neither graham nor eugene debs won their election but people remained fascinated by this couple. >> to watch the rest of this program visit ourwebsite , booktv.org and use the search box at the top of the page to search for adam hope she'll or the title of his book rebel cinderella. >> good afternoon, i'm john fortier, and thank you for joining us in a virtual event where we are here for important reasons. the release of a new book, the book is "fight house: rivalries in the white house from truman to trump" and the author is tevi troy, will join be joined by tevi as well as kiron skinner to make commentary on this book. let me start by introducing our guest and we will talk a little bit and where interested in having you ask questions as well.

i'm excited about this book but also about our guest. it's a rare thing to be good at public service, to be a person of action and it's a rare thing to be a scholar and be excellent at the study of something and tevi troy and kiron skinner both bring thatto the table . tevi was someone who worked in many places in public service from congress to several departments, the department of labor and hhs importantly at the white house which is what these books are about, this book and several of his other books. is again an accomplished author was written in addition to this pieces on the white house and about intellectuals in the white house as well as emergency preparedness in the white house. and the use of socialmedia by presidents . so i hope you will take the time to listen but also to think about buying this book. we've got fourth of july coming up, we have presidents

birthdays in the summer. anytime is a good one for a loved one to learn moreabout the white house and the presidency . kiron skinner is also a person of action and of scholarly repute. she is someone who's worked most recently in the white house or in the state department as director of policy and play, served as a number of other white house administrations in advisory and other roles as well as on presidential campaigns but she's also the toby professor and director of the institute of politics and strategy at carnegie mellon university. there she studies the presidency. she's written books on ronald reagan and foreign-policy as well so we have a great lineup today but what we're going to do is jump into the meat of the book and we want you to get a little sense from tevi of the key points in the book and i want to

turn to kiron to hear her thoughts. we will have some conversation and then i'm going to turn to you. what i do come to you for questions we have a number of ways of getting in touch with us and one is to make questions in the comment section facebook and also with the u2 chat function and also on twitter at #dpclive. tevi, this is a book you've written extensively on the white house but of course it's about personalities and conflicts and important advisors in the white house but it's a book about the presidency and the white house itself and it tells a lot about how that institution has grown so my first question is you point out that over the period you're talking about starting after fdr white house has become a much bigger institution. it has more staff, it's more prominent and yet the advisors are maybe younger

than cabinetsecretaries . tell us about the growth of the white house's relation to the cabinet and if you can with the many examples you have in your book just a few of them to give us a sense of what some of those conflicts in that area were quick thanks john and thanks kiron for doing this. the book is as you said the growth of the white house staff and growth of the executive office. many people don't realize this before the fdr decision and eleanor roosevelt you didn't have a white house staff per se. you'll say what about nikolai hey and lincoln's and ministration but the president may have had a secretary course to but in roosevelt there someone called the brownsville commission and it had a conclusion with the present needs help and those four words conclusion led to the creation of the executive office of the president which has 1800 people.

most of those are career staffers who serve administration in an administration out but there's 30 to 400 are what we would think of as white house staffers and those are the people we note our younger . they have proximities close to the president but they're not necessarily persons that we delegated. there close to the president and often make challenges for the cabinet secretary in charge of the area and also for this whole idea of fighting within the white house so the first two presidents i look at our truman and eisenhower and these guys both are the first two presidents to start in a white house staff so they had to think about how they wanted to create their staff and how they give a structure and both of them for the most part were believers in cabinet government area the idea of cabinet government is the cabinet officers are in charge of the respective areas and the white house that helps the president and helps guide but really it's

the cabinet officers setting policy and eisenhower was known to tell cabinet offers officers who came to him with problems he said this is your area, work it out but i highlight a couple of instances where you did have cabinet secretaries kind of butting heads with white house staffers were people who seem to be delegated by the president in a way that was different from what cabinet government would seem to entail some one-story i tell in the truman administration is truman and his issue of whether to recognize israel. today that's not such a controversial proposition but at the time it was a big question mark for us policy and most of the national security was against it including george marshall who was not only a war hero but secretary of state and someone who trumanrevered more than anybody else in public life . truman knew he wanted to hear the other side of the issue

