A Framework for Understanding the Mind of White House Staff.

During my five years in the Clinton White House, I came to understand the unique perspective that presidential aides carry to the political world. At the institutional pinnacle of American political power, staffers approach their work with a variant of political realism. It is a political metaphysic that sees the world as inherently chaotic, always in need of leadership, and it is entirely opposite to the premises of idealist thinking. Staffers have to make sense of the Hobbesian chaos around them. Because the modern White House inevitably finds itself at the center of the nation’s most intense controversies, staffers are selected for their ability to cope with seemingly intractable problems or, if they do not have that propensity at the outset, the skill is imposed upon them by the demands of the job. Among these pressures is a requirement that staffers set aside personal comfort in favor of team loyalty – a formula for burnout at the individual level. This paper is a narrative exploration of the staffer’s psyche. It is based on my own professional experience as well as ongoing interviews with selected White House staffers (1981 to the present). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]