■ó yeah, that's right. that is interesting, too, because i think i read a story cetely different way of doing things than ron klain, for example, necessarily the personal style of whether you really inclusive in decision making. it sounds more like it's about yourt. so what you and you laid dutiesf those are the hardest j'çw terms of the things that you kind of laid out is the remit of the chief of staff. what for you was the most difficult? attract the best and the brightest to work at the white house. and even if it's not true, but was that that was challenging? i because if you are truly one of the best and the brj

managing the personalities of these very competent people that the president hired. so that they were not the president. and when you were advising the president and when you say that, who comes to mind? what cheney, john rumsfeld. john bolton, yeah. john bolton. ce are all very competent people. they're competent and confident. so how did you do you have a memory of having to check times and any you should have dealt with -- holbrooke seriously the the challenge there is that t want their view ton to ad■ be the accepted view.and so if t personality,ou out some other mr person in ro ws ■[so

just as competent. so i would police that andaybe during a meeting and i'd say sally really has more at like to say. what do you think, sally? or i would say after the meeting the■- president, you know, so-and-so kind of dominated the discussion. i know that jim had a lot more president, you might want to call jim and see what he had to say. so t w things to do because you don't want to elim counsel, you want to invite it. but you want to make sure the ent is making the decision rather than being bullied into the decision or think thath decision is purely just the president's with no cecounsel. he needs advice and counsel. we live in a pluralistic society. actually, today we live in a my way or the highway society. i' like us to live in a pluralistic society where there are differentere should be different views, they should be heard and they should be debated. so does that resonate with you

or what would you say was the hardest part? does that sound similar? yeah, managing egosf people that are on the staff or in the cabinet who always feel dissed because they've got some yog ki the white house who thinks they know mord ey may than the cabinet person and the cabinet person was either a rnor or some some sort of major player. and they always feel that nobody listens to them and and you've got a lot of talent in most of these cabinets, and they have egos because they've been around most of them for a long time. that's why they got thesay thate most difficult. but i think in everybody in washington is a triple are. and and the competition is enormous. and you also know that probably

eight out of ten people that you're dealing with and a staffer in the cabinet all think theyo a better job than you can do. and maybe they can. ■d those egos around the p and i'll try with . anyone come to mind?■ñ example that you might have with that? maybe. no, an anecdote of of of the policy that was where those egos got most obama was really good at he would not let someone dominate c go you know, like goo chur a nobody sees you. me with cgm.t do that in he would call on backbenchers in parliament. well,principals would say what y want,■jsuch that he would then f figure out, okay, who's staffing that principal and and he asked them and put them oneir opinions

awkward because you knew that person was thinkingwith my boss. i was the secretary sitting at the table and to tell the president the truth, but he was really good at that. the sounds sort of exhausting. but i president clinton, he was known as a chattyella. so i mean, did that so engaging? you mean engaging. so did that dynamic impact what these gentlemen have described? how would you describe your challenge is completely it did and i would i out of thes side and the polics as well with president clinton, who was engaged inig intellect, a lot of curiosity, a lot of energy, '5 get it done in a hurry. no, mr. president, we need to prioritize her we've got to keep our eyes on the proverbial prize.

if you look back in history, our most any president and judged be really the hallmarks of aunsuccessful presidency. so÷"■ñ that's the prize. and in our case, as bill certainly remembers, president clinton had only gotten 43% of the .ross perot got 19% of the . and president bush 41 had the remaining of the vote. and ewhat of a surprise election, at least up until the last month. and is you you'll remember, because president bush was such a gentleman, such a great man, grprwar, all of that. but the economy, it was the ec carville pointed out in the campaign. so to me, the renumber one. the president had run on the economy. we had to deliver on the

economy, job creation and rising tide lifts all boats. secondly, this was ang governor from arkansas who was not well known eter thcampaign. so it was essential that he step he sure footed manner as he met foreign/ dealt with foreign policy issues. i peace and security and prosperity. and i'll remember forever all of these chiefs have gone through a similar process. you ow■v they made a great point about what what cadence are you what sequence4j are you when you're chief of staff? is that the beginning of a term or end of a term man was at the beginning of the clinton gore night before the president takes the sacredandy knows full well g bush. you were briefed on the nuclrcoe

football. that's mb moment in our case, general colin powell was head of the joint chiefs and i assure you, gel powell, wh he stepped in a room, filled it up immediately, both in at!e. and in intellect and presence. so the night the blair house, general powell is giving the president, the vice president, natura59 chief of staff. and we discussed how many minutes you have to respond tong of the football. and i'll remember as long as i live, probably despite some loss of memory over time looking into the president's eyes, we kind of locked sacred responsibility of any commander in chief. so i always felt, jennifer, my ■wjob was to try to focus the president and the white house and the keep our eyes on the prize.

peace andthat was our goals. and i thinkboomer, i did not ina balance the budget. i talked the president about it and make, of course, was omb director. you understand it very, very well. but as we move the first term, the economy improve. we had low inflation, but real productivity. and all of a sudden you begin to that to me was was our was our were our goals. now, mike, i don't know if you are going to say share that view of managing people's opinions. if so, i'm curis because at least the image of president trump in the in the media was weth a person who was very captive to the last person who spoke to. true or not you can truth squad that from you from your perch there or is it or was it something completely different that you

found most challenging? again, i deal with the egos first because you always deal with that in a white house, andt? i'll give a specific example and name names. i d't nd doing this. john bolton. i could. and john boehner was a very there's no question on the smarts i've ever met was never really able to convince him that he wasn't the president. and i'll give you a specific example. we were in osaka, japan, and for a variety of reasons we going at the last minute to the john was against that decision demilitarized zone between the dmz to north south korea on 6 hours notice and john was against that decision and was was was vehement as to and laid out various reasons why he thought this is a bad decision that the president saidohn. we're going and john left. john went to instead. you can't do that. right. that's that's

when you knew it was time for john to go, because john was you member of this team, you have to there's only room for one ego in that room. and it's the to it has to be enough for you to recognize you're in the oval office having your argument on something. and if the president agrees with you, yay for you. pre■sside■nt doesn't agree with you, you're not the president. and managing that was real. and i remember specifically that we had some other folks that fell in the same category, but john was one who jumped out at . my biggest challenge really, though, i went through various phases, the biggest challenge at beginning was to keep everybody from killing themselves or killing each as a really, really tough place to work. k last two or three months of the job. the door was closed all the me erybody was out for him and herself in the west wing. and it was one of things i was i was i was set out to change and so we had a you know, i spent most of my day. i would it in the morning. meet the president noon.

and i spent most of my day walking around the west wing trying to build a team because they were not aat that particular time. and once we got able to do that, i felt like we were really good place until the first impeachment. but for a while there it was. it did work, but it was a challenge because of where i was in the cycle. i wasn't at the very beginning and i wasn't going into the real. we were the sort of there. i got there right after the midterms with a specific goal of fixing the place. and thatange the culture fromof brutal vipers to two folks actually functioning as a tm. and it worked. after that, then the challenge became fairly simple, which is with with the normal people? because trump liked trump like all people, he would. i've heard that clinton was the same. i think obama was the exact opposite. i'm case. trump loved to have big ghave a. so we had i used to joke that we ulsekets to the trade discussions because we'd have