will be assigned gifford who later became famous as a white house aide to make the case for recognizing israel in his white house meeting where he would be running against marshall . marshall was not that interested in having this junior white house aide weighing in on this issue about white house for you and he said what are you doing here but truman backed up clifford and he said i asked him to be here. clifford makes a case for recognizing israel but marshall was so angry that he lost this argument that he never again spoke to clifford or under his name the rest of his life . one quick story in the eisenhower administration is john foster dulles who's the secretary of state and again secretary of state and white house people, eisenhower decided to bring in howard stefan , former administrator to be negotiator on an arms deal . specifically with the soviets and the new york times had a laudatory editorial about staff and when he came on board calling him secretary

pete but this worked foster dulles who said what does that make me, the secretary for war and he was constantly trying to undercut staff and eventually did manage to get rid of it so even with these two presidents believed in cabinet government you often had the sense of people designated by the president to handle an issue sometimes running afoul of the cabinet secretary and creating tension. >> another theme that you address is how a president has centralized authority or not within his white house. some presidents at least wanted to have a chief of staff. a strong chief of staff, a gatekeeper who all things would go through that person and others didn't want a chief of staff at all or wanted a looseoperation . come times referred to as the spokes on the wheel. where many people have access to the president. tell us about that organization of the white house and how it affected

some of the conflicts you highlight in the book the chief of staff people assume was always there and that's not the case. the first was truman adams under eisenhower that they had this back-and-forth over the next three administrations it wasn't clear that a chief of staff was going to be a recurring position in the white house ironically. after eisenhower you had kennedy who did what you said, these folks on the wheel and he did not have a chief of staff, and then nixon very prominently hr haldeman as chief of staff who is a very kind of imperious fellow and in the subsequent administration had reacted against nixon and the imperial presidency and you had for two had a chief of staff, with don rumsfeld that he didn't want to call him people staff, he called him back coordinator and jimmy carter didn't want to have a chief of staff and that led to all kinds of challenges so the carter and ministration darts without a chief of staff and relatively comes

around to bring bringing in jordan. that worked out well and you have jack lawson becomes a chief of staff and he was the guy who butted heads with hamilton jordan campaign of 1976 because lawson was in charge of the transition and all the campaign people like you see today in even the modern era, they were worried the transition people were going to take their jobs while they were working to get them elected so washington eventually becomes chief of staff and is good at it so much so that when ronald reagan wins he says to him from what i hear if you have had this position earlier i might not be in this position right now and if carter had gone with chief of staff early on he would have had an effective presidency and may have had a second term of the chief of staff is an important role under the reagan administration you have tim baker was regarded as the best chief of staff ever and once he comes in and he does a good job you see what a good chief of staff can do he

basically has his chief of staff consecutively in every administration since. that doesn't mean there are problems. don reagan replaced jim baker as chief of staff who is not nearly as effective, did not get along as well with mrs. reagan and in fact during iran-contra he at one point hangs up on mrs. reagan when she's telling him to do something he doesn't want to do and jim baker hears about this and he says hanging up on the first lady, that's not just a firing offense, that they hanging offense but he was fired and it didn't last much longer after that so the chief of staff is an important position and can help actual conflict but sometimes they get involved in the conflictthemselves . >> if i ask you to give advice to a president, an incoming president and especially with respect to how you deal with conflict in the white house, is it thing

that's necessary? is it good to have a little? does it and on with that president is ? what's your big advice for a president able to run a white house well knowing that there are potentially these very strong conflicts that you detail in the book and some examples from the book would be great . >> i tried to describe there is a continuum. on one side you have no conflict and that leads to groupthink. the johnson administration and want to hear opposing voices on vietnam. he marginalized people who try to raise countervailing voices and there were people at the state department who were uncomfortable with the vietnam policy and they formed a little group to discuss alternative policy options but they were so nervous johnson might find out about this they called themselves the nongroup and they met secretly johnson wouldn't be aware of it and take revenge on them.

so that is groupthink and that is way too much conflict a version but on the other hand if you have to much conflict and in this i think of the ford administration, then you have a wild uncontrolled white house and you have people leaking to the press and people not able to trust one another and the ford administration was like this because everyone face very poor and he was a nice guy i think his niceness precluded him from taking steps to control the infighting in the white house . there was a guy called robert hardin before he became president who was a very thin-skinned and egocentric fellow and his team was sop and he had a joke that in stamford, sweet old bob but we know it doesn't stand for that and he does as well. but ford was very reluctant to control haldeman and he would control the presidential inbox from his office which is the anteroom

