>> next the presidential historian and former senior aid to president george w. bush, his book fight house looks at the internal site that shapes the ministrations. this was a virtual event hosted by the bipartisan policy center. >> good afternoon i am the director of governmental studies at the policy center and thank you for joining us in a virtual event where we are here for an important reason, the release of a new book, the book is rivalries in the white house from truman to trump and the author will be joined to make commentary on this book. let me start by introducing our guest and then we're going to talk a little bit and looking forward to having you ask questions as well. the reason i'm very excited

about this book and about our guest, there is a rare thing to be good at public service, to be a person of action and a rare thing to be a scholar and excellent at the study of something. and both bring that to the table. chevy was somebody who worked in many places in public service from the congress to several departments, the department of labor and partly in the white house which is what these books are about in several of his other books. he is a published author who has written, in addition to this piece of the white house, pieces of intellectuals in the white house as well as emergency in the white house and use of social media by the president. i hope you will take the time to listen and to think about buying this book, fight house, where fourth of july coming up in the president's birthday the summer, anytime is a good time for love going to learn more about the

white house and the presidency. >> skinner, has also a person of action and the scholarly repute, she is someone who has worked most recently in the white house in the state department as director of policy and planning and a number of white house administrations in advisory and other roles and welcome to the presidential campaign. she is also the toby professor and director of the institute of politics and strategy at the university. , their study is the presidency, she's written books on ronald reagan and the foreign policy as well. we have a great lineup today, what we are going to do is jump into the meat of the book, we want to give you a little sense in one of the key points and i want you to hear her thoughts,

we will have conversation and then will turn to you, i want to mention a couple other times, when i do see for questions you have a number of ways of getting in touch. one is to submit questions in the comment section and also with the youtube chat function and finally at twitter at # btc life. let's begin. this is a book that you have written extensively on the white house, when i like about the book is it's about personality and conflict of important geysers in the presidency and the white house itself. it says a lot about how the institution is grown. my first question, you point out over the period you're talking about starting after fdr, the white house has become a much bigger institution, more staff, more prominent and yet the advisors are younger than cabinet secretaries but they

also have the year of the president. tell us about the growth of the white house, its relation to the cabin and if you can the many examples you have in your book, few of them to give us a sense of what those conflict in the area were. >> thank you john and thinks tehran for doing this. the book is about the growth of the white house staff and the executive office of the president. they do not realize this but before fdr administration and before roosevelt, we do not have a white house staff per se, the truth is the president manhattan, but in roosevelt europe something called the brown wall commission and the brown will commission had a forward conclusion when the president needs help. that forward conclusion wasn't executive office of the president, 1800 people. most 1800 are crew staffers who served in the administration.

it is about 3 - 4 countries that we traditionally think of white house staff. and sometimes they are a little younger and have the advantage of the proximity, close to the president but not necessarily the person to be delegated authority. however, the very close to the president and we challenge the cabinet secretaries and the women in charge and for the whole idea of fighting in the white house. the first two presidents that i look at our truman and eisenhower, they're both part of the first two presidents to start in the white house staff and they had to think about how they wanted to create the white house staff endure structure. both of them for the most part was a leader in cabinet government. they cabinet government the cabinet officers are in charge of the respective areas in the white house staff has helped the president and guide but as the

cabinet officers who have set policy. i have known to tell cabinet officers and say this is your area, you look it out. that said in the instance where you did have cabinet secretary butt heads with white house secretary and people delegated by the president in a way that is different with the cabinet government seem to attest. one thing in the truman administration, truman is facing the issue of whether to recognize, is not just a controversial proposition but at the time it was a big? for u.s. policy. most were against including george marshall who was not only a war hero but the secretary of state and someone with truman was geared more than anyone else in public life. truman knew he wanted him here on the other side so clifford became famous in the white house

aid to make the case for work in icing israel where he'd be running against marshall. marshall is not that interested weighing in on an issue. and for letting the president no, what is he doing. but he backed clifford and easier and i asked him to be here, he makes the case in the u.s. does recognize the bill but marshall was so angry that he lost the argument and he never spoke to clifford the rest of his life. a quick story and eisenhower administration, john foster was the secretary of state and its infrequent test with the white house people. eisenhower decided to bring in the former minnesota governor to be negotiator with specifically the soviet. the new york time and the editorial about when he came on board because of the secretary, this really hurt who said what

