Fight House

Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump

Tevi Troy

• Publisher: Regnery History
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781621578376
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

"Fight House looks juicy as all hell" - National Review "Troy seamlessly weaves West Wing gossip with significant moments in modern history." - Jewish Insider THE WHITE HOUSE HAS ALWAYS BEEN A FIGHT HOUSE President Trump's White House is famously tumultuous. But as presidential historian and former White House staffer Tevi Troy reminds us, bitter rivalries inside the White House are nothing new. From the presidencies of Harry S. Truman, when the modern White House staff took shape, to Donald Trump, the White House has been filled with ambitious people playing for the highest stakes and bearing bitter grudges. In Fight House, you'll discover: -The advisor to President Harry Truman that General George Marshall refused to acknowledge -How the supposed "Camelot" Kennedy White House was rife with conflict -How Dr. Henry Kissinger displaced other national security advisors to gain President Richard Nixon's ear -Why President Jimmy Carter's personal pettiness and obsession with detail led to a dysfunctional White House—and played a role in his losing the 1980 election -How the contrasting management styles of President Ronald Reagan and First Lady Nancy Reagan led to some epic White House staff clashes -Why the "No Drama Obama" White House was anything but no drama Insightful, entertaining, and important, Tevi Troy's Fight House will delight and instruct anyone interested in American politics and presidential history.

CHAPTER 1 TRUMAN AND IKE The White House Staff Emerges, and Conflicts Follow

Both Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower ran tightly controlled operations that gave little room for White House staffers to shine as individuals. They kept the focus on cabinet members, and thereby minimized rivalries. Truman also followed Franklin Roosevelt’s lead, by employing a spokes-on-the-wheel system, in which aides reported to a centralized hub in the form of the president himself.

Even though he was following Roosevelt’s lead in his staffing, Truman was the first to enter office following the creation of the EOP. Roosevelt had a tumultuous internal process, embracing contradictions and treating staff disagreements with a light touch. The New Deal was complicated, with new agencies and new governmental authorities creating conflicting lines of authority.¹ The presidential scholar and former White House aide Stephen Hess put things starkly: “Roosevelt had designed his whole theory of management on conflict.”²

Truman, however, abjured Roosevelt’s conflict-centered approach, returning to the traditional concept of a cabinet-centric government. As an unnamed Truman intimate told U.S. News during the administration, Truman “likes things to run smoothly” and “doesn’t like his advisers to disagree.”³ Historian Alonzo Hamby observed that while Truman’s “staff was no freer than any other from ordinary tendencies toward turf battles, personality conflicts, and back-biting, such episodes were minimal.” This was so, Hamby explained, because Truman “loathed” such conflicts to the point that “however forced the cordiality may have been between some persons, they all maintained in it their dealings with each other—or found themselves leaving.”⁴

What Truman inherited from Roosevelt was not aligned with his personal preferences toward conflict or slipperiness. Yet when presented with a Brownlow-recommended White House staff as a concept and reality, Truman was determined to use it to his advantage. This meant that at least some conflict would be inevitable. In these early days, the structure of the White House staff was informal. To quote Clark Clifford, who served as Truman’s special counsel, “There was no hierarchy within the White House. There was no organization chart… I never received any instructions from any other staff member; I got them from the President.” Truman saw the White House staff as a team of equals. As Clifford wrote, “The organization of the White House was a group of individuals, and they were individuals who were equal in status.” Truman could have chosen to create a more formal structure but pointedly did not. Clifford attributes this conscious decision to Truman’s time in the Senate and the personal, oral way he liked to be briefed while there: “The President got more from personal contact than he did from other forms of contact.”⁵

Truman’s approach had its advantages, but it could be off-putting to those not equipped to deal with oral briefings or White House egalitarianism. There was the risk that traditionally higher-ranking individuals, such as cabinet secretaries, might resent the fact that, as Clifford observed, there seemed to be “no particular rank… between the persons in the White House.”⁶

The title “Special Counsel” itself was born in a controversy that began in the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt had wanted to bring Samuel Rosenman in to serve as his White House Counsel—the same role Rosenman held when Roosevelt was governor. Attorney General Francis Biddle objected, thinking that the attorney general of the United States effectively held the role of counsel to the president. To placate Biddle, they came up with the title of special counsel for Rosenman, but fearing the title modification would not suffice, Roosevelt also aimed to make the announcement at a time that Biddle would be unable to object: “We’ll call it Special Counsel to the President, and I’m announcing it next Wednesday when Francis Biddle is in Mexico City.”⁷ As things would turn out over time, cabinet members like Biddle were right to be worried.