to the oval so even shared a bathroom ford which is an unusual breach of protocol to what you would do by controlling the inbox as if he saw something go in the presidential inbox he didn't like he would pull it out and he would flip it to novak and if you wrote something he wanted to get in front of the president he would slip up in your inbox without going through the process and this is untenable, not manageable and in fact they decided they had to do something about it and gerald ford was opposed to hartman, he didn't want to do anything about it but that chief of staff was named dick cheney but cheney was assigned with figuring out always deal with the hartman problem and one of the things he did was booted hartman out of that anteroom. he knew that he couldn't go to ford and say can we get rid of your friend but what he said was that your president, you need a room for quiet contemplation and board agreed and they made

that anteroom before contemplation room and art and found that he was out of an office so hartman did stay in the white house organization but he never had that office from which he was being so problematic. sometimes you need to take steps that is not what the president is willing to articulate but i would say in the continuum from growth state to extreme chaos somewhere in the middle is a comfortable zone and sometimes you have a president who is willing to kind of survived a little chaos or engender a little chaos in order to get better results. and in this famous story is of bill clinton who loses the midterm election in 1994 because his staff had drifted too far to the left. he knows he needs alternative voices and brings in an advisor nicknamed charlie, charlie we later found out was dick morris who was a political consultant to clinton also had been a republican political consultant charlie brings in

the memos are trying to direct clinton back towards the center. clinton's aids don't like it and they find out. they make it to the press and the new yorker that dick morris is advising the president and people like george stephanopoulos and harold hickey are among the more liberal white house a are going at it hammer and tongs the entire time he's in the white house and stephanopoulos was memoir, he talked about how much he dislikes morris at the end he knows that clinton by bringing in this outside force better results out of his staff so sometimes the president has recognized are benefits to fostering a little bit ofchaos . >> thanks tevi and you get a good sense of some of what's in the book . there's a lot more for the audience so there's certainly morereason to go out and buy that book .

i'm going to do 2 things. i'm going to turn to kiron in one second but also remind the audience were coming to you later for questions and you can submit your questions in the comment section of facebook and do so in the chat function and do so through twitter the handle hashtag dpc line. though kiron, you have also some experiencein scholarly work in this area . first some broad thought for teddy about the book and if you want to share your experiences in the trump or reagan administration we'd love to hear that. >> i'd love to thank you all at the bipartisan center for doing this book event and for the work you do across the political divide to bring us together to talk about big policy issues and tevi's book is a great demonstration of what you stand for and believe in

he's looking at democrats and republicans in the white house, all the interact in a scholarly way . not making judgments along ideological lines. that being said i would like to ask tevi about his comments on the model that he sets up for his analysis. he talked about three big factors that govern his work as he looked at the white house. one, we talked about ideologicalfighting . he's interested also second in administrative and decision-making process. and then finally he talked about the broader category of infighting. i'm interested tevi if you could take a higher out look and say which variable do you think has the best outcome for public policy? in the white house, i'd like to start their area i think that's a fascinating way of looking and framing what goes

on in the whitehouse . relatedly you mentioned evan and novak. many of us are old enough to remember those amazing columns and we waited for what they were going to say next. but what you think about the role of leaking and leaders in the public policy process. do they do something that's important for outcomes? or are they just a nuisance and do they corrupt and corrode and destroy the democratic process. those are two big areas i'd like to have aconversation about . >> thank you for your scholarship which i'veenjoyed over the years . you correctly note i have three letters in the book that presidents have in their purview. one is ideological comity, if

you have a team that gets along ideologically you're going to see less fighting because we agree in an ideological way. number two is process, if you have a process whereby people get their voices heard even if they don't win at the end of the day they had a fair process there are more likely to lock arms at the end of the discussion and say the president decided i had my chance and we're going to accept this as the president's policy judgment and the party's presidential power. if the president is willing to see more inviting, if the president is tolerant of infighting going to have more of it and if the president in contrast says i don't want to see it, an example is obama, he made it clear he did not want to see infighting in the white house and there's a great story i have in the book of alyssa who didn't like something that was written about her and do your second point, she wrote a blistering email to many of

the white house staff complaining about theway he was treated . obama calls her into the oval office . and she doesn't know why. and she was shocked that the president even bother knowing about an email she sent sent a clear signal, i don't want to see these kind of shenanigans and this kind of stuff going on in the white house so those three are the leversof president has to control. in terms of which one has the best policy results , i think it's hard to say although ideological alignment is helpful because then you know where the president wants to go with them. reagan's taking and said even though there was fighting in the reagan white house the idea of reagan ruled, meeting people knew generally where reagan wants to go so even though people might have fought over titles or

