forward in america. that's this week and every week on c-span2. >> when the house comes in today they plan to introduce an article of impeachment against president trump, a censure resolution against the president and other measures related to last week's assault on the u.s. capitol. that's live at 11 a.m. eastern on c-span. later in the day, house democrats hold a conference call on how to proceed with impeachme impeachment. >> good afternoon, i'm john fortier, the director of governmental studies at the policy center. thank you for joining us in a virtual event. we're here for an important reason, the release of a new book, the book is fight house, rivalries in the white house from truman to trump and the author tevi troy, we'll be joined by tevi and aaron skinner on this book.

let me introduce the guest. the reason i'm excited about the book and our guest, it's a rare thing to be good at public service and to be a person of action and a rare thing to be a scholar and to be excellent at the study of something. and tevi troy, and kiron skinner bring that to the able. tevi was someone who worked in many places in public service, on the congress to several departments, the department of labor and hhs, but also, importantly at the white house which is what these books are about-- this book and several other books and he's an accomplished author who has written, in addition to this piece on the white house, pieces about intellectuals in the white house as well as emergency preparedness in the white house and the use of social media by presidents. so, i hope you will take the time to listen, but also to

think about buying this book, white house. we've got fourth of july coming up, we've got more president's birthdays in the summer and anytime is good for someone to learn about the white house and presidency. kiron skinner is also a person of action and scholarly repute and worked recently in the white house or in the state department director of policy and planning. served an um into -- served a number of administrations as well as presidential campaign and the professor and director of institute of politics and strategy at cash carnegie mellon university and she's written books on reagan an and foreign policy as well. we have a great line-up today and we're going to jump in the

meat of the book. we want you to get a sense of tevi what is in the book, the key points and turn to kiron to hear her thoughts and we will have some conversations. i'll mention it to you, when i come to you for questions, you have a number of ways of getting in touch with us. one is to submit comments in the comment section in facebook and youtube chat function and finally at twitter #dcp live. we'll look for your questions. tevi, this is a book and you've written extensively on the white house. what i like about the book, it's about personalities and conflicts and important advisors in the white house and it's a book about the white house and presidency itself and how that institution has grown. my first request he is, you point out that over-- my first question, you point out that after fdr, the white

house is a bigger institution, more staff, more prominent and yet, the advisors are often younger than cabinet secretaries, but they also have the ear of the president. tell us about the growth of the white house and its relation to the cabinet and then if you can, with the many examples you have in the book, a few of them, to give us a sense of what some of the conflicts in that area were. >> well, thanks, john. thanks, kiron for doing this. look, the book is really, as you said, about the growth of the white house staff. the growth of the executive office as president and many people don't realize this, but before the fdr administration, before franklin delano roosevelt, people see in some sense, what about nickolai, but in roosevelt the brownlow commission, it had a famous

four word conclusion, the president needs help. and that four word conclusion leads to the office of the president that has about 1800 people. most of those 1800 are career staffers who serve administration in and administration out, but 3 to 400 who are what we would traditionally think of white house staff. and those people as you noted are younger, and have the advantage of being close to the president, but not necessarily the person with delegated authority. however, their closeness to the president faces channel for them who is in charge of the cabinet area and with the fighting in the white house. the first two presidents i look at are truman and eisenhower and these guys are the first two presidents to start with the white house staffs. they had to think how they wanted to create their white house staffs and structure. and for the most part they believed in cabinet government,

the idea of cabinet government. they're in charge of the respective areas and the white house staff with helping the president and the cabinet officer would say, this is your area, you handle it, you would, it out. that said, i do highlight in "fight house", you had cabinet secretaries butting heads with white house staffers or people seemed to be delegated by the president in a way that was different from what cabinet government would seem to attend. one story i tell in the truman administration, truman was faced with the issue whether to recognize israel. now today that's not such a controversial proposition, but at the time it was a big question mark for u.s. policy and most of the national against it including george marshall who was not only a war hero, but the secretary of

