With all the attention focused on President Joe Biden’s apparent cognitive failings, it’s worth remembering that the modern presidency is as much about the people around the president as it is about the chief executive himself.
If Biden manages to remain the nominee (and he shouldn’t), we will have the rare chance to compare two White House staffs and assess whose was better.
Staff isn’t responsible for the agenda or the direction a White House takes. Staff works on the competency of the decision-making process and the implementation and communication of decisions with Congress, the bureaucracy and the public.
Biden has one of the best White House staffs of my lifetime. We have had many great White House staffs, such the brief Ford years, Reagan’s first term and most of Obama’s eight. Biden’s may well be remembered among those.
This is no accident. Biden has always been staffed well throughout his long career. He recognizes talent, shows loyalty to staff and keeps people around when they are good at their jobs. He also inspires tremendous loyalty in them. Even when they lose an internal debate, they don’t leak. They line up behind the decision and try to make it work. The best White House staff have a “passion for anonymity.” That describes every member of Bidenworld.
In part thanks to this staff, Biden has been able to have a pretty successful presidency. Staff members were essential in getting major legislation through Congress amidst dysfunction and polarization, like his infrastructure bill, the stimulus package, the CHIPS Act and the budget. Internationally, he managed to assemble the largest alliance in modern times against Russian aggression. He even avoided the perpetual tension between the National Security Council advisor and the secretary of State.
The Biden presidency has been far from unblemished, of course. The withdrawal from Afghanistan was badly handled, and the presidential debate prep was a disaster. The team may have been too tight, too loyal, to immersed in a groupthink bubble to realize how much Biden had declined while in office.
Time will tell if this last mistake will outweigh all the good that they did. They may have been so invested in their boss that they wouldn’t let themselves recognize the danger that Biden’s decline posed to reelection — and to the nation.
So then how about former President Donald Trump’s staff? During the last debate, Trump attacked Biden for not firing anyone. Indeed, part of a president’s job is to swiftly remove people from his staff and cabinet when it becomes necessary.
But I’d be worried about a Waffle House that had as much turnover as Trump’s White House did. He had four chiefs of staff, five communications directors, four press secretaries and four national security advisors. His cabinet turnover was more than twice that of Reagan's first term, and almost five times Obama’s.
Beyond turnover, the Trump White House leaked like a ’57 Chevy, spilling the internal deliberations of each day almost immediately to the press. Each chief of staff tried to crack down, but the truth is, this was what Trump wanted. It was good TV. It was like an episode of “The Apprentice,” and all that drama put Trump constantly before the public.
It also gave Trump convenient fall guys and gals for any perceived mistake. One staffer even titled his autobiography “Team of Vipers” because, in the Trump White House, everyone was out to knife someone else in the back. It’s hard to get anything done for the president or the nation if you are plotting your colleague’s demise or trying to avoid your own — or both!
And don’t forget the nepotism; Trump kept his talentless daughter and overrated real-estate heir son-in-law involved in policymaking at the highest levels.
Bad staffing had real world consequences. One of the key things a good White House staff does is make sure the president’s words are accurate. In March 2020, Trump spoke to the nation about COVID and said that in 72 hours, he would be cutting off travel from Europe as well as the importation of goods. But goods had not been included in his executive order. This caused markets to reel before a correction was issued. Also, the travel ban would not apply to Americans, but he failed to mention that, so thousands of Americans rushed to buy airline tickets at exorbitant prices so that they wouldn’t be trapped abroad.
No White House staff could be held responsible for the blizzard of falsehoods, exaggerations, misstatements and crude, undiplomatic remarks that Trump made, on COVID and everything else. But a major presidential speech that causes unnecessary economic upheaval and panic is a sign of an amateurish White House staff. And many people are worried that the second Trump administration will feature even less experienced staff, more committed to MAGA principles than to the Constitution or legality.
So if it comes down to Biden or Trump this November, think about the people these two men have surrounded themselves with as much as you think about them. The choice is between constant chaos, turnover, incompetence and infighting on the one side, and an extremely gifted team of longtime loyalists on the other, who kept a president’s obvious decline from the nation.
Choose wisely.
Jeremy D. Mayer is an associate professor of policy and government at George Mason University, and coauthor of “The Changing Political South.”