stature, the fact of where they were going in a general policy direction was well-known. i think the process was extremely important, the george w. bush administration and process was extremely important and will the type anybody who committed a process file. that was somebody who went around the process. i think process is important but presidential power also set the tone. so i think if you force me to rank them i would put the process first although i think all three are important . with respect to your second question about the press i think the press plays an important role. you need to have a press that lets us know what's going on and we know more about fighting in the white house today because in part of the press and you mentioned novak, with each fight that i look at in the book, i looked up to see if novak wrote any

thing on the fight and it was the other scholarly work i was doing in the book and i thought they were helpful and indeed the publisher of this book is a guy named alex novak who i brought in yesterday and he likes the fact that i was looking at his father's columns and in fact he had written two books but the press plays an important role and i think there are people who take advantage of the press and they will be against their colleagues and they may lose their policy and only to the press about the president is trying to do policy x and he was in a policy why and i don't think that's helpful. in the bush administration i worked on on the domestic side of the house not only was it a relatively leakfree administration, the reason i say it's a leakfree administration is because the reporters complain that there were not enough leaks coming

from the industry and i have a soul stream of quotes of reporters planning about the absence of leaks from the administration and i think they don't feel like any other utterance is leaking it to a washington post reporter and i maybe get you to ask some more, maybe get you to talk a little bit about either your time in the trump administration or your studies of the reagan administration . tevi has written about both of the book that we cover as much about trump is new but some of your thoughts about that and maybe tevi and direct with what you're thinking along those lines. >> absolutely. tevi, you talk about peggy noonan saying he understood reagan was in charge from an ideological and policy standpoint but you also know that he had numerous national security advisers so the

return in the white house every 14 months or so over an eight year period there was a new national security advisor so there was a tension between this ideology which he was committed to and everyone knew what his northstar was and his ability to have the process of awhite house clerk . i've studied reagan and found that fascinating and often wondered how a president who had that many national security advisers had a historic breakthrough in the cold war that he did. in december 1987, the washington summit went to the first nuclear disarmament treaty of what was then the forty-year cold war. you how reagan got something that historic done in the midst of having new faces, not just the national security advisor but downstream area and the people underneath each man coming in and coming out.

how did that happen in the work that you did? >> the national security advisorposition , it was relative stability at the secretary of state position. i have a wonderful story in the book because jim baker was this chief of staff and he did like hayes and they tried to keep them off motorcade and air force one and the hotel the president was staying in and he complained about the guerrillas in the white house area your 42-year-old deputy of staff dresses up in a gorilla costume parading around saying on baker's gorilla. it's just astounding to me and i could not imagine an era of cell phones and twitter that somebody woulddo something like that . so he goes relatively quickly

but george schultz comes in is a excellent secretary of state and had a clear sense of what you wanted and i know he's a colleague of yours . i think the stability their help and the other thing is this idea that you talk about which is the idea of reagan rules. if you have a sense of what the president wants and you are more likely to have a even if they interchange and know the direction in which the president is trying to go and course who succeeded reagan was hw bush and there you had the more conservative staffers and the more moderate staffers because bush himself was a little less clear about his position . he said he had trouble with the nationstate so when a president, you're not clear on where they want to go it's hard to get some of these couples. >> related to that john if you don't mind i'd like to say that sometimes it's difficult and you've already referred to this but i want to draw you out more tevi on this point.

it's often difficult for a white house that is largely cohesive, the three big variables that you mention to get the work that they want done when there's chaos in the agency going on. and related to that powerful cabinet secretaries who happen to disagree with the president. i think we've seen that in the trump administration and that may advance much of the trump story so far. can you give us some historical examples that may help be a corrective to what the trump administration has experienced if indeed you agree with what i've just described ? >> it's certainly clear that some of my best stories in the fight house about inviting our between the national security advisor and secretary of state in the next and administration example you had henry kissinger was the national security advisor and it's on

now because you have this photo wisdom on foreign policy but then hewas very young, very aggressive, very thin-skinned . and he was constantly threatened by william rogers who is the secretary of state in the nixon administration who knew next and going back to the eisenhower administration because they were close personal friends yet kissinger ran rings around rogers in part because it and recognized it and he learned from kissinger on foreign policy whereas rogers had nothing to teach nixon who himself was quite the strategist . so sometimes you had this thing where the national security advisor can kind of run rings around the secretary of state and similarly you have this issue in the carter administration where there's constant fighting to urgency and side that was secretary ofstate .