state and someone who was revered more than anyone else in public life and truman wanted to hear the other side of the issue and he appointed clark griffin to make the case for israel in a white house meeting he would be running up against marshall. marshall was not interested in having a junior white house aide weigh in on his purview. but truman said i asked him to be here and the u.s. does recognize israel about you marshall looked so angry he lost the argue he never again speak to clifford or uttered his name. and another one, a secretary of state, this is a frequent one between the secretary of state and white house people and eisenhower decided to bring in the former minnesota governor

to be a negotiator on the arms deal and specifically the soviets and new york times called him the secretary of peace. this really irked foster who said what does it make me, the secretary for war? and he was constantly trying to undercut him and managed to get rid of him. even with the two presidents who believed in cabinet government you often have a sense of people designated by the president to handle an issue can sometimes run afoul of the cabinet secretary and create some tension. >> great. so, another theme that you address is how a president has centralized authority or not within his white house. some wanted to have a chief of staff, a strong chief of staff, a gate keeper that all things go through those persons, others didn't want a chief of staff at all, or wanted a loose operation, sometimes referred to the spoke on the wheel

theory 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 that you highlight in the book. i'm glad you mentioned the chief of staff. some assume the chief of staff was always there, but that's not the case. the first was sherman under eisenhower. and then the next three or four, that whether the chief of staff was in the current position in the hierarchy. after eisenhower you had kennedy, didn't have chief of staff. nixon had halderman and the others reacted against nixon and imperial presidency and you had ford who had a chief of staff, it was don rumsfeld, but he didn't want to call him chief of staff, called him staff coordinator and jimmy

carter didn't want to have a chief of stand and led to channels. and carter administration starts without a chief of staff. and then they brought in jordan and didn't work out well and watson who butted heads with hamilton jordan during the campaign of 1976 because watson was in charge of the transition and the campaign people like you see today and even in the modern era all the campaign people were worried that the transition people were going to take their jobs while they are working to get the president elected. watson becomes chief of staff and so much so, when ronald reagan wins, he meets watson, if you had this position earlier, i might not be here now. that is if carter had a chief of staff early on, he may have won a second term. a chief of staff is an important role. under the reagan

administration, jim bakker widely regarded as the best chief of staff ever. and once he comes in and you see what a good chief of staff can do, you have a chief of staff. and that doesn't mean that you would not have problems. after jim bakker, didn't get along well with mrs. reagan. during iran-contra scam scandal, he hangs up when she asks him to do something that he doesn't want to do. and baker heard about that, and says you don't hang up on the first lady. sometimes they get involved in conflict. >> great. so, if i asked 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 a thing that's necessary? do you need to manage it? is it good to have a little? what would you say to a president? does it depend who the president is? what's your advice for a president to run a white house well knowing potentially strong conflicts that you detail in the book and again, some examples of the book would be great. >> yeah, sure. they're described as a continuum. in the johnson administration, johnson didn't want to hear opposing voices on vietnam, he marginalized people who tried to raise counterveiling voices. and there are in who were uncomfortable with the foreign policy and they formed a group to discuss alternative options and they were so nervous that

johnson would find out, and they called themselves a non-group and met so johnson wouldn't be aware of it. >>, but if there's too much conflict, i often 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 it's odd it's like this because everyone thinks gary jerry ford, what a nice guy. and he was a nice guy. but robert hartman, a friend who knew ford before he became president, a thin-skinned and ego centric fellow. his nickname was s-o-b, and he joked it stand for sweet old bob. and we know and he did as well. ford was reluctant to control

hartman. he did shenanigans, he would control the presidential inbox from his office the ante-room to the oval office. and he shared the bathroom. if he would go to the presidential inbox, he would pull it out and slip it to a columnist. if he wrote something, he wanted the president so see, he would flip it over. and this was untenable and unmanageable and they decided to do something about it and gerald ford was close to hartman and didn't want to do anything about it, but the deputy chief of staff, dick cheney, later was the youngest chief of staff in presidential history. cheney was assigned with figuring out the hartman problem and he booted him out of the room next to the oval. he couldn't go to ford and say

