Transcripts For KQED Charlie Rose The Week 20170902

Failure. And we havent seen as much of that out of this white house as other president s have done. In some level, i think that president trumps success has been in sewing chaos, and i think he thought that would work for him as president. Rose well have that story and more on what happened and what might happen. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by the following and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications rose and so you began how . Form the team. Rose is it luck at all, or is it Something Else . Its not out of context. Rose whats the object lesson here . You can tell the president no. Rose tell me the significance of the moment. We begin this week with a look at the news of the week. Here are the sights and sounds of the past seven days. Thousands who fled harvey are jammed together at double capacity. The National Weather Service Calls the flooding unprecedented and beyond anything experienced before. Femas going to be there for years. It happened in texas, and texas can ham anything. President trump visited texas to see the aftermath of harvey firsthand. The president was also ask about his pardon of sheriff joe arpaio, particularly the timing. Actually, in the middle of a hurricane, i assumed the ratings would be far higher than they would have been. Defiant show of force trying to let the United States know they have weapons in their arsenal that theyre willing to use. Two people are dead in a public shooting at a library in new mexico. A washington, d. C. Grand jury has indicted 19 people accused of attacking protesters near the Turkish Embassy in may. Maria sha sharapova playing n her first tournament since her ban for doping. Look at the baby laugh. Rocket man what a sensational catch he cant believe it. There are so many heroes in houston. And then a hero comes along there was a lot of chaos and destruction in texas this weekend but it was heartwarming to see that there was also a lot of this were going to go save some more lives, help some more people. People need help. Im here to help. Im going to try to save some lives. Now, those are the kind of people you should erect statues of, those people right there a hero lies in you rose it has been exactly a month since general john kelly was sworn in as the white house chief of staff. His predecessor, reince priebus, lasted only six months, and he received much of the blame for the chaotic nature of the trump white house. The question is what needs to be done to bring order to the west wing . I spoke with three men who held the job. Jack watson was president carters chief of staff from 19801981. John podesta was president clintons last chief of staff. And andy card was the first chief of staff to president george w. Bush. Also joining me was chris whipple. Hes the author of a new history of the chiefs. It is called the gatekeepers how the white house chiefes of staff define every presidency. Is it the toughest job, second to the presidency, in washington . Andy . Its the toughest job because youre helping the president do the real toughest job. Rose right. Which means you have to have discipline and bring order to chaos, and you also have to Pay Attention to whats happening outside the white house as well as inside the white house. And you actually have to make sure that the president is served with the challenge in time to meet the thj so when a decision is made, it is relevant, and not irrelevant. Charlie, its also its also tough because one of the chief roles of the chief of staff is to make sure that the president is hearing all the voices that he needs to hear, that he that hes getting all the to be an honest broker. To be an honest broker. To be a very honest broker. And also, as part of that role, honestly, to tell the president no when he needs to be told no, and thats not easy. Rose thats not easy for anybody, is it . For anybody. Particularly in this white house. laughter with a president who doesnt like to be told no. Rose a person who didnt come up in the political giveandtake and compromise of the political world. It can be brutal, but its also a tremendous honor to do it. And having, you know, done a lot of different jobs over the course of my life, its the one where you have the most impact most immediately. You see it the most. And as andy noted, youre really helping the president achieve his vision for the direction of the company. You serve at the pleasure of the president , but your job is not to try to please him. What i learned from talking to these guys and interviewing all 17 living white house chiefs of staff for the the gatekeepers president s cannot govern effectively without empowering a white house chief of staff as first among equals in the white house to execute their agenda and also, most importantly, as andy says, to tell them what they dont want to hear. Its almost impossible to overstate the importance of having a chief of staff who is a gatekeeper meaning he controls access to the oval office and gives the president time and space to think. Hes the honest broker, as jack just mentioned, making sure that every decision is ted up with all the information on every side. He prioritizes, helps the president pyreitize the agenda, and he is in charge of the administrations message. Now, none of that may sound familiar at the moment because in my opinion, we dont have a white house chief of staff who has been empowered. Rose right now. Right now. Rose but oftentimes, somebody has to come in im thinking of, you know, panetta, when there was chaos, and organize the place, right . Yeah, yeah. One former chief told me that for some president s its a little bit like alcoholism you have to hit rock bottom to recognize that you need to change. And i think theres no question about