does that make me the secretary for war and he was constantly trying to undercut staff and he did manage to get rid of it. here would be to presidents having the government and the people who were designated by the president to handle an issue in the cabinet secretary. >> another thing that you address, however, president has centralized authority and not within the white house, some president wanted to have chief of staff, strong chief of staff, gatekeeper of all things that will go to that person, others did not want to see the staff at all. or loose operation, sometimes referred to as were many people have access to the president. tell us a little bit about the organization of the white house and how it accepted the conflict

that you have in the book. >> i really mention the chief of staff they assume the chief of staff is always there, that is not the case. the first prominent one was sherman adams under eisenhower but then you have the back-and-forth over the next three or four ministrations, the chief of staff was a recurring position in the white house. eisenhower did what you said, they did not have the chief of staff and nixon very prominently had chief of staff who is very curious fellow. and in the administration he reacted against nixon and the imperial presidency and florida who had a chief of staff was don but he did not want to call the chief of staff, he called it the staff tornado. jimmy carter did not want to have a chief of staff and that left all kinds of challenges. the carter administration reluctantly came around to chief of staff and that did not work

out well. he butted heads with hamilton and george jordan in joining the campaign because susan charge of the transition all the campaign people and he's in the modern era, and they thought the transition people would take their jobs. so watson becomes chief of staff and so much so when ronald reagan wins he meets jack lawson and he said from what i hear, if you had this earlier i might not be in this position right now, carter had gone with this chief of staff early on and with the presidency he may have won a second term. the chief of staff is an important role under the reagan administration you have jim baker who is regarded as the best chief of staff ever and once he comes in and he does a really good job, you basically have a chief of staff consecutively in every

administration. that does not mean there aren't problems. reagan replaced jim baker as chief of staff not nearly as effective did not get along merely as well as ms. reagan and at one point he hangs up on mrsg him to do something that he did not want to do. jim baker who was a previous piece of staff and he was hanging up on the first lady, that is not a firing, that is hanging. andy didn't last much longer after that. sometimes i get involved in the conflict as well. >> if i ask you to give advice to a president, an incoming president especially with respect to how you deal with conflict in the white house, is everything that is necessary, do you need to manage it, that the

depend on who the president is, what your big advice for president able to run the white house well, knowing his very strong conflict in some examples in the book would be great. >> i describe is a continuum on one side you have absolutely no conflict and that leaves a group of people on the john thune administration, he did work here into tried to raise voices and in fact they were people at the state department there were uncomfortable with the vietnam policy and they formed a loop to discuss alternative policy but they were so nervous that he might find out that they called himself the non-group and so johnson will not be aware of it and take revenge on it. and on the other hand you have

too much conflict in this i think of the warner administration. and then you have a wild uncontrolled white house and you have people at the press and it was like this because everybody thinks jerry florida what a nice guy but i think his nicest included him in the white house and there was robert he was a friend of ford's and knew him before he became president and was very thin-skinned and his nickname was slb in the white house he said it stood for sweet old bob. and he knew that as well. and florida was reluctant, he would do shenanigans from the inbox of his office to the oval, he even shared a bathroom with florida.

the usual preacher protocol. what he would do with the control of them boxes, they went to president-elect, he would pull about and the political policies. he wrote something in front of the president, into the presidential -- this is really incapable, not manageable and in fact they had to do something about it and gerald florida was close to hartman and he did not want to do anything but then there was cheney who became the chief of staff and the presidential history but cheney was assigned a figured out how to deal with the problem and one thing he did was heartening next to the oval, he knew he could not go to florida and say get rid of your friend but he said mr. president and he found he

was out of office and he did not stay in the white house and he no longer had the office from where he was being so problematic. sometimes he needs to take steps that are not necessarily what the president is willing to articulate what he wants in order to address. i would say in that continuum to extreme chaos and somewhere in the middle is a comfortable and you have a president who is willing to survive chaos engender a little chaos for better results. in the famous story of bill clinton who loses the midterm election in 1994 because he knew he needed alternative voices, he brings his advisor his name is charlie, his name was dick morris who was a long-standing political consultant to clinton but a republican consultant at the time of his career. charlie brings in the memos that