they knew each other before the administration and had dinner the night of the election and talk about the possibilities of them working together and from the first day of the carter administration burzynski is brief and he's told this one rings for the secretary of state and burzynski shout yank it out pointing to the secretary ofstate phone . so from the first day of the administration he was laying out his marker that he was going to the ultimate antidote to the secretary of state. in the maximum administration i talk about how james schlesinger was secretary of defense and he wouldn't put up with kissinger's shenanigans and he had a bureaucratic standing to be able to push back against kissinger and he was much more effective as secretary of defense and rogers was able to be as secretary of state because he kind of scared off kissinger.

kissinger was a bit of a bureaucratic bully and he knew that he couldn't believe schlesinger so i think people , it's a very alpha male, alpha female environment. people are pushing the limits of what they can accomplish and if you can stand your ground . you can show that you bring value to the process and you're not going to be count by someonewho's offering shenanigans . >> i think we want to go to your audience question. i want to remind you again in case more are coming in that you can submit them on the comment section of facebook or you can use at twitter with#dpclive . so we have a number of questions in already and i'm going to start with one from ej fagan. that question is what role do vice presidents play in creating or disarming conflict and has that will change as the vice president has taken on more of an active role.

beginning with al gore. >> thank you for the question and thank you for your excellent baseball podcast which i listen to regularly. the vice president does play an important role but he doesn't have to play an important role because the vice president in some ways acts at the pleasure of the president and he gets as much power as the president grandson . in the jfk administration lyndon johnson is the vice president under john f. kennedy . the attorney general is robert f kennedy and robert kennedy is a staffer and johnson as asenator . and f kennedy is trying to demean lyndon johnson and weaken his role and robert f kennedy was the most powerful person outside the president in the kennedy administration for those birth thousand days .

and you have the tragic circumstances that kennedy is assassinated and suddenly the vice president is elevated to the presidency and now rfk, robert f kennedy is working for a president who hates him and there's a big screaming fight they have in the oval office shortly after johnson is in the first cabinet meeting and they don't talk for two months after that which is not really unusual. i'm sure everybody is here, but think about it, rfk would be sitting attorneygeneral at a period where he's not talking to the attorney general . that is unusual though sometimes you have to president giving certain powers to a vice president and also point out that hubert humphrey was lbj's vice president and you think lbj might have learned from the experience to be nicer to hubert humphrey and in fact the opposite was thecase . it was as belittling of humphrey as the kennedy

people were of johnson. then in the later years he picked up the vicepresident had become more powerful and you love look at my chapter on the bush 43 administration , he was deputy chief of staff and he was very involved in the clash of the titans between secretary rice and colin powell at the state department and donald rumsfeld in defense and dick cheney as vice president and i imagine the bush domestic team got as long as well read the book foreign policy team was likely and was inviting and the vice president was an important part of that though i think the vice president, i've not really seen relating to ej question a serious situation where the vice president was able to tamp down conflict though i think

sometimes the presidents are involved. >> we have a lot of questions coming in so i will try to get throughas many as we can . 80 we can keep it short so we can go to more of them. i think if you want to tevi answer the question. we're happy to have you. i have a question from gabby g which is which white house and the biggest fights that actually impacted the execution of policy? >> i'd like to go to the ford administration on that and the ford administration was paralyzedby the infighting . i mentioned some of the instances with robert harvey but you had presidential addresses that would not get resolved the cause of some of the infighting. there's one instance where it was the night before the state of the union and ford is yelling at his staff because they haven't resolved

all the conflicts and there's a great story about how robert hartman they were thinking about ways to celebrate the bicentennial in 1776 and hartman is afraid that the other staffers are working against him so they give him a bunch of ideas from the outside world and by various intellectuals including william kristol and hartman plays on what the other staffers will pick so he comes up with a code so that you don't know the name of the individual person who's made the recommendation and he would ask people person a or person b or person see but then in the computer era all the loses the code so he tricks himself into not knowing who's capable so sometimes these things and not only paralyze you because you're fighting with others but you're protecting yourself. >> i actually would like to jump in with a question

before we move on. and this is a little bit of a different question but it relates to the issue of leaking. and you think of evanson novak was a high watermark. but in this era we have technology and social media where many people are waiting in who have limited if any journalisticbackground . but we have also government officials going to these various individuals and leaking important information . what do you think about that tevi? you're seeing this especially in the trump administration where there's an attempt to really smear and destroy people who are serving vocally and it's leading to a lot of turnover. >> it's a good question about meeting and what i found in the book is there's a