it, in bill clintons case, it took him a year and a half to figure out that he had to empower a white house chief to really organize and make that white house run. It wasnt Mack Mclartys fault. Mack was not empowered. Bill clinton didnt want to be disciplined. There was an intervention by Hillary Clinton and al gore and tipper gore. And they flew leon panetta to camp david and basically locked him in a cabin until he agreed until he said yes. Jimmy carter, jimmy carter really thought he could run the white house by himself. It took him two and a half years to give ham jordan the title. President s come in full of hubris, intoxicated by having won the election. They think they can run the white house sound familiar it never ends well. Rose heres the money question what would you change if you were now chief of staff for donald trump . I would try to enforce a rule for the president and everyone else in the white house taste your words before you spit them out. Or tweet them out. Because the president s words make a big difference. They make a difference on the white house staff, the bureaucracy in the executive branch of government, congress, and the world. And so i would want discipline around the words that are spoken by the president , and subordinately, by anyone at the white house staff. And, actually, gives more discipline over dont leak. I think probably the first thing i would like would be to take his phone away from him so he cant look, i think this is a chaotic structure. It has been from the very beginning. You had steve bannon coming off the campaign. You had jared kushner, his soninlaw coming into the white house playing an important role. You went through a succession at National Security adviser within a month of the administration. But i think in some level that president trumps success has been in sewing chaos, and i think he thought that would work for him as president. I think at this point, you know, it remains to be seen whether you can be effective as president. Certainly hes having his challenges on capitol hill. Rose so you take his phone away, whatever, however well, you know, just think about trying to if you have the strategic job of setting an agenda to work with the hill, for example, on policy, and youre trying to message around that and create the backdrop and the backup so that people feel that they can stick with you, and every day, the storys changing. You know, he just you know, they make plans and theyre blown up virtually every day. That in part i think is the result of the investigation and the president s inability to stay away from it. But i think its also just the nature of the way hes always, i think, conducted himself in business, and certainly the way he conducted himself on the campaign trail. So it may be a tall order to get any chief of staff to have the authority to discipline that process, to do you know, i fundamentally agree with what andys saying, but i think its a tremendous challenge in this context. You cant run the white house the way you run a family manhattan Real Estate Firm with equally empowered advisers coming and going and not and not a public firm but a private firm. And not a chain of command and not somebody who is empowered to execute the agenda. And as john said, this is a white house that is broken. It may be broken beyond repair because at the end of the day, only donald trump can decide to empower his white house chief of staff to execute his agenda, and also tell donald trump what he does not want to hear. And does anybody imagine that happening any time soon. Rose nor can anyone point out to you somebody who says no to him. I ask that question all the time, when i say, who says no to the president has stepped forward with a candidate. Charlie, there is another really important point in addition to all of this discipline. This white house is lacking a disciplined message, a disciplined process. The tweeting constantly, daily, morning, noon, and night is not helping because its its putting out inconsistent and, indeed, contradictory messages, where the president is disagreeing not only with himself something he said earlier but with his secretary of state or someone else. But theres another the secretary of state is trying to mediate the deal between the conflict between qatar and the arab states, and the president is take sides. And here i think if i if you were to ask me what is the central problem, the most important sort of unalterable problem, it would appear, theres an insufficient respect for the truth. Falsehoods are being stated, are being given almost every day in one way or another. Statements are being made that are, on their fairfax untrue, that can be shown to be, proved to be immediately untrue. That puts your staff, whether its your chief of staff or your press secretary god love him in an impossible position. But think about this if theres not a respect for the truth, if theres not a respect for the importance and the legitimacy of fact, how can you have a rational debate . How can you have rational debates about what policy should be if no one cares what the truth is, what the realities are . You cant. And thats why there has to be a there has to be a come to jesus meeting here somewhere, some time, which i have low expectations for it happening. Rose do you agree with this, andy . First, i think the president has so many different responsibilities. Some of them are to make decisions and order that they been implemented. The governing responsibilities are actually paramount to that because they have the to invite others to be part of the solution and build bridges and invite people to be part of the success or share the blame for failure. And we havent seen as much of that out of this white house as other president s have done. Its the invitation to be part