are trying to get clinton back, his aides don't like and they find out from charlie and the leaking to the press and that dick morris is advising the president and people like stefan engine stefain theentire time he house. stephanopoulos whose memoir talks about how much he dislikes morris. at the end he knows clinton by bringing in outside force got better results out of the staff. sometimes the president has recognized the benefits with a little bit of chaos in order to get better. >> thank you tevi, you given a good sense of what's in the book. there is a lot more for the audience, there's certainly more reason to go out and buy that book. i'm going to do two things, i'm going to turn to tyrannical one second but i want to remind you

we will come to you later, you can submit your questions in the comment section on the facebook and you can do so through twitter at the handle # btc life. karen, you have all sorts of experience in this area and first some broad thoughts and if you want to share your experiences in the trump, we would love to hear that. >> i would love to thank you all for doing this book event in the work that you do across the political divide to bring us together to talk about the policy issues and tevi is a great administration for what you believe in. looking at democrats and republicans in the white house, how they interact in a scholarly

way, that making judgment along ideological lies, that being said i would like to ask tevi about his comment on the model that he sets up for his analysis, he talks about three big factors that govern his work as he worked at the white house. one he talked about ideological siding. he was interested second in administrative and decision-making process. and finally, he talked about the broader category of insight. i am interested if you could take a higher altitude to look and say which variable do you think has the best outcome for public policy. , i would like to start there. i think that's what's fascinating a way of looking and framing what goes on in the white house. relatedly, since you mentioned

evan and novak, many of us are old enough to remember those amazing columns that we waited for what they were going to say next. but what do you think about the role of leaking and leakers in the public policy process, when they do something that is important or they just a nuisance and do they corrupt and corrode and destroying the democratic process. those are two big areas i would like to have a conversation about. >> thank you for your scholarship. i think that you correctly note i have three lovers in the book that the president has in the purview to address number one is ideological comedy. you have a team, comedy, you

have a team that gets along ideologically, you're going to see less fighting because they generally create an ideological line. number two if you have a process where people can get their voices heard and have their thoughts expressed to the president, even if they don't win at the end of the day, they have a fair process and they're more likely to be at the end of the discussion and say the president decided, i had my chance and work with them to accept this as the president's policy. as the third, if the president is willing to seek more insight and his tolerance, you will have more with the president in contrast and think i don't want to see it and he has the famous no drama obama, he made it clear he did not want to be fighting in the white house and there's a great story i have who did not like something that was written about her and she wrote an e-mail to many of the white house complaining about the way she was treated and she thought

somebody stocked her. obama -- it is not unusual because of the chief of staff and the president, she does not know why and he says to her, she was shocked that the president even bothered knowing about e-mails and said a very fierce signal, i don't want to see the stuff going on in the white house. those three are the lovers that the president has control to take the desire. in turn which one has the best result, i think it's hard to say ideological is helpful so then you know when the president will go with that, even though there was fighting in the reagan white house, the idea of reagan roles meaning people knew generally where reagan was to go and even the people might have thought of titles or the stature, the fact of where they were going in a

policy direction. i think the process was extremely important in the administration with the bush administration in the process was extremely important and anybody who committed a process and somebody went around the process, the presidential powers also set the tone, let me guess you force me too rank him and i would put the process first but there was a section about the press, i think the press plays an important role, we need to have a press that lets us know what's going on and i think we know about the white house today than previous errors because you forgot to mention novak, each guy i looked at in the white house, i went and looked if novak wrote any columns on a particular fight, and he did in addition to all the other legal

scholars. and indeed the publisher of this book a guy named alex novak and he liked the fact that i was looking at his father's column to the book. i think the press plays in a porn role but there are people who take advantage of the press and they have a leak against her colleagues and especially through the court process and the leader to the press to do policy acts. it was not much better and i don't think that self-serving approach with the bush administration and i was on the domestic side of the house not only a free administration, the reason i say the administration because importers complain that they are not coming from the administration and i have the approach in the book with public borders complaining about the leaks of this administration.

