Press Releases
Now in paperback: THE GATEKEEPERS by Chris Whipple
With a new chapter on Trump
The Gatekeepers
Chris Whipple
- Imprint: Broadway Books
- On sale: March 6, 2018
- Price: $17.00
- Pages: 400
- ISBN: 9780804138260
212-572-2722
sbreivogel@penguinrandomhouse.com
THE FIRST IN-DEPTH, BEHIND-THE-SCENES LOOK AT HOW THE AMERICAN PRESIDENCY HAS HINGED ON THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE WHITE HOUSE CHIEFS OF STAFF, BASED ON UNPRECEDENTEDLY CANDID CONVERSATIONS WITH ALL 17 LIVING CHIEFS
*WITH AN EXCLUSIVE NEW CHAPTER ON THE TRUMP PRESIDENCY, FEATURING INTERVIEWS WITH REINCE PRIEBUS AND STEVE BANNON*
Our country has just endured one of the most divisive elections in modern history. Now well into his first 100 days in office, President Trump has surrounded himself with an inner circle of advisers who are determined to execute his outsider agenda, but who have little governing experience. Foremost among them is White House chief of staff Reince Priebus. His position is one the framers of the Constitution could not have envisioned. Unelected and unconfirmed, the chief serves at the whim of the president, hired and fired by him alone. And yet the chief’s job is so critical that the presidency cannot function effectively without one. Will Priebus be able to hold the president’s ear, or will he be outplayed by louder voices in the room, such as Stephen Bannon’s? Will he—like history’s most successful chiefs—be empowered to execute Trump’s agenda, and prove himself capable of harnessing the president’s chaotic, combative, and even reckless instincts? Or will he be remembered as a “yes man,” incapable of telling the president what he doesn’t want to hear, thereby spelling disaster for Trump’s administration—and for the country?
Based on extensive, intimate interviews with all seventeen living chiefs of staff and two former presidents, Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush, THE GATEKEEPERS: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency (Crown, on sale April 4, 2017), by award-winning producer and journalist Chris Whipple, is the story of men who defined the presidencies they served. In THE GATEKEEPERS, Whipple explains how every president needs an empowered chief of staff in order to govern effectively. Our most successful presidents understood the importance of a strong chief (Ronald Reagan, for example, knew that he needed a consummate Washington insider, James Baker, in order to get things done). Yet as Whipple’s book shows, our political age is also littered with the wreckage of presidencies that failed to understand this lesson. From Watergate to the Iran-Contra affair to the Iraq War to the bungled rollout of Obamacare, Whipple illuminates the past, shedding light on moments in our nation’s history that take on new meaning in this current climate.
The book has been years in the making, starting when Whipple began to research his acclaimed 2013 documentary film The Presidents’ Gatekeepers. But the film only scratched the surface of a rich and consequential story that has never been told. For the next three years, Whipple conducted dozens of additional interviews—including follow-up interviews with the chiefs themselves and people who worked alongside them in the White House, as well as cabinet officers, congressmen, and staffers. He also spoke with experts—historians, journalists, and others—who specialize in the chiefs and the presidents they served. The result is a methodically detailed, compelling, and dimensional history that changes our perspective on the presidency, told by people who have had front-row seats to the last eight administrations.
In THE GATEKEEPERS readers will discover how:
– Richard Nixon’s infamous chief H. R. Haldeman, often blamed for Watergate, actually tempered Nixon’s self-destructive instincts and wrote the template for the modern White House chief of staff.
– Two ambitious chiefs, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, brought Gerald Ford back from political disaster to the brink of victory over Jimmy Carter—forging a political alliance between themselves that would take them to the pinnacle of power decades later.
– Jimmy Carter tried to govern without a chief, and thereby crippled his presidency.
– James A. Baker III redefined and mastered the job—making the Reagan Revolution possible.
– Leon Panetta, along with his deputies