of a solution that compelz a bureaucracy to want to work hard for you i was asking about the question and to be a partner in solution. Rose i was asking about the question about truth. Do you believe what jack just said about i think there are some things that are so obviously true that the president said were not, like, day one, how many people attended the inauguration. I mean, that was a bizarre thing to ask your press secretary to go out and claim. Iit was the biggest crowd ever on the mall when it was demonstrably not the biggest crowd ever. But he probably had more eyeballeyeballs and ears paying attention because of media and the fact that more Media Outlets were covering everything, so but, yes, i think they are sometimes challenged by the reality that they want to deny. Rose whats the perfect qual fick for being a chief of staff . I dont i really dont think you can define it. Define it that way. Because the person is, in essence, a partner with the president. So different president s are going to want different kinds of people. In clintons case, he loved a lot of input. The title the gatekeeper if i really tried to be the gatekeeper with bill clinton, i think he would have just gone crazy. You have to work as the care and feeding in part is to work and be understanding of the way the president works. Hes a tremendous thinker. You know, he brings lots of voices to the table. He invites people in. Sometimes that can be maddening, but often, its quite creative. And hes you know, hes a policy guy. So i had to find ways to feed that so that he didnt feel cut off from the people he wanted to talk to. Rose you mean he wanted to see a lot of information so you had to make sure he saw a lot of information. And talk to a lot of people. Cabinet secretaries used to call me up all the time and say, i gotta go see the president because i have to have a conversation face to face. And i would say, 2024561414. He stays up all night. Call the white house operator. They will put you through to the president. If you have something you have to say to him call him up and it worked out that way . Some people were intimidated by that, which usually meant they really didnt have to talk to the president. Others took advantage of that. I had the advantage of knowing who he talked to every night because i saw the log of his phone calls. So i could the discipline laughter . The discipline is not to prevent the president from out it beside the two peoplews the oval office. So the discipline i had was i want to know before, during, or after you have visited with the president. And the best complier to that rule was actually the president. At the end of the day, he would say, you might want to talk to soandso. He came to see me if he didnt tell you about it, go see him. Having said that, i dont think any of the guys at this table would have allowed donald trump to be alone in a room with his f. B. I. Director, given the circumstances at the time. Rose it was donald trump that wanted to be alone. Yeah, but no competent chief of staff would have permitted that to happen. No empowered chief of staff. An empowered chief of staff. One of the things about the qualities for a great chief of staff and i think all of these guys share this i think temperament. If you think about halder man was famously the perfect son of a bitch. But you dont have to be. Jim baker and leon panetta i think shared something these guys also have. They were grounded. They were comfortable in their own skin. They had been around the block. They could walk into the oval office, close the door, and tell the president what he did not want to hear. As dick cheney put it to me when he was jerry fords a terrific chief of staff for jerry ford. He said you cant have a tough thing that you have to tell the president and have eight or nine guys sitting around saying, its your turn to tell him. No, its your turn. It has to be one person to do it. And, unfortunately, we do not have a chief of staff as we speak in the white house who can tell the president no. Rose is there anything exwb in the white house who can tell the president no . Well, you know, i sometimes wonder if donald trump could find the civilian equivalent of jim mattis, who, evidently, has the gravitas to change the president s mind, on torture, for example, and tell him no mcmaster. He needs to find somebody like that, because history is littered with the wreckage of presidencies that tried to govern this way, including jerry fords. Back to your first question, what makes a good chief of staff . I completely agree with john. The role of the chief of staff is going to vary from president to exprt vary drastically. It would be hard to imagine two president positive more unlike in the delegation department than president reagan and president carter. President carter are like president clinton, was a president who wanted the information, who could assimilate and absorb and organize in his own mind, in his own way vast amounts of information. I knew that about him. The essential criterion for the chief and the president is mutual trust. They know each other. They sort of know the minds of each other, and they trust each other. The for the chief of staff, i would say, its important for him to admire and respect the president as not just a leader which he clearly is a leader by role and definition but a moral leader. And conversely, the president needs to know that his chief of staff is not their selfserving himself, that he is there to execute the role for the president in the best possible way he can, given the president s personality, given the president s priorities, given the president s goals. Chris mentioned don regan as kind of a model of failure. Who had been successful, successful in business, arguably successful treasury secretary. I think you