could we get rid of your friend. he said, mr. president, you need a room of quiet contemplation for the issues of the day. and he agreed. and they made that room the contemplation room. hartman never had that office. and sometimes you need to take steps not necessarily what the president is willing to articulate what he wants enable to address it. i would say that continuum from group think to extreme chaos somewhere in the middle is a comfortable zone and sometimes you have a president who is willing to survive with a little chaos or engender a little chaos to get better results and this the famous story is of bill clinton who loses the mid term election in 1994 because his staff drifted too far to the left. and he needs new voices and he

secretly brought in charlie, charlie who was dick morris, longstanding political consultant to clinton and also to republicans during his career and charlie brings in memos trying to drift clinton back to the center. and clinton's aides don't like it and they eventually find out and leak it to the press and new yorker that dick morris is advising the president and people like stephanopoulos, george stephanopoulos and harold hickey among more liberal white house aides are going at it hammer and tongs at morris the whole time in the white house and stephanopoulos his memoir, excellent book, by the way, about morris and notes clinton by bringing in this outside force got better results out of his staff and sometimes the president has recognized there are benefits fostering a little bit of chaos in order to get better results. >> thanks, tevi. and i think you've given a pretty good sense of some of

what's in the book. there's 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 kiron in one second. remind usa the audience, we're coming to you later for questions. how to do that, submit your comments on facebook, do so through the chat box and twitter, handle bpc live. and kiron, you have work in this. and first, broad thoughts for tevi's and the administration. >> first of all, thank you for the bipartisan center for the work that you do across the political divide to bring us together to talk about policy issues. 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, how they 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 talks about three big factors that govern his work as he looked at the white house. one, he talks about ideological citing. and interested in administrative and decision making process, and then finally, he talked about just the broader category of infighting. i'm interested, tevi, if you could take a higher altitude to look and say, which variable do you think has the best outcome for public policy in the white

house? i'd like to start there. i think that's a fascinating way of looking and framing what goes on in the white house. relatedly, and since you mentioned evan and novac, many of us are old enough to remember those amazing columns and we waited for what they were going to say next and for their scoop. but what you think about the role of leaking and leakers in the public policy process? do they do something that's important for outcome? 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 a conversation about. >> that's great, thank you for your careful read, kiron, and your fellowship which i've enjoyed over the year. you correctly note that i have

three levers in the book that presidents have in their pe view, number one ideological comity. comity, if you have a team that gets along ideologically, you're going to see less fighting because they generally have ideological. >> and process where people get their voices heard and have their thoughts expressed to the president, even if they don't wind at the end of the day, they had a fair process, they're more likely to lock arms at the end of the discussion and say, okay, the president decided, i had my chance and we're accepting the president's judgment. if the president is willing to see more infighting, or tolerate more infighting. if the president says i don't want to see it, and obama, nickname of no drama 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, didn't like something written about her in the press and wrote a blistering e-mail to the white house staff the way she was treated and thought that somebody leaked on her. and obama called her into the oval office which is not usual because she's deputy chief of staff. and that person with the president, but she didn't know why, and he said to her that's quite an e-mail that you sent. and she was shocked that he knew about e-mails. he made the signal i don't want to see those shenanigans, don't want to see if this the white house. those are the levers of the presidents if so desired. in terms of the results, i think that ideological alignment is helpful. reagan picking noonen, even though there was fighting in the reagan white house, the idea of reagan rules, meaning

that people knew generally where reagan wants to go, even though people might have fought over titles or stature, the fact of where they were going in a general policy direction was clear. i think the process, one, is extremely important. the administration i worked, the george w. bush administration and process was extremely important and won't be tried to anybody committed what is known as a process, someone who circumvented process, but presidential power set the tone. if you force me to rank them, i would put the process first, but all three are important. with respect to your second question about the press, look, i think the press plays an important role. i think we need to have a press that lets us know what's going on and i think we know more about fighting in the white house today than we did in the previous era because of the press. and you mentioned novac and

each fight that i looked at in the book in fight house, i looked up to see if evans and novac wrote any columns on that particular fight and they invariably did and they were a source and helpful. the publisher of this book is a guy named alex novac. he liked the fact that i was looking at his father's columns and in fact preface to the book. ... i was on the domestic side of the house and not only was it her -- the reason i say it was a

