Chris Whipple - The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency

I loved The Gatekeepers! The reporting is superb, the writing engaging and wonderfully fair-minded. Unbuttoned at last, these chiefs have wonderful stories to tell. This book serves as a compellingly readable thank-you note to a motley crew of policy nerds, fixers, maniacs, and soon-to-be exbest friends of the president who have lost sleepand probably several years off their livesin the service of the White House, and of their country.

Alex Beam, author of The Feud, Gracefully Insane, and American Crucifixion

Chris Whipple is one of our eras most accomplished multimedia journalists. Drawing on access to senior officials most reporters can only dream of, his documentary The Spymasters brought Americans inside the U.S. intelligence community as never before. Now, Whipple has done it again, exploring the inner workings of the last eight presidenciesfrom Nixon to Obamathrough exclusive interviews with current and former White House chiefs of staff. The Gatekeepers is first-rate history, as told by the men who lived it to a man who knows, with supreme assurance, how to write it.

James Rosen, Fox News chief Washington correspondent and author of The Strong Man and Cheney One on One

History, drama, intrigue. Every page is engaging. Required reading for every Washington power player.

David Friend, Vanity Fair, author of Watching the World Change

A vibrant narrative of the real-world West Wingconfident and fast-pacedIn this page-turner of a history, readers will discover new facets of historical events that they felt they already knew.

Publishers Weekly

Introduction
I Brought My Pillow and My Blankie

1: The Lord High Executioner
H. R. Haldeman and Richard Nixon

2: Beware the Spokes of the Wheel
Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Gerald Ford

3: The Smartest Man in the Room
Hamilton Jordan, Jack Watson, and Jimmy Carter

4: One Hell of a Chief of Staff
James A. Baker III and Ronald Reagan

5: Dont Hang Up on the First Lady
Donald Regan, Howard H. Baker Jr., Kenneth Duberstein, and Ronald Reagan

6: The Prime Minister
John Sununu, Samuel Skinner, James A. Baker III, and George H. W. Bush

7: An Iron Fist in a Velvet Glove
Thomas F. Mack McLarty, Leon Panetta, Erskine Bowles, John Podesta, and Bill Clinton

8: The Decider
Andrew Card, Joshua Bolten, and George W. Bush

9: Between Bad and Worse
Rahm Emanuel, William Daley, Jacob Lew, Denis McDonough, and Barack Obama

R ahm Emanuel was so cold he could see his breath as he crossed the White House parking lot and entered the West Wing lobby. It was December 5, 2008, an unusually frigid morning in Washington, D.C. But it wasnt the weather that sent a chill through Emanuel; it was the unbelievably daunting challenge that lay ahead.

In just six weeks Emanuel would become White House chief of staff to Barack Obama, the forty-fourth president of the United States. But for more than a month, he had watched in astonishment as the world they were about to inherit was turned upside down. The U.S. economy was teetering on the edge of another Great Depression. Creditthe lifeblood of the world economywas frozen. The entire auto industry was on the brink of collapse. Two bloody wars were mired in stalemate. There was more than a little truth, Emanuel thought, to the headline in The Onion: Black Man Given Nations Worst Job. The stiletto-tongued infighter, former senior adviser to Bill Clinton, and congressman from Illinois felt apprehensive. I brought my pillow and my blankie, he would later joke, looking back at that dark morning when the fate of the new administration seemed to hang in the balance. The truth was, Rahm Emanuel was scared.

The unannounced gathering at the White House that morning looked like a Cold Warera national security crisis. Black sedans and SUVs rolled up; men in dark suits clambered into the Executive Mansion. Emanuel thought about the elite fraternity that was assembling here: Donald Rumsfeld. Dick Cheney. Leon Panetta. Howard Baker Jr. Jack Watson. Ken Duberstein. John Sununu. Sam Skinner. Mack McLarty. John Podesta. Andrew Card. Joshua Bolten. They were among Washingtons most powerful figures of the last half century: secretaries of defense, OMB directors, governor, CIA director, majority leader, and vice president. But they had one thing above all in common. It was a special bond, a shared trial by fire that transcended their political differences: Every one of them had served as White House chief of staff.