Trump is running White House like a Democrat

(Bloomberg View) — It’s safe to say the new Donald Trump administration has shattered all records for reports of internal turmoil in the first week. See, for example, here and here. Some of this could be Trump himself — several stories are just brutal about his inability to focus and about how unprepared he seems to be. And some of it could be media overkill, since once a story is out there, it tends to feed on itself.

But another potential explanation — especially considering the jaw-dropping leaks coming from within the White House — is that there is something seriously wrong with the way Trump has structured his new staff.

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He has decided, in short, to run the White House like a Democrat — just when it appeared that a decades-long argument had been settled in favor of the Republican model.

Here’s the history. The “presidential branch” of government, with large White House staffs and agencies such as the Office of Management and the Budget, the National Security Council, and the Council of Economic Advisers, only goes back to Harry Truman’s administration. Truman governed this new part of the government more or less the way Franklin Roosevelt had governed a tiny presidential staff, with several different people reporting directly to the president.

Dwight Eisenhower, however, brought over a new style from his military experience, naming former New Hampshire Governor Sherman Adams as his chief of staff.

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This top-down model served Ike well, and subsequent Republican presidents have all copied it to some extent. Democrats, however, resisted. Even when someone had the title, they were generally weak versions of the idea. So Jimmy Carter began without anyone in that role, which was eventually filled de facto by Hamilton Jordan (who finally got the title two and a half years into the presidency). Both Carter and Bill Clinton wound up moving to a hierarchical chief of staff model after experiencing White House disarray early in their terms.

It appeared, in January 2009, that the old argument was finally settled in Eisenhower’s favor when Barack Obama began his presidency with Rahm Emanuel as chief of staff. While the Obama administration had its share of rocky moments, little of it appeared to be traced to White House disorder, and it seemed both parties had adopted the same model.

So it’s a bit of a surprise that Trump has abandoned the Eisenhower model, but appears to be trying out the failed Democratic style. Trump does have a designated chief of staff, Reince Priebus. But he appears to have a weak version of the job, with a three-or four-or perhaps even five-headed organizational structure a better description of what’s happening. Originally, Priebus was announced as part of a dual-command structure with Steve Bannon, but Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner made it three, and Kellyanne Conway has been portrayed as one of a “Big Four.” And don’t forget Vice President Mike Pence, who might make it five. Could National Security Advisor Michael Flynn even mean six? That’s part of the problem; without a solid structure, everything is up in the air, which gives everyone strong incentives for turf wars.