leak free administration because reporters complain that were not enough leaks coming from administration and have a stream of quote in the book of reporters complaining about the absence of leaks from this administration. that can lead to cooperating better if you feel like every other -- doesn't show up in the "new york times" or the "washington post" or "politico"" >> kiron, can they get you to ask some more, maybe get you to talk about either your time in the trump administration or your studies of the reagan administration? tevi has written about both in the book doesn't cover as much about trump as it is new but some are your thoughts, , and maybe tevi can interact with what you are thinking along those lines. >> absolutely. tevi, you talked about saying we understood reagan was in charge from an ideological and policy

standpoint, that you also know that he had numerous national security advisers. there was a sure and the does come every 14 months or so, over the years. there was a new national security adviser. so there was a tension between his ideology which he was committed to and into a new what his northstar was, and his ability to have a process of how the white house worked. i studied reagan and found that fascinating and i've often wondered how does the president who is that many national security advisers have a historic breakthrough in the cold war that he did? for example, in december 1987 the washington summit led to the first nuclear disarmament treaty what was then for your cold war. could you speak a a reagan got something that historic done in the midst of having new faces,

not just a national security adviser come , but downstream, e people underneath each man come in and coming out? how did that happen from the work that you did? >> national security adviser position relatively stability of the secretary of state position. i have wonderful stories in the book, jim baker was a chief of staff and his deputy chief of staff didn't like gates and tried to keep him off motorcades and off of air force one and out of the -- did he say what am i, a leper? he complained. a a 42-year-old deputy chief of staff dresses up in the gorilla costume and widest parading around saying i am baker's gorilla. just astounding. i could not imagine it near of cell phones and twitter someone would do something like that but this was before that.

george schultz come in who is an excellent secretary of state and real clear sense of what he wants and you know he's a colleague of yours at hoover, kiron. i think this to believe that really helped. the other thing is this idea the idea of reagan rule. if you have a sense of what the president wants then you're more likely to have aids even if the interchange know the direction which the president is trying to go. the person who succeeded reagan was george h.w. bush and there is yet much more -- because bush himself was a little less clear about his positions. he said he had trouble with the court vision of things. >> related to that, john, if you don't mind i would like to say that sometimes it's difficult

and you probably refer to this but i but i would like to dry out more, tevi. it's often difficult for white house that is largely cohesive on the three big variables you mentioned to get the work they want done when there's chaos in the agencies 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, in fact, be much of the trump of the 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 agreed with what i've just described? >> it certainly clear some of my best stories about infighting between the national security adviser and the secretary of

state. in the nixon administration of henry kissinger who was national security adviser and it's hard to remember now because we see this kind of aged guru starting with foreign policy within he was very gentle, very aggressive, very thin-skinned, brilliant to be sure and use his consort threatened by william rogers who was the secretary of state in the nixon administration who also knew nixon going back and they were close personal friends. kissinger ran rings around rogers in part because nixon allowed a part nixon recognized kissinger is brilliant and recognize he could learn were as rogers had nothing to teach nixon who himself was quite the strategist when it came to foreign policy. sometimes you have a situation with the national security adviser can kind of run rings around the secretary of state. similarly you had this issue in the carter administration where there is constant fighting between brzezinski and five

answer secretary of state. these guys knew each other before the administration. they've had dinner the night of the election and talked about how the prospect of them working together, and in the first day of the carter administration brzezinski is break on his communications console and these told this phone rings in the president this phone rings from the secretary of state. brzezinski shouts, yank it out, say i work for the president, not for van sparks won the first day he was already laid out thank yous going to be -- but sometimes you can have a relationship that works better. in the nixon administration, i talk about how james schlesinger was at secretary of defense and he would put up with kissinger and he actually had a bureaucratic standing to be able to push back against kissinger and he was much more effective as secretary of defense than

