White House Chief of Staff

The White House chief of staff is the head of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, a cabinet position in the federal government of the United States.

White House Chief of Staff

President of the United States

1946 (Assistant to the President)
1961 (White House Chief of Staff)

John R. Steelman

www.whitehouse.gov

The chief of staff is a political appointee of the president of the United States who does not require Senate confirmation, and who serves at the pleasure of the President. While not a legally required role, all presidents since Harry S. Truman have appointed a chief of staff.

In the administration of Joe Biden, the current chief of staff is Jeff Zients, who succeeded Ron Klain on February 8, 2023. The chief of staff is the most senior political appointee in the White House. The position is widely recognized as one of great power and influence, owing to daily contact with the president of the United States and control of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

Selecting senior White House staffers and supervising their offices' activities;

Managing and designing the overall structure of the White House staff system;

Control the flow of people into the ;

Oval Office

Manage the flow of information to and decisions from the (with the White House staff secretary);

Resolute Desk

Directing, managing and overseeing all policy development;

Protecting the political interests of the president;

Negotiating legislation and appropriating funds with leaders, Cabinet secretaries, and extra-governmental political groups to implement the president's agenda; and

United States Congress

Advise on any and usually various issues set by the president.

[6]

Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, loosely describes the role of a White House chief of staff through his interview with former president Barack Obama:

The responsibilities of the chief of staff are both managerial and advisory and may include the following:

These responsibilities have recently extended to firing of senior staff members. In the case of Omarosa Manigault Newman, who published a tape she alleged was made in the Situation Room of her firing by Chief of Staff John Kelly, the chief of staff said that his decision for her departure was non-negotiable and that "the staff and everyone on the staff works for me and not the president."^[7]

Richard Nixon's first chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, garnered a reputation in Washington for the iron hand he wielded in the position—famously referring to himself as "the president's son-of-a-bitch", he was a rigid gatekeeper who would frequently meet with administration officials in place of the president, and then report himself to Nixon on the officials' talking points. Journalist Bob Woodward, in his books All the President's Men (1974) and The Secret Man (2005), wrote that many of his sources, including Mark Felt, later revealed as "Deep Throat", displayed a genuine fear of Haldeman.^[8]^[9]

White House Chief of Staff