In what James A. Baker, III, has called the "worst job in Washington,"
the chief of staff orchestrates the president's conduct of the U.S.
government. He holds the unique responsibility to magnify the time, 
reach, and voice of the president of the United States. "You need a 
filter, a person that you have total confidence in who works so closely
with you that in effect he is almost an alter ego," Gerald Ford has said.

    In this volume, resulting from the Washington Forum on the Role of
the White House Chief of Staff, held in 2000 in Washington, D.C., 
twelve of the fifteen men who have held the office of chief of staff
discuss among themselves and with a select group of participants the
challenges, achievements, and failures of their time in that role.
Their purpose is to find lessons in governing that will help future 
chiefs of staff prepare to assume the office and organize the staffs
they will lead.

    These pages of frank and uncensored discussion present in
question-and-answer format the voices of the chiefs of staff as they 
discuss the transition from campaign to governance, the reelection 
drive every four years, and ultimately, the closing out of an 
administration. The group also addresses the place of the White 
House chief of staff within the larger governing community of the 
Executive Branch, Congress, interest groups, and the press.

    The American White House sits at the nerve center of world 
history, and at the core of this nerve center, a massive 
bureaucratic operation exists to process the flow of information and 
policy. Because the White House chief of staff manages that 
operation, to ignore its requirements risks presidential fate itself 
and indeed, the fate of the republic.

_________________________________________________________

TERRY SULLIVAN, an associate professor of political science at
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was for two years 
the director of the Presidential Transition Project at the James A. 
Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University, where as 
part of that effort, he coordinated the Washington Forum. In 
addition, he is the co-editor of The White House World: Transitions, 
Organization, and Office Operations, also published by Texas A&M 
University Press.


The Presidency and Leadership, A Joseph V. Hughes, Jr., and
Holly O. Hughes Book


What people are saying about this book

"“. . . a very well rounded and detailed analysis of the role of White 
House Chief of Staff. . . . A key strength of the book is the 
presentation of views by many former Chiefs of Staff, thereby 
presenting the reader with an inside and authoritative view of what 
the position entails. . . . Sullivan does an excellent job in meshing 
the views of the panelists into his analysis of the Bush transition. 
. . . offers valuable information to scholars as well as the general 
public."—Roman Popadiuk, George Bush Library Foundation

"When you realize that even though the White House chief of staff 
has tremendous power, he or she, nevertheless, is not a principal 
but only a staffer face it, it's right there in the title then it is 
easy to understand why some people also characterize it not just as 
the second-toughest job in Washington but as the worst job in 
Washington. As the only person in history who was dumb enough to 
have taken the job twice in his life, I confess that I was sometimes 
inclined to agree with that characterization."—from the foreword by 
James A. Baker, III