rogers was able to be as secretary of state because he kind of scared of kissinger. kissinger was a bit of a bureaucratic bully and he knew he couldn't bully schlesinger. i think people, it's very alpha male, alpha female environment. people were pushing to see the limits of what the good accomplishment if you can stand your ground and not be a jerk about it but you can show that you bring value to the process and you are not going to be cowed by someone with shenanigans and you can probably go far in the process, and that would be my advice. >> great. i think we want to go to your audience questions. you can submit them in the comments section facebook, you can use the youtube chat function or at twitter with the hashtag. we have a number of questions in already no start with one. the question is, what role do

vice president play in creating or disarming conflict? has that role changed as the vice presidency 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. the vice president does play an important role but doesn't necessarily have to play an important role because the vice president really ask in some of it as a the president. he gets as much as the president grants him and we have this very interesting circumstance in the lbj and jfk administration. lyndon johnson is a vice president under john f. kennedy. the attorney general is kennedy's brother robert f. kennedy who hates johnson and hated him from the days when they're both in the senate. kennedy is a a staffer and john as a senator. robert f. kennedy is constantly trying to demean lyndon johnson and weaken his role, and robert

f. kennedy was the most powerful person outside the president indicated administration for the first 1000 days. but then you're that terrible tragic circumstances where kennedy is a solid-state and suddenly the vice president is elevated to the presidency and now rfk is working for a president who hates him and, in fact, there's a big screaming fight the have in the oval office shortly after johnson is inaugurated right after the first cabinet meeting and they don't talk for two months after that. which is not completely unusual. i'm sure everybody -- think about it, rfk was the sitting attorney general at the time were he was not talking to the president. that is unusual. sometimes you have presidents giving certain powers to a vice president that they may have one restriction and the good to another. it's interesting i also point out hubert humphrey was lbj's vice president and you think lbj might've learned from the experience he had to maybe be

nicer and more inclusive of his vice president hubert humphrey and affect the opposite was the case. he was as belittling of humphrey as the kennedy people were of johnson. then in later years as -- to have become more powerful and you look at my chapter on the bush 43 administration dick cheney 4chan earlier is very involved in the clash of the titans between secretary rice, first national security adviser, then secretary rice and then colin powell at the ticket from an and don rumsfeld at the fence and cheney as vice president. i mention the bush domestic and got along pretty well. the bush foreign policy team was rife with infighting. the vice president was an important part of that. so i think the vice president, i have not really seeing in

relation to the situation with the vice president was able to camp down conflict but i think the vice president sometimes are involved. >> great. we have a lot of questions come in so i won't try to get to as many as again. maybe we can keep it short so we can get to more of them. also kiron, we're happy to have you share your wisdom as well. have another question here from gabby, which is, which white house had the biggest fights that actually impacted its execution of policy? >> i like to go with the ford administration on that. the ford administration was paralyzed and infighting. i mention some of the instances with robert hartman budget presidential addresses including state of the union that would not get resolved because of some of the infighting. there's one instance where it was the night before the state of the union and 40 chili at a

staff because they still have result of the conflicts in the state of the union. there's a great story i have in the book with robert hartman where they were thinking of ways to celebrate the bicentennial in 1976, and hartman is afraid that the other staffers are working against them so they get a bunch of ideas from outside world, by various intellectuals including crystal, and hartman comes up with what the other staffers pixley comes up with some kind of code so you don't know the name of the individual person that is made the recommendation and he would ask people do you like this? but then in these precomputer era, hartman loses the coats cot suite triggers himself and he does not know whose paper belongs to which scholar. sometimes these things cannot only paralyze you because you're fighting that sometimes the tactics used to protect yourself can rebound against yourself.

>> i actually would like to jump in with the question before, john, you move on. this this is a little bit of a different question but relates to the issue of leaking. when you think of evans and novak they were the high water mark of responsible journalism. but in this era we have technology and social media where many people are weighing in who have limited, if any, journalistic background. but we have also government officials going to these various individuals, and leaking important information. what do you think about that, tevi? especially in the trump administration where the attentively smear and destroy people who are serving honorably, and it's leading to a lot of turnover.