and i think that can lead to people cooperating better they don't feel that they can show up in political. >> can i get you to ask more, to talk a little bit about your time in the trump administration or your studies on the reagan administration tevi has written about book and the book doesn't cover about some it is new but some are your thoughts about it and maybe tevi can interact with what you're thinking along those lines. >> absolutely tevi, you talk about peggy noonan saying we understand reagan was not in charge from an ideological and policy standpoint but you also know that he had numerous national security advisers, it was a turn in the white house, every 14 months or so over an eight year . . . there was a new

national security advisor and there was a tension between the ideology which he was committed to and everybody knew what the northstar was in his ability to have the process of the white house. i studied reagan and found that fascinating and how does the president who has that many national security advisers have the historic breakthrough in the cold war that who did, for example december 1987, the washington summit led to the nuclear treaty i was marked the 40 or cold war. can you speak to how reagan got something that historic done in the midst of having new faces, not the national security advisor but downstream, the people underneath each man coming in and coming out, how did that happen on the work that

you did. >> national security advisor position, it was stability of the secretary of state position right after going early on in the process and i'm a wonderful story because jim baker was a chief of staff in the deputy chief of staff tried to keep them off of air force one and out of the hotel the president was staying in and he said what am i a leper, he complained about the guerrillas in the white house. the 42-year-old deputy chief of staff and a gorilla quashed human the white house saying -- i cannot imagine cell phones and twitter that somebody would do something like that. and it goes relatively quickly but george comes in which is an excellent secretary of state and a clear sense of what he wants and he's a colleague of yours in

the stability really helped in the other thing the idea of reagan which you have any sense, you are more likely to have a even if they interchange with the president trying to go. the person who succeeded george h. w. bush and the more conservative staffers and moderate staffers because themselves were a little less clear about the position of what they said and he had trouble with the vision. and you're really not clear on whether you're going to go. >> related to that, if you don't mind i would like to say that sometimes it is difficult that you were you referred to this, i'd like to draw you out more on this point, it is often difficult that is largely

cohesive that three big variables that you mention to get the work that they want done when there is chaos in the agencies going on. and related to that powerful cabinet who happened to disagree with the president, i think we've seen that in the trump administration and that would be the story so far. can you give up historical examples that may be corrective to what the trump administration has experienced if you indeed degree what i just described? >> it is certainly clear that my best story in the white house about inciting the national security advisor in the secretary of state and then is to enter nixon administration with henry kinzinger who is a national security advisor and intern to remember now because we see it of a group of foreign

policy but then he was very young, very aggressive and he was constantly threatened by william rogers who is the secretary of state and nixon also newington nixon and with the wings around rogers and parts of nixon recognized and learned from kinzinger whereas rogers had nothing to teach nixon who was a strategist and came to foreign policy. sometimes you have a situation where the national security advisor, when it rings around an event in the carter administration were there citing between the secretary of state and they knew each other before the administration in the night of the election and they talked about the prospects of them

working together in the first day of the carter administrati administration, he is briefed by the communication council and until the phone rings from the secretary of state and he shouts, yank it out to the secretary of state, i work for the president, on the first day of the administration he was 30 laying out that he would be open to the secretary of state. and sometimes you can have a relationship that works better. the nixon administration i talked about he was a secretary of defense and he would not put up with his shenanigans and he had the bureaucratic standing to be able to push back against kinzinger and he was much more effective of the secretary of defense then rogers was able to beat the secretary of state because he scared off kinzinger, he was a bureaucratic bully and he knew he could not fully around him.

i think it's a awful meal and ae and people are pushing to see ththe limits and if you can stad your ground and not be a jerk about it, you can show that you bring value to the process and you will not be toweled by somebody in the shenanigans. that would be my advice crew. >> i think we want to go to your audience questions and i want to remind you we have more coming in and if you can summit on the comments section of facebook and use the youtube function or twitter and live. and we have a number of questions in already, i'm going to start with ej fagan, my question is, what role do vice president's play with the conflict. has that real change since a vice presidency has taken on an active role beginning. >> they stand for the question

and thank you the vice president does play an important role, does not necessarily play an important role in if the vice president really acts in some way the pleasure of the president in the jfk administration and what does the vice president under john f. kennedy, the attorney general is famously kennedy's brother, robert f kennedy who hated johnson and he did them from the days in the senate he is trying to demean lyndon johnson and weaken his role in robert f kennedy was the most powerful person in the kenny amen canadin administration then you have a terrible tragic circumstances

and the vice president is elevated to be presidency and now rfk who is working for president who hates him and there is a big screaming fight that they have in the oval office shortly after johnson is inaugurated after the first cabinet meeting and they don't talk for two months after that. and everybody in the audience with the weird coronavirus period. rfk was the sitting attorney general and knowing the president for two months, that is unusual. sometimes you have a president giving certain powers to a vice president that they may have one administration on the other. i also point out that hubert humphrey was lbj's vice president and he might've learned from the experience that he had to be nicer with humphrey and the opposite was the case, he was belittling.