constant race of technology so as these technologies improve for leaking so do these technologies improve for chasing down leaks and in the johnson administration lyndon johnson asked the white house operators to report to him on who staffers were calling to try to identify leaders and similarly he asks the white house motor pool to report to him on where white house staffers were being taken by the army drivers who drive around white house staffers so presidents are always trying to get a handle on leaks and in the next administration the famous plumbers unit that led to watergate and let nixon's resignation, the reason they were denied call plumbers they ended up breaking into the watergate hotel but the reason they started and the reason they had that nickname is because they were just leaks because there was a cat and mouse game between the administrations and staffers on the leaking issue and i think that there's always

going to be technologies for leaking and identifying leaders are and i think the best way to address it is to have the president set a standard and make it clear bringing people who are willing to not be leaking against one another and as i've said i don't want to suggest all leaking is evil because sometimes presidents or the administration will put out a trial and talk about a certain policy here facing or a personnel. with lease this isn't necessarily designed to destroy, sometimes it's designed to get policy some sunshine and air you can assess whether the policy would be treated well or reacted too well by the american people. so again, the word leak as these negative connotations but it's not always. >> i'm going to turn to another audience question. if you look at tevi's green

you'll see it not only white house but jefferson read and intellectuals in thewhite house , way behind him so maybe feel the need to buy more of these books. i want to turn to a question from russell newsom. that question begins with a comment i agree with. fight house is a great book about the modern presidency. the book gets intimate but i'd like to hear the author discuss whether these rivalries animate more from personality or policy? >> it's a great question and rush himself is a former white house batter so he knows whereof he speaks. personality is an issue. i guy like kissinger is a sharkskinfellow . a person like robert hartman, like the corn and menstruation and a guy, i can't imagine he's not going to fight the people but these are people who try to with

the policy of the fighting so in the reagan administration you had enemies and he was kind of the true conservative advisor to reagan and very close to reagan but even gets the chief ofstaff job . he is disorganized and there's a great story in the book that his briefcase is known as a place where papers go in and never come out so that even called it the black hole and i have a lot of nicknames in the book but the only nickname is the briefcase, they called it the meesecase but he's finding his way with jim baker but he stepped down and that he said i'm not going to leak because leaking against baker would not only hurt baker potentially but also hurt the president . sometimes people have to find a higher sense of what they're trying to accomplish from a policy perspective and they say i'm going to not necessarily leak to advance myself but i'll do what i can do kind of help the administration testified so i

think that personality really drives that you can't have these but then on the policy side if you have strong disagreements about policy direction you are going to have infighting personalities . >> we have another question and actually i think certainly tevi should answer this but maybe kiron as well. this is from herbert lunch and what are factors that have contributed to successful relationships between a given chief ofstaff and cabinet ? >> it's a good question for the chief of staff who sees himself as a private comparison above everybody else but at the same time he doesn't necessarily have cabinet rank. sometimes you have presidents

who do get a little bit ahead of themselves so don reagan y mentioned earlier about him nancy reagan said ispretty good at the chief park but he doesn't get the staff part . so i think the way to make sure they get along is to try and inculcate the sense that they're all on the president's team and that there's an equivalent ability to access and one of the reasons don reagan wants to become chief of staff is because when he was treasury secretary never had a one on one time alone with president reagan so if you keep cabinet secretary isolated from the president i think that will hurt you as the chief of staff because there's a feeling that you are isolating the president and you're not letting them have to face time that they need in order to get a sense of the president's policy and in order to get their stuff done but i think the chief of staff needs to be an inclusive residence and we saw this with andy cardin at

the white house, he recognized the importance and the need to fold them into the process and i think that's a good model to have the chief of staff it's a long period it helped that secretary cardin had been victoria transportation previously so he knew about this potentially area. >> let me see on the question a phone what teddy has said from the standpoint of the trump administration. again an administration that had a lot of turnover in the white house not just at the national security council but also in the role of chiefof staff . i've been able to infer is that the chief of staff which has become so critical for themodern american presidency , i don't see how a president could preside without the chief of staff given the sheer amount of operational activity that the white house is responsible for on any givenday . but the common factor that i think that leads to a great