>> it's a good question about leaking. what i found in the book is there's a constant rate of technology. as they improve, the leaking, and the improvement. mentioned on as the white house operators to report to him onto white house staffers were calling so he could try and identify lakers. similarly the white house multiple reports to him on were white house staffers were being taken by the army drivers to drive around white house staffers. presidents are always try to get a handle on leaks. in the nixon administration the famous plumbers union that led to watergate nixon's eventual resignation, the reason to recall the roof plumbers because there they were designed to stop leaks. they ended up breaking into the watergate hotel to get the papers but the reason they had that nickname is because they

were designed to identify leaks. there's a cat and mouse game on leaking issues. i think there's always going to technologies for baking and technology for identifying who the leakers are and i really think the best way to address it is to have the president set a standard and bring in people who are willing to not be leaking against one another. and that said, i don't want to suggest all leaking is evil because sometimes president or administration will put out a trial comfortable put out a trial. leaking is not necessary to destroy bricks sometimes it's decide to get a policy some sunshine and air so that you can assess whether the policy would be treated well or reacted too well by the american people. so the word leak has these negative connotations in many

cases it isn't but it's not always the case. >> we are going to take another audience question. i wonder if you look carefully at the screen you'll see not only his current book but is other books behind him so feel the need to buy more than one of these books. i'm going to turn to question from russell newsom. that question begins with a comic i agree with. white house is a truly great book about modern presidency. the book gets into this but i would like to the author discussed whether these rivalries imminent more from personality or from policy. >> it's a great question. personality is obviously an issue. i guy like kissinger isn't sharkskin fellow come was a sharp skin fellow. a person like robert hartman, also a guy who i can imagine --

was not getting into fights with people are sometimes people trying to set the policy above the fight. in the reagan administration u.n. ed meese and he was kind of the true conservative advisor to reagan and very close race but he didn't get the chief of staff job because he was disorganized and is a great story in the book that his briefcase was known as a place where papers go in and never go out. they even called the black hole. i have a lot of nicknames in the book but object to get anything in the book is his briefcase. ed meese was finding a way for james baker but he also unilaterally spent hours in the fighting and he said i'm not going to leak because leaking against baker was not only hurt baker potential but also hurt the president. sometimes people have kind of a higher sense of what the kind accomplished from a policy perspective and they say, not

miss her leaked to advance myself but i will do what i can to kind of help the administration by being silent. i think personality really tries it. you can't have this without personalities, but then on the policy side if you have strong disagreement about policy or policy direction you are going to find personal is a constant where personality is a variant. >> great. we have another question and actually i think certainly tevi should add to this but maybe kiron away in on this as well. this is from herbert, and the question is, what are factors that contribute to successful relationship between a a given chief of staff and cabinet secretaries? >> it's a good question because the chief of staff on one level views himself as a, above everybody else but at the same

time he doesn't visit have have cabinet rank, most presidents let the chief steph curry cabinet meetings. sometimes you have the chief of staff of the lipid ahead of themselves, so don regan who i mentioned earlier, nancy reagan said he's pretty good at the chief part but he doesn't get the of staff part. i think the way to make sure they get along is to try to inculcate the since they're all on the president steam and they have the equivalent ability to access it when of the recent don regan once become chief of staff is because he was treasury secretary never had a one-on-one time along with president making. if you keep the cabinet secretaries isolated from the president i think that will hurt you as the chief of staff because there's a feeling you isolating the president and you're not letting them have facetime in need in order to get

a sense of the president's policies in order to get stuff done. the chief of staff needs to be an inclusive -- i saw this with andy card picky with a record its importance the cabinet secretaries in the need to pull them in the process and that's a good model for how to have the chief of staff get along with the cabinet secretary. secretary carter himself had been a cabinet member and so we knew about that tension. >> let me speak on that question based on what tevi has said from the standpoint of the trump administration. again, and administration that have a lot of churn in the white house, not just at the national security council also in the role of chief of staff. what i've been able to observe is that both in the chief of staff role which has become so critical for the modern american presidency, i don't see how we president could survive without the chief of staff. given that sheer amount of

