i guess somewhere this came, maybe with holdman once saiding give me a tough s.o.b.you have to be an s.o.b. to be good? >> it depends on the president's personality. the one thing the chief of staff cannot do is be inconsistent with the way the president runs the white house. no, i don't think you have to be an s.o.b. >> you have to be tough sometimes. you have to make a hard decision and be able to either fire someone or reassign someone from one position to another position. that's not easy. because you know these people. you're working with these people. so toughness, yes. >> there are three functions that any chief of staff has to meet. first is the care in feed -- care and feeding of the president. that's a logistical challenge. it's also paying attention to the state of mind of the president. the emotional roller coaster the president might be on. that is a very large job that people don't pay attention to but it is all-consuming for a chief of staff. then you have the policy debate. the chief of staff manages the policy debate. in the necessarily the policy bu

if you think about holdman was the pluperfect son of a -- but you don't have to be.er and leon panetta shared something these guys also have, they have grounded, they were comfortable in their own skin, they've been around the block, they could walk into the oval office, close the door and tell the president what he did not want to hear. it was dick cheney who put it to me when he was gerry ford's, a terrific chief of staff for gerry ford, said you can't have a tough thing you have to tell the president and have six or eight guys who say, it's your turn, it's your turn. there has to be one person. and we do not have a chief of staff as we speak who can tell the president no. charlie: is there anybody who can tell the president no? >> you know, i sometimes wonder if donald trump could find the civilian equivalent of jim mattis who evidently has the gravitas to change the president's mind on torture, for example. and tell him no. he needs to find somebody like that. because history is littered with the wreckage of presidencies that tried to govern this way, including g