In 2016, our country endured one of the most divisive elections in modern history. Now into his second year in office, President Trump continues to lean on a revolving inner circle of advisers who are determined to execute his outsider agenda but who have little governing experience. One of the president's most important advisers is his chief of staff, a position the framers of the Constitution could not have envisioned. Unelected and unconfirmed, the chief serves at the whim of the president, hired and fired by him alone. And yet the chief's job is so critical that the presidency cannot function effectively without one. Reince Priebus, Trump's first chief, who held the job for just over six months, was never fully empowered by the president and was routinely outmaneuvered by louder voices in the room, including Jared Kushner and Stephen Bannon. When an ineffectual Priebus left the role, many hoped Trump's second chief, retired general John Kelly, would help bring order to a chaotic White House. But while Trump and the Republican Party scored a major victory with their tax plan, they stumbled when it came to dismantling health care and curtailing Trump's off-script tweets. There's also concern that aggression towards North Korea is leading the country down a dangerous path, thanks to this commander-in-chief's impulsiveness. Kelly has said he has no plans to change Trump, but as chief of staff, isn't one of his most important jobs to protect the president from himself?
Based on extensive, intimate interviews with eighteen living chiefs of staff, including an exclusive new chapter with interviews from both Priebus and Bannon on Trump, as well as two former presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, THE GATEKEEPERS: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency (Broadway Books, on-sale March 6, 2018), by award-winning producer and journalist Chris Whipple, is the story of men who defined the presidencies they served. In THE GATEKEEPERS, Whipple explains how every president needs an empowered chief of staff in order to govern effectively. Our most successful presidents understood the importance of a strong chief (Ronald Reagan, for example, knew that he needed a consummate Washington insider, James Baker, in order to get things done). Yet as Whipple's book shows, our political age is also littered with the wreckage of presidencies that failed to understand this lesson. From Watergate and the Iraq War to the bungled rollout of Obamacare and the disasterous announcement and execution of Trump's "Muslim ban," Whipple sheds light on moments in our nation's history that take on new meaning in this current climate.
THE GATEKEEPERS is a methodically detailed, compelling, and dimensional history that changes our perspective on the presidency, told by people who have had front-row seats to the last nine administrations.