Harry S. Truman and Clark Clifford in Key West, Florida. Clifford would later recall that he “never received any instructions from any other staff member; I got them from the president.” Courtesy of the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum

Despite the title and the existence of a predecessor in Rosenman, Clifford’s job was ill-defined. As Clifford himself wrote years after both he and others had served in the position, “there is no blueprint for the job.”⁸ This seems to have been the case for getting the job, too. Clifford’s qualification for the job may have been based more on personal connections than on his record. This is, of course, not unusual for political aides. To this day, there is no clear-cut educational or professional path to the position of White House aide, and in that respect, Clifford was not uncommon. A graduate of Washington University in St. Louis—both for college and law school—Clifford was already in his late thirties when the Second World War began. He joined the navy, commissioning as a lieutenant junior grade and working on readiness assessment for West Coast naval bases. He became a naval aide to Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and then moved over to the White House after making a point of being useful to Rosenman while Truman was away at the 1945 Potsdam Conference. Rosenman noticed this effort and, after Truman’s return, said to the president, “Let’s keep that young fellow here.”⁹

Clifford continued to make himself useful at the White House, eventually following Samuel Rosenman as Truman’s special counsel. He also became a valued political advisor to the president, a role that would bring him into the crucial presidential decision over whether to recognize the State of Israel in 1948. Many books are still written about this incident, which has had enormous political and policy implications for decades. While an obvious decision to many now, given the closeness between the United States and Israel, at the time it was exceedingly controversial, so much so that nearly the entire national security establishment opposed the decision, particularly Secretary of State George Marshall.

Truman faced enormous pressure on both sides of the recognition question. Politically, the Jewish vote was important, particularly in New York, which was then a hotly contested state in presidential elections. There were also complicated geostrategic issues at play. Those opposed to the recognition pointed out that the surrounding Arab populations vastly outnumbered the small number of Jews in Israel and around the world. As Clifford put it, “I remember at that time the argument being made that there were approximately twenty or thirty million Arabs and a million and a half Israelis, and that the day would come that the Israelis would be pushed into the Mediterranean. Obviously also, the oil was a matter of important military consideration.”¹⁰ The Zionists were, however, more “Western,” and had the potential to be allies in a strategically important region. Nascent Cold War politics played a role as well. Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union, which voted with the Jews in favor of partition in 1947 at the United Nations, hoped to make the new state into an ally. There also was the issue of destiny. Truman, well-versed in the Bible, had some sympathy for the position that the Jews had a right to return to their ancestral homeland.

Given the complexity of the decision, Truman had a meeting in the White House to discuss the situation. As Clifford recalled, the president came to him and said, “I want to have a conference on this problem of Israel. I would like you to prepare yourself and you be the lawyer for the position that we should recognize Israel.” Truman knew that Clifford would be facing opposition by taking this stance, saying, “I am inclined to believe that General Marshall is probably opposed to it, but you get ready and we’ll set up a meeting.”¹¹ As Truman wrote in his memoir, he was always aware of the fact that “not all my advisers looked at the Palestine problem in the same manner I did.”¹²

Truman was right about Marshall. At the meeting, which took place on May 12, 1948, Marshall went first and made the expected case against recognition. Marshall’s argument focused on the geostrategic elements of the situation, particularly the likelihood that the Arabs would defeat the outnumbered Israelis. Clifford went next, ushering in a cinematic Oval Office confrontation. Clifford, who had prepared for the meeting like the trial lawyer he was, gave a formal presentation, “with an introduction and a body to the argument… and ended up with a ringing peroration.” Despite the quality of the presentation, or perhaps because of it, “it infuriated General Marshall.”¹³ Clifford remembered that even during his presentation, “he noticed the thunder clouds gathering” and “Marshall’s face getting redder and redder.”¹⁴

When Marshall did respond to Clifford’s presentation, it was dismissive and personal. Addressing the president, Marshall said, “I don’t even know why Clifford is here. He is a domestic adviser, and this is a foreign policy matter. The only reason Clifford is here is that he is pressing a political consideration.” Truman lashed back quickly: “Well, General, he’s here because I asked him to be.” Not done yet, Marshall said, “I fear that the only reason Clifford is here is so that he can press for a political solution of this issue. I do not think that politics should play any role in our decision.”¹⁵