operational activity at the white house is responsible for in any given day, but the common factor that i think that leads to a great chief of staff that may have been missing in the trump administration, and has been the private relationship, if any, that that individual have with the commander-in-chief. and a lot of what we are seeing in the trump administration is that it's the 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 adviser. that's a hard place to be. it's hard to build the relationship in real time and often when you're that close to the president, the more that you have prior history, , the more i think the trust is there. if you've been in the trenches before, either in the campaign or in some other phase of life. we are seeing in this time a

collection of people who are serving a president where they really don't know him very well, and he doesn't know them very well. tevi, i don't know if you want to respond that based on your research? >> look, i think she's raising an important point which is the sense that the president has the most trust in the people that are within and you often have this -- reagan have california mafia or carter had the georgia mafia. it's not necessarily mafia in a mop since but people who with him before. if your present anybody -- yapped at some level of distrust because you want to talk to and they kissed a few because you are president. and what they thought of you before your presidents i think the people who knew you wouldn't really have the closest view,

that has value to and that's why talked earlier about bob hartman. he was close to four before ford was not only president but vice president, and so the honesty that comes inherent in that relationship i think is extremely important for the level of trust a president can put in that person. >> okay. i'm going to remind the audience we have a little more time and so if you'd like to submit a question you can do so in the comments section facebook, you can do so on the youtube chat function or on twitter at #npclive. another question here coming from peter and good and that is proper structure and process usually provides the outcomes desired. when a president does that care about either come what i'll be returned is for better outcomes. >> as a city earlier process and structure often important so it's hard to beat that. if you don't have the price or the structuralism alphabetic outcome. that said if you a clear

direction, you can overcome some process problems potentially my everybody knowing where you're trying to go. the question is if you don't have a good process and you don't have clarity and direction, that's really what can lead to chaos and that's when you really start to see problems. i think it's a really good question, but it's boring, processed is boring but it's incredibly important for getting things done and it's not a partisan thing. the white house policy process is an honor tried in true tradition that goes from administration to administration and it is perfectly in line with being the juror of the bipartisan policy center. there are certain structure of government that we should maintain and adhere to regardless of the ideology with the partisan nature of the administration that is in power. let me just come is that the most exciting thing. >> can i follow up and maybe get you to talk more about the

reagan administration, again maybe cure and wants to also we in on this. reagan administration famously had a triumvirate, three people at the top, and as described it seems like they could've couldn very chaotic, was in this or something to would recommend just that model on paper but it was way in which it sort of settled in and was successful even though there was a lot of conflict. maybe you could say more about the reagan triumvirate, that process which may not have been operated the way it look like on paper. >> i think the reason the reagan triumphant work comp is jim baker's chief of staff and then you have ed meese as counsel to the president and then mike deaver and step it chief of staff for the free them work really well together because each within a specific roles to play. jim baker as chief of staff, the operator, made the white house trains on a tie. in this same. [speaking in native tongue] paper i talked about that did beautiful in the white house

between ed meese and baker. baker took all of the logistical pieces the sound less sexy but actually ran the white house effectively. ed meese was the kind of keeper of the ideological plane. he was -- so important in the reagan administration and he tried to make sure they didn't go off the rails ideologically even though baker was more moderate and meese and deaver didn't care about ideological. deaver was an analogy guy. because each had a specific role and even though the might have crossed they didn't step on each other's toes in the specific areas and i think that is important. the other funny thing is, the extent to which they distrusted the other so that always stuck together as a group and other staffers knew that they could get a lot done without those three senior people bother even if they're all of going to

reagan and say no one wants have a meeting with reagan without one of the three most because reagan could say something that was detrimental to the missing member. there's a music story where reagan in a hospital with three them hacktivism at the hospital altogether. they couldn't visit him individually and reagan joke when they showed up, gee, fellas, i did know we were going to have a staff meeting. that was one of the instances in which they were able to work in part because reagan's management style. he gave people slack and because of reagan's clear ideology guidance but also because the three event of them each had tr specific role. >> i could add to that, that it wasn't clear come into the white house that these three men would emerge as the ones that really worked together and help organize the president. 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 that presidential crisis. remember, al hague ended up being outside of the community 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 presidential crisis also help the framework of the administration, and also made george h.w. bush a trusted aide in a way that i think may not have happened with the speed that it did. but on the other side, even within in place, it couldn't stop the chaos around the national security council which ultimately got as the iran-contra scandal, which

almost toppled the reagan presidency. i think that sometimes leaders are great with a vision, and that was reagan. but even nancy reagan said that her husband was no manager. you really need the president to have both, i think, the ideological or policy direction with some ability, not complete a ability, but sensory ability to manage. reagan was better at one than the other. >> i think those are accurate. that initial crisis of reagan being shot was very interesting and informative that you mentioned george h.w. bush and what of the things he did was he was effectively i think president but he refused to his helicopter land on the white house lawn during that time.