in later years without the vice president he had become her powerful in the bush 43 administration, cheney was deputy chief of staff, he is very involved between secretary right in security advisor and he had colin powell who got expelled in cheney's vice president and i mentioned earlier the bush domestic team in week three, the foreign policy team was rightfully in insight, the vice president was important part of that, the vice president, i just really seen to a serious situation with the vice president he was able -- sometimes they are involved. >> we have a lot of questions

coming in, i'll try to get to as many african and we need to try to keep it short so we can get to more of them. if you answer the question have something to say, were happy to have you share your wisdom as well, i have a question from gabby g, which white house had the biggest fight that impacted execution of policy? >> i would like to go with the florida administration, it is really paralyzed by the inciting, i mentioned the instances of robert hartman. your presidential addresses including state of the union that would not get resolved because of the inside and it's one where the night before the state of the union and yelling at the staff because they have not resolve the conflict state of the union and it's a great story with robert hartman in ways to celebrate the

bicentennial 1976. hartman is afraid that the other staffers are working against him and they get a bunch of ideas from the outside world and by various intellectuals in those kind of people. and he was afraid of what they would pick so he comes up so you don't know the name of the individual who made the recommendation and he would ask people, are you person a or b or c and then the computer era, he loses the code so he tricks himself in doesn't know who he's capable of injured scholars pray sometimes these things can only paralyze you because you're fighting with others but to commute and protect yourself and be better against herself. >> i actually would like to jump in with the question before you move on. this is a little bit of a different question, this is late

to the issue. it was a high watermark, we have technology and social media where many people are waiting in who have limited if any journalistic background but we have also government officials going to the various individuals in the heat important information, what do you think about that, you're seeing in the temple administration where there is an attempt to smear and destroy people who are serving honorably and its leading to a lot of turnover. >> it's a good question about leaking, what i found in the book there is a constant rate of technology, the technology for the leaking and the technologies

with chasing down the leaks. the johnson administration for example lyndon johnson asked the white house operator to report to him on the white house staffers and he can try to identify leakers in the white house to report to him where white house staffers are being taken by the army drivers with the white house staffers. presidents are trying to get a handle in the nixon administration became a union that led to watergate in the mitigation. the reason they were called the plumbers because they were designed from scratch week. they broke into the watergate themselves but the reason they started in the nickname because of leaks. there is a cat and mouse game between the administration and staffers on the leaking issue and there will always be technology leaking and noise technology identifying who the

leakers are in the best way to address it is to have the president to make it clear in bringing people who are willing to not leaking against. i don't want to suggest all leaking is evil but sometimes administration will talk about a certain policy that they are making or personnel there picking up, this is necessarily designed to destroy and sometimes it's designed to get a policy between sunshine and air seek and assess whether he would be treated well by the american people. the leak has negative condensation but it is not always. >> we will turn to another audience question, if you look carefully you will see not only the fight house but his other books with the president

jefferson red and intellectual suede behind him. you may feel relieved to buy more of these books. i will turn to a question from russell newsom, that question begins with a comment i agree with, it's a great book about the modern presidency, the book gets into this but i like to hear the author discuss whether these rivalries and many more personality or compulsive interim policy. >> he is a former white house staffer so he knows, the personality is an issue, the guy like kinzinger is a sharp skin fellow and the people no matter what, a person like robert hartman and a guy who can't imagine being in environment. sometimes you see people who are trying to put the policies above and in the reagan administration you had at least a true

conservative advisor to reagan and very close to reagan, but he did not get the chief of staff, uses organized and there's a big story in the book and the briefcase where they go in and don't come out and the agent called the black hole and there's a lot of nicknames in the book and he called it the briefcase. and finding a way with james baker and he unilaterally stepped out and that he's not going to leak because leaking against baker was not only for baker but also the present. and it's a higher send with a higher perspective and not necessarily way to advance herself but i do what i can to help you administration. i think personality, you canno

cannot -- on the policy side if you have a strong disagreement by the policy direction, personality is a constant policy of a barrier. >> great, we have another question and somebody should answer this. we have this as well and this is from herbert, the question is what are the factors that have contributed the sexual relationship between the given chief of staff and cabinet secretaries. >> that's a good question, the chief of staff, he himself above everybody else, but at the same time he does not necessarily have cabinet rank although the chief of staff goes to the cabinet meetings. sometimes they get ahead of