Already stretching the boundaries of appropriate behavior in a meeting with the president, Marshall went even further: “I said bluntly that if the president were to follow Mr. Clifford’s advice and if in the elections I were to vote, I would vote against the president.” As Clifford recalled, Marshall’s disloyalty to the president “was so shocking that it just kind of lay there for fifteen or twenty seconds and nobody moved.”¹⁶

Marshall’s comment created an awkwardness that effectively ended the meeting. Afterwards, Truman said to Clifford: “Well, that was rough as a cob,” adding, “That was about as tough as it gets. But you did your best.”¹⁷ For the next two days Clifford worked behind the scenes with Undersecretary of State—and future Secretary of Defense—Robert Lovett to hammer things out in such a way that Truman could recognize Israel without embarrassing Marshall and the State Department too badly. Truman would recognize the State of Israel two days later, shortly before the Soviet Union did the same.¹⁸ Despite Clifford and Lovett’s efforts, the State Department was not pleased. Truman recorded that he “was told that to some of the career men of the State Department this announcement came as a surprise.” He was unbothered by this; for he wrote, “It should not have been if these men had faithfully supported my policy.”¹⁹ Even Lovett, who would fondly recall their working together, still inserted a memo to the file explaining that “I can only conclude that the President’s political advisers, having failed last Wednesday afternoon to make the President a father of the new state, have determined at least to make him the midwife.” Clifford wrote in his memoir that “I knew exactly whom Lovett meant when he referred to ‘the President’s political advisers.’ ”²⁰

Lovett, at least, was civil. Marshall was irate. Going into the meeting, Marshall did not like Clifford, but things clearly worsened after the meeting. As Clifford later wrote about Marshall, “Not only did he never speak to me again after that meeting, but, according to his official biographer, he never again mentioned my name.” To be fair, Clifford did not seem to like Marshall much either, writing in his memoir that “George Catlett Marshall was a man of the strictest rectitude, with little noticeable sense of humor.”²¹ But at least he was willing to use Marshall’s name.

The May 12 meeting was one of the starker exchanges to take place in the Oval Office. Yet the disagreement between Clifford and Marshall was not strictly a rivalry, mainly because of the power disparity between the two men. Marshall was one of the leading generals of the Second World War, a national hero and someone whom, as Hamby noted, Truman “revered… as he did no other man in public life.”²² Truman thought Marshall would “probably go down in history as one of the great men of our era, not because he was the chief military brains in winning the war, but because he is also a great statesman and diplomat.”²³ In fact, when Clifford suggested that the U.S. effort to rebuild Europe be called the Truman Plan, Truman balked and insisted it be called the Marshall Plan.²⁴

Despite Clifford’s anonymity at the time and Marshall’s iconic status, Clifford won the fight over Israel. For this reason, the conflict merits inclusion because of the way it highlights the shifting power from cabinet officials to the White House. Of course, there was another important reason for Clifford’s victory: Truman himself wanted to recognize Israel. He had read the Bible as a child, as well as a book called Great Men and Famous Women, which celebrated, among others, the Persian king Cyrus who ret...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Truman and Ike: The White House Staff Emerges, and Conflicts Follow
• Chapter 2: John F. Kennedy: Passion for Anonymity on the White House Staff? Not So Much.
• Chapter 3: LBJ: Johnson’s Kennedy Obsession Continues
• Chapter 4: Nixon: Kissinger-Rogers and the Dangerous Quest for White House Control
• Chapter 5: Gerald Ford: Defined by Rivalry: Robert Hartmann versus Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney
• Chapter 6: Jimmy Carter: Overlearning the Lessons of His Predecessors
• Chapter 7: Rivalries under Reagan: Baker versus Meese, and Regan versus Nancy
• Chapter 8: George H. W. Bush: Darman and Sununu versus All
• Chapter 9: The Clinton Administration: Semi-Controlled Chaos
• Chapter 10: George W. Bush: Domestic Calm, National Security Turmoil
• Chapter 11: Barack Obama: Conflict in the Era of “No Drama Obama”
• Conclusion: The Lessons of Fighting at the Highest Level
• Acknowledgments
• Appendix One: The Infighting Scorecard
• Appendix Two: White House Nicknames
• About the Author
• Notes
• Index
• Copyright