chief of staff that may have been missing in the trump administration has been the prior relationship if any that that individual has with the commander-in-chief. and a lot of what we're seeing in the trump administration is that it's a collection of people who really didn't know donald trump when they came to serve him. either in the cabinet or as chief of staff or as national security advisor. that's a hard place to be. it's hard to build a relationship in real time and often when you're that close to the president the more that you have them prior history the more i think the trust is there and if you've been in the trenches before. i've been in the campaign or some other phase of life. so we're seeing in this period a collection of people who are serving the president where they really don't know him very well and he doesn't

know them verywell . tevi, i don't know if you want to respond to that based on your wisdom . >> kiron is raising an important point which is the sense that the president has the mosttrust in the people that come with him . >> .. they want to talk to you and kiss up to you because your president and what would they have thought of you before your president. the people who knew you when really have the closest view that have value to it and that's why talked earlier about bob hartman. he was close to afford before ford was not only president but before he was vice president and

the honesty that comes in that relationship is extremely important with a level of trust. >> okay. i'm going to remind the audience, we still have a little more time so if you'd like to submit a question to could do so in the comment section facebook, on the youtube chat function or on twitter. another question here comment from peter, and that is proper structure and process usually provide the outcomes desire. when a president does not care about either what are the alternatives for better outcomes? >> as i said earlier process and structure are extremely important so with hard to beat that. if you don't have processed by the structure you have some problematic outcomes. if you have a clear direction you can overcome some process problems potentially by

everybody knowing where you're trying to go. the question is if you don't have good process and you don't have clarity and direction, that's really what can lead to chaos. that's when you start to see problems. it's a really good question, but it's boring, , process is boring but it's incredibly important for any things done. it's not a partisan thing. the white house policy process is an honored tried and true tradition that goes from administration to administration and is perfectly aligned with the theme of the bipartisan policy center, that there are certain structures of government that we should maintain and adhere to regardless of the ideology or the partisan nature of the administration that is in power. let me just, it's not the most -- [inaudible] >> i follow up with, maybe get you to talk more about the reagan administration, i can maybe kiron wants to weigh in. the reagan administration had a triumvirate, three people at the

top, and as described or seems like a good been very chaotic, wasn't necessary something you would recommend, just that model on paper. but the was we which it a sort of settled in and was successful even though the was a lot of conflict. maybe say more about the reagan triumvirate, , the process which may not have been operated the wit look like on paper. >> i think the reason the reagan triumvirate worked at the people know is the chief of staff and then you had counsel to the president and deputy chief of staff. the three of them worked really together biggest because each f specific roles to play. jim baker as chief of staff was the operator. he made the white house trained when a tie. in his paper that a talk when the book divvied up the role between ed meese and baker. baker took all of the logistical pieces that sounded less sexy but helped run the white house

secondly. ed meese was the kind of keeper of the ideological plane, the outreach to the conservative group which is important in the reagan administration and he tried to make sure they did go off the rails even though baker was more moderate than meese and didn't care about ideology at all. he was born in the sky, reagan image was so important and dever was really good making reagan look good. because each of specific role and even though there might have crossed they didn't step on each other's toes in specific areas and that's important. the other thing, the extent to which they distrusted the other so that always stuck together as a group, and the other staffers knew that they could get a lot done without those three senior people bothering them if they were all going to reagan because nobody wanted to have a meeting with reagan without one of the three members because then reagan could say something that was detrimental to the missing

members. there's a story, when reagan was in hospital the three of them is in a hospital altogether but they couldn't visit him individually and reagan joked, i did know we're going to have a staff meeting here. that was one of the instances in which a triumvirate was able to work apart because of reagan's management style. he gave people a little slack and because of reagan's clear ideology guidance but also because the three of them each had their specific goals. >> i could add to that, that it wasn't clear coming into the white house that these three men would emerge as the ones that could really work together and help organize successfully. but what made the critical difference in the first couple of months of the administration was the fact that reagan was shot and how they performed during the presidential crisis.

remember, al hague ended up being outside of the community surrounding the president because of his performance, especially before the press when he said i'm in charge. but these men comported themselves in a way that got reported back to the president that they were respectful, dignified and collaborative. and i think that president to crisis also helped the framework of the administration and it also made george h.w. bush a trusted aide in the way that i think may not have happened with the speed that it did. but on the other side, even with them in place it couldn't stop the chaos around the national security council, which ultimately god is the iran contra scandal which almost toppled the reagan presidency. i think that sometimes leaders are great with the vision, and