themselves so don reagan who i mentioned earlier without nancy reagan says he's good at the chief part but he does not get the art stock. as i think the way to make sure they get along is to try and implicate the sensitive on the presidents team and their equivalent ability to access and in one of the reasons don reagan wanted to become chief of staff over the treasury secretary, he never had a one-on-one time alone with president reagan. if you keep the cabinet secretary isolated from the president and that will hurt you as a chief of staff because there's a feeling you are isolating the president and not letting them have in order to get a sense to get the stuff done. i think the chief of staff needs to be inclusive and i sell this with andy when i worked at the bush white house, he recognized the important of the cabinet

secretary into the process. that's a good model for how the chief of staff got along with the cabinet secretary. in secretary carter had been a secretary previously. so he knew about this. >> let me speak on that question based on what he said from the standpoint of the temple administration. again an administration that has had a lot of turn and the white house, not just the national security council but in the world to chief of staff. what i've been able to confirm the chief of staff which is become so critical for the modern american presidency. i doubt we have a president that could survive without the chief of staff, given the sheer amount of operational activity with the white house is responsible for any given day. the common factor that it leads to a great chief of staff that may have been missing in the

chamfer administration and on the prior relationship, that individual has commander-in-chief. and a lot of what were seen in the temple administration is a collection of people who really did not know donald trump when they came to serve him. either in the cabinet or the chief of staff or the national security advisor. that is a hard place to be, it is hard to build a relationship in real time and often when you're that close to the president the more you have prior history and the trump is there and if you been in the trenches before, either in the campaign or in some other phase of life, were seen in this. a collection of people who are serving a president where they really do not know him very well and he does not know them very well.

>> tevi i don't know if you want to respond to that. >> i think parents are raising an important point, it's a sense that the president has the most trust in the people that often have in the appellation attacks with the arkansas or reagan at the california. carter has -- it's not the mafia but people who had him before, if your president and even as you me as president and somebody you have to have some level of distrust because they want to talk to you because your president. what did they think of you before your president. the people who knew you when really have a closeness and value. that's why talked earlier about bob hartman, he was not only president but the vice president and the honesty that comes in the relation said it's extremely

important for the level of tru trust. >> i'm going to remind the audience we still have a little more time and if you would like to submit a question you can do so in the youtube trust function or on twitter at # btc life, another question from peter and that is proper structure and process usually provide the outcomes desire when the president does not care about either, what are the alternatives. >> as i said earlier process and structure is really important. and it's hard to beat that, you don't have structure coming will have some problematic outcome, with that said if you have a clear direction, you can overcome the process problems potentially by everybody knowing where you're trying to go. the question is if you don't have a good process and the

clarity of direction, that's what we need to pass. i think it's a really good question but the process is boring and dual but it's incredibly important for getting things done and is not a partisan thing, the white house process is an honored tradition and goes from the administration to the administration imperfectly in mind with the theory of the bipartisan policy center that there are certain structures of government that we should maintain and adhere to regardless of ideology where they have the administration in the power. the most exciting thing but -- >> and i follow up and get to talk about the reagan administration and also way on this. the reagan a administration had a triumph or of three people at the top and as described it could've been very chaotic, was

not necessarily something you would recommend, just that model on paper with the president better way than settled in and was successful even though there was conflict. maybe you could say a little bit more about the reagan which might not even operating on paper. >> i think the way reagan worked, jim baker, chief of staff and the counselor to the president and mike as deputy chief of staff in the three worked well together, each had specific roles to play. jim baker was a chief of staff and operator in the famous piece of paper talk about in the book divvied up the role in the white house between baker and he had the logistical pieces that sounded less sexy that helped him run the white house respectively. he had the cheaper ideological

plane and outreach which are so important in the regular administration and he tried to be sure that they did not go off in even though baker was more moderate and he did not care about ideology at all, and the reagan image was so important and he was really good at making reagan. because he was in and they might have caught, they did not step on each other's toes in the specific area and i think that's important. another thing about this in the white house, the extent to which they distrusted each other so they stuck together as a group and the other staffers knew they could get a lot done without those three senior people bothering them because nobody wants a meeting with reagan without one of the three lovers because then reagan would say something that was detrimental to the members. and there is even an historian