also maybe some of the people, david gergen was in the situation room and kept excusing himself and situation room, unclear why but richard allen was nice to get advisor didn't trust him a thought he kept going out leave the room to leaked to the press and that's why happening professor leakey. >> we are coming to the end of our estimate i can ask kiron, if you have a last thought that you want to put on the table about the book and then i'm going to ask tevi to close it out with a final summation of 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 just 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 tevi did.

he took it seriously as an intellectual exercise, and as i said to him the other day, this is a book i will use with my students as a teach american politics. it really helps us understand the american form of government and what in the federalist papers they were concerned about and what they were predicting. much of it occurs on the pages of this book. they 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 two 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 a predominant power on earth and has come for each present increasing amount of responsibility as more people push for rights from racial rights to gender, to disability. that's a lot to do in a relatively small white house with a relatively small staff. despite the leaking and despite the inviting and ideological battles and varying levels of presidential tolerance for all of this, 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. thank you for two spady and also the kind words or isolate micra scholarship and your service to this great nation. i really think you captured what i'm trying to get at in this

book in "fight house" because these people are human. you may look at you democrats or republicans, i don't like that, but these are humans and they have got families and they have spouses and they have spouses and the of challenges and if you are concerned and the writ was going to happen after the administration and i was trying to capture the human element in this book because yet some instances where people, you think of them as all-powerful person to redo it in the "new york times" or the "washington post" but these are actual real people with real lives and there's just a great, great story want to mention in the book in the reagan campaign in 1980. there's a lot of tumbled in this campaign can i guy named john sears was a campaign manager who were systematically going after the californians in getting rid of them at and talk about in te book a confrontation on reagan's house that led to mike deaver being accused of financial improprieties. mike deaver was very, very close to the reagan's in fact, in baker said to have i'm able to

go to the bedroom to greet the reagan's that he's allowed to go into the bathroom with him. that shows you how close mike deaver was. when he's accused of these improprieties he gets indignant and he storms out of the house and he says, if you don't want me i quit. once out of the house the next minute he sheepishly walks back into the house and says, i forgot that my wife drop it off here so i don't have a car. can i borrow nancy's station wagon to get back to the city? so this was a very human moment. there's a guy who indignantly resigned from the campaign and yet at the same moment he recognizes his friendship with nancy would allow him to borrow her station wagon and he sheepishly comes back. i fall 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 that each president has an ideological predilections

and knows to some degree and help shape the direction you are bullied but it's also the people are and what they're trying to accomplish and in with our cons are. in the clinton and obama administration there's a story about the deputy chief of staff, and she is frustrated there are not sufficient feminine products in the white house oval office come in the west wing bathroom. she goes and she fixes and makes a big announcement that i've gotten this sixth and she talks about the blank stares she got from the obama staff wouldn't happen but that was important to her and that was the reality that she brought to the role. again, the human element is in kobe important in white house. i appreciate everybody calling in. i appreciate the epc doing this and hope people will purchase the book and a look for to engaging with people in the future. i'll be the last few seconds to john. >> tankage your audience. thank you kiron skinner. thank you presidential historian tevi troy and author of the great we've been discussing

today, "fight house: rivalries in the white house from truman to trump" ." ♪ ♪ ♪ you are watching booktv on c-span2 every week and with the latest nonfiction books and authors. booktv on c-span2 created by america's cable-television companies. today we are brought to you by these television companies who provide booktv figures as a public service. >> weeknights this month we're featuring booktv programs as a preview of what's available every weekend on c-span2.

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