that was reagan. but even nancy reagan said that her husband was no manager. and you really need the president to have both i think the ideological or policy direction with some ability not complete ability but some series the ability to manage. reagan was better at one than the other. >> that initial crisis of reagan being shot was very interesting and informative. you mentioned george h.w. bush and one of the things they did was he was effectively i think president but he refused to have his helicopter land on the white house lawn during that period mac and i thought was an important symbolic step the reagan saw that bush wasn't trying to give -- accrete how to sew. and also some other people may be didn't acquit themselves, david gergen was in a situation room and kept excusing himself

come unclear why but richard outland was ashes could advisor didn't trust him about he was leaving the room to leaked to the press and that's why he was named professor of leaking. >> so were coming to the end of our our estimate i can ask kiron if you have a last thought you want to put on the table about the book, and then i will ask tevi to close it out with the final summation whatever else hasn't been said. >> what i like about the book in particular is that it fills the void in presidential history. we often think of infighting in the context of the scandal after scandal, and we read these books looking for some information about a particular person that we didn't know, but that's not what katie did. he took it seriously as an intellectual exercise, and as i said to him the other day, this

is a book i would use with my students as a teach american policy. it really helps us understand the american form of government and what in the federalist papers they were concerned about and what their predicting. much of it occurs on the pages of this book. we always have to worry about factionalism. we always have to worry about even particular individuals who can corrupt the process, but this book gives us hope because 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 course correcting and get really big policy outcomes. remember, over the time that tevi writes, the united states is the predominant power on earth and has, and for each president increasing amounts of

responsibility for the globe and for domestic policy as more people push for rights, for racial rights, gender, disability. that's a lot to do in of relatively small white house with a relatively small staff. and despite the leaking, despite the infighting and the ideological battles and varying levels of presidential tolerance for all of us, we still get the outcomes that make us the world's most fully functioning multiethnic democracy. thank you, tevi, for this important work. >> thank you, kiron. >> final thoughts? >> thank you for participating in this and also for your kind words. i so admired your scholarship and service to this great nation. i think you captured what in time to get in this book, because these people as human. you may look at if you're a democrat or republican, i don't

like them, but these are humans and they got families and spouses and they got challenges and then career concerns and they worry which would happen after the administration and i was really trying to capture the human element in this book because you have so many instances where people, you think of them as all-powerful person to read about in the "new york times" of the "washington post" but these are actual real people with real lives and is aa great story about to begin in the book in the reagan campaign in 1980. there's a lot of the tumult in this, a guy named john sears was a campaign manager was estimate for after the californians in getting rid of them and a talking a book about a confrontation that ronald reagan's house the lead to mike deaver being accused of financial improprieties. mike deaver is some very, very close to the reagans. in fact, jim bakker says to him unable to go to the bedroom to greet the reagans but he's allowed to go into the bathroom. that shares your close mike deaver was. when he is accused of these

improprieties he gets indignant and eastern thought of the house and he says if you don't want me i quit, and runs out of house. in the next minute he sheepishly walks back into the house and says, i forgot that my wife got me off their site don't have card. can i borrow nancy's station wagon? so this was a very human moment. here's a guy who indignantly resigns from the campaign and yet at the same moment he recognizes that his friendship with nancy would allow them to borrow her station wagon and he sheepishly comes back. i have all kinds of human moments in the book because again it's important these personalities really shape policy, they shape the direction of this great country. i recognize each president has ideological predilections and knows to some degree and help shape the direction going but also with the people are and what they are quite accomplished and what their own concerns are.

in the obama administration there's a story about a deputy chief of staff and she is frustrated, there are not sufficient vitamin and products in the white house oval office in the west wing bathroom and she fixes it makes a big announcement that i've gotten the sixth and she talks about the blatant stairs she got from the obama staff would happen but that was important to her and that was the reality she brought to the role. again, the human element is incredibly important in the white house. i appreciate everybody calling in. i appreciate the bpc doing this. i hope people purchased the book and i look forward to engaging with people in the future and i believe the last few seconds for john. >> thank you to our audience, thank you to kiron skinner. thank you to tevi troy, author of the great book with a discussion today, "fight house: rivalries in the white house from truman to trump." ♪

♪ >> tv continues now on c-span2, television for serious readers. >> hello, everyone and thank you so much for joining us tonight. my name is benjamin quinn and perhaps of harvard book store i'm excited to welcome you here to two nights event with the calvin baker discussing his latest book "a more perfect reunion: race, integration, and the future of america" in conversation with katy o'donnell. the next event is part of our ongoing virtual event series. we are fortunate to be able to -- bring authors and the writing to our community during these difficult times. every week will be hosting events via zoom and just like always you can g