in the hospital that the three of them have to visit in the hospital together and know that they cannot visit them in the hospital, reagan had a joke when they showed up and i did not know we were going to have a staff meeting. that was one of the instances in which it was able to work in part because the reagan management style and gave them slack in the clear ideological guidance and because they each had specific goals. >> i could add to that, it was not clear coming into the white house that these three would be on the onset rot together to help organize. what made the critical difference in the first couple months of the administration. and the fact that reagan was shot, how they perform during a presidential crisis. remember al haig ended up being outside of the community

surrounding the president because of her performance especially before the press when he said i am in charge. these men supported themselves in a way that got reported back to the president they were respectful, and collaborative. in that help the framework of the administration and to also make george h. w. bush a trusted aid in the way that may not have happened for the speed that it did. on the other side even with him in place, it cannot stop the chaos of the national security council which ultimately got a handle which almost toppled the reagan presidency. sometimes leaders are great with the vision and that was reagan. even nancy reagan said that her husband was no manager.

and you really need the president to have the ideological or policy direction with some ability, not complete ability but serious ability. reagan was better at one then the other. >> the initial crisis of reagan was very interesting and you mentioned the george w. bush and one of the things that he did, he was effectively acting president but he refused to have a helicopter landed on the white house lawn during that period and that was a step that reagan saw bush was not trying to create power to himself in a circumstance and other people putting themselves and he kept excusing himself and unclear why but richard allen who is a national security advisor did

not trust him until he kept going out to leak to the press and that's why he made professor leakey. >> were coming to the end of our hour, maybe i can ask, do you have a last thought you want to put on the table about the book and then i'll ask tevi to close it out with the final submission of whatever else has not been set. >> what i like about the book in particular, it seems to fill a void in presidential history, we think of the context of scandal after scandal and we read these books looking for information about a particular person that we did not know, that is not what tevi did. he took it seriously with intellectual exercise and as i said to him the other day, this is a book i will use with my students as they teach american

politics, it really helps us understand the american form of government and what in the federalist papers they were concerned about and predicting, much of it is a curve from the pages of tevi's book. we have to worry about factionalism and worry about particular individuals who can corrupt the process. but tevi's book gives us hope, even though we have to worry about the potential to destroy the democratic process. somehow in the american system of government, we keep recovering, we keep the course directing and we get big policy outcomes. remember over the time that tevi rights, the united states is a predominant power on earth and for each president increasing the amount of responsibility for the blow and domestic policy as

more people push from racial to gender to disability, that is a lot to do in a relatively small white house with a relatively small staff and despite the leaking and despite that insight and ideological battles and levels of presidential tolerance for all of us, we still get the outcome back and make us the world's most fully fund interim functioning democracy. thank you for this important work. >> thank you. >> final thought. >> thank you for participating and also for your kind words, i admire your scholarship and service to the great nation. and you capture what i'm try to get at, if people are human and you may look at the democrat or republican, these are human and they have families and spouses in challenges and career

concerns and they worry what's going to happen with the administration, is trying to capture the human element in this book because you have so many instances where you think it's an all-powerful person and you read about in the new york times and the washington post, these are real people with real lives and is a story i want to mention in the book with the reagan campaign, the 1980s, john who is a campaign manager, systematically going after the california and getting rid of them in a talk in the book about a confrontation that ronald reagan led to mike being accused and somebody very close to the reagan said to him i'm able to go to the bedroom to brief the reagan but he ended up going to the bathroom. that shows you how close he was. he's accused of these and he stormed out of the house and he

said if you don't want me, i quit and he ran out of the house. in the next minute he sheepishly walked back into the house and i forgot my wife dropped me off, i don't have a car, can i borrow nancy station wagon to get back into the city. >> is a very human moment in the sky resigned from the campaign and at the same moment he recognizes his friendship with nancy would allow him to borrow her station wagon and then he comes back. i have all moments in the book because again it's important that the personality really shapes the direction of the great country and they recognize each president has an ideological direction in those we to some degree but also who the people are and what the trend to accomplish and in the obama administration, there is a story about alyssa that i mentioned earlier is a chief of

staff and she is frustrated with the feminine products in the white house oval office in the west wing bathroom, she makes a big announcement and she talks about the blank stare because she got from the obama and that was reality that she brought to the role. again the human elements in the white house, i appreciate everybody who is calling in. . . .