press, sir.”
.. Trump’s decision signals that he wants more gravitas and discipline in his chaotic White House, relying on a retired Marine General to take the place of Priebus — who sometimes struggled to earn the respect of the president’s staff.
.. When he asked his wife if he should do the job, she replied, “Well, you know, if we’re nothing the Kelly family is a family of service to the nation.”
Trump’s presidency hinges on this choice
On one point above all, they were unanimous: The president cannot govern effectively, they said, without a chief of staff empowered to execute his agenda.
.. the president cannot govern effectively without a chief of staff who is first among equals. The chief wears many hats. But he is above all the person the president counts on to turn his policies into reality and, when necessary, to tell him what he does not want to hear.
.. Since the days of Richard Nixon and H.R. Haldeman, every president has learned, often the hard way, that he cannot govern effectively without empowering a chief of staff as his gatekeeper. Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford, tried to run the White House according to a model he called the “spokes of the wheel” — with a handful of advisers reporting directly to him, at the center. The result was chaos
.. Carter, horrified by the Watergate scandal personified by Haldeman, chose not to appoint a chief at all; but 2½ years into his term, unable to prioritize his agenda and bogged down in minutia, he realized his mistake and named Hamilton Jordan.
.. Panetta set the stage for Clinton’s reelection. He did it by telling Clinton hard truths.
.. Pitting advisers against one another may work in a family real estate empire, but modern history shows that it is a formula for failure in the presidency. Like Trump, Ronald Reagan wanted to shake up the establishment, but he intuited something Trump has yet to grasp: As a Washington outsider, he needed a consummate insider to get things done.
He found that person in James A. Baker III, a smooth-as-silk 50-year-old Texas lawyer. Baker knew what was doable on Capitol Hill and was not afraid to tell the president what he did not want to hear.
.. No competent chief would allow an executive order on immigration (a core Trump campaign promise) to be dispatched without vetting it with the departments involved.
It’s also hard to imagine Baker or Panetta allowing a president to squander his political capital on an ill-fated health-care bill with almost no chance of passing the Senate.
.. Priebus’s greatest failure has been his unwillingness to confront the president with the painful truth.
.. He cannot succeed as president if he is surrounded by sycophants.
.. Trump can continue to try to govern by himself — his gut instincts unchecked, his advisers warring, his executive orders mired in the courts and legislation dead on Capitol Hill. Or he can empower a chief of staff to take charge