cant be imperial if youre the chief of staff. And that was i think that was regans downfall. You have to be like a sports manager. You have tremendous talent in the white house, and you have to be able to, you know, build a team that is going to be cohe was and Work Together as opposed to just, you know, operate by dictot from the chief of staff, and i think thats what regan tried to do. It broke down, down the hall with the National Security adviser, and that broke down the hall with the you know, she finally stepped in and solved the problem. Rose yes. She was no longer you know, he liked the chief part of the title a lot. It was the staff part he didnt like s so much. Charlie a verb that has not been used by any of us in terms of the role of the chief of staff but i think all of us would agree on, is that the really effective chief is also going to be very good at enabling people to do their jobs. The chief doesnt try to do it all himself, in the same way that the president cant, so cannot the chief. So the chief has to identify people that he or she that time will come when we have a woman chief of staff form the team, form the team that you know and that you have confidence in, that you trust. And enable them to do their jobs. Rose back to the power thing. I mean, one of the things that seems to me gives a chief of staff a lot of power is often you have the last word with the president. You have the last sound in his ear before he makes a decision. I mean, that came up i think it is sometimes said when you had dick cheney around and colin powell around, who prevailed might have been who first of all, the cheestles has to have peripheral vision and know where all the people with great tunnel vision are. laughter okay . And that happens to make sure that any word to the president is not out of context because you want the words to be within context. And strong personalities in the white house, its a team and its a team of rivals in every white house because theyre very competent staffers who are legitimately hired because they have great expertise. Many of them have type a personalities, and they think theatre only person with great expertise, and you have to nag process and make sure the Playing Field is, in fact, level and not skewed one way because a dominant staffer is bullying the process. But the last word i found the president would frequently seek me out as the last word, but it wasnt so much abo that meeting and jane was ready to speak up, but she was intimidated by sally. You might want to call jane. You know, Dennis Mcdonough tells me the story in the book about the walk they used to take. Rose i was thinking about that very thing when i raised the question. At the end of every day, around 5 00, they would tack a walk around the south lawn. On a bad day, it would be a lot of laps. But when obama was confronted with the decision about whether to retaliate against syria when he had drawn his famous red line and then decided ultimately not to retaliate, he came back from that walk and shocked his National Security team when he told them what he had decided. And the speculation was also that perhaps mcdonough had really had the last word in his ear, and really pushed him in that direction. And i asked dennis about that, and he said, no, absolutely not. He said, i always felt that was an unfair advantage. They would be, as andy says, talking about the process, talking about how they got to that point, and being a sounding board for the president and the honest broker, as he should be. Rose thank you all, a pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. Rose thank you. The book is called the gatekeepers how the white house chiefs of staff define everyone presidency, chris whipple. Now heres a look at your Holiday Weekend Steven Spielbergs Close Encounters of the third kind is released in theaters. The 137th u. S. Open tennis championships continue all weekend in flushing meadows, nawk. And the italian grand prix runs sunday in mans aitaly. An exit out of the second at 110. Again, riding the curves is cruc. And heres a look at the week ahead sunday is the brix annual summit in china. Monday is labor day. Tuesday is the day Congress Returns from recess. Wednesday is the 20 anniversary of prensis dianas funeral. Thursday is the day the new England Patriots and the Kansas City Chiefs kick off the n. F. L. Regular season. Friday is the day former congressman Anthony Weiner is sentenced in his sexting case. Saturday is the womens final of the u. S. Open. Rose thats charlie rose the week for this week. For all of us here, thank you for watching. Im charlie rose. Well see you next week at our new time, 10 30 eastern. Check your local listings. Rose funding for charlie rose has been provided by captioning sponsored by Rose Communications captioned by media steves music in viennas parks enjoys a long tradition. A century ago, Johann Strauss was the toast of viennas high society. It was here, in viennas city park, in the kursalon, where the waltz king himself directed wildly popular concerts in the late 1800s. And the tradition continues to the delight of music lovers from around the world. [ the blue danube plays ] welcome to the program. It is the end of summer and as we prepare for the next season we bring you some of our favorite conversations here on charlie rose. Chnology with oftions on youtube and investor reid virtu. So there have been many cycles where people describe Virtual Reality and were another one of them. Each time Virtual Reality is better. If you havent checked out Virtual Reality, you should. The Science Fiction of maybe well take our classes for kids maybe at that time will be Virtual Reality. Maybe discussions and conference. Maybe the charlie rose show will be in Virtual Reality, you know. So i think theres a lot of