A thought on Trump's Chief of Staff problem - TEXT

politicalprof

Donald Trump is his own Chief of Staff ... which is the problem with hiring a new one.

So, Chiefs of Staff to US presidents basically have three jobs. First, they manage the work flow of information getting to the President. Second, they manage access to the President by other staff people. And third, they manage outflow from the Oval Office to the government, the public, and the world at large.

There are lots of ways to do this job, and some COSs have done it with greater skill than others. Some have been openly partisan advocates within the administration; others have seen their role more as a neutral broker of information (to the degree “neutrality” and “politics” can be said to coexist).

But to be successful, a COS has to be able to do those three things.

Donald Trump, of course, doesn’t really want much, if any, substantive information. He certainly doesn’t want to feel like he is being managed or that access to him on the part of his favored people is any way constrained. And he most definitely doesn’t want his public regurgitations of his id to be even slightly limited.

Which is fine in the sense that if you want to be your own COS, you can be. Have at it. But no COS can succeed under those work conditions.

By this point in the Trump presidency, no serious person can believe he can be managed or processed into anything close to a “typical” president – certainly not in terms of managing the White House. Ipso facto, whoever finally takes the job of COS won’t be a serious person.

But it won’t matter anyway. We’ve already seen the Trump administration with the adults in … charge? Present?

Now we’re about to get a government run by hormonally-charged teenagers.

Source
http://politicalprof.tumblr.com/post/180990041073/donald-trump-is-his-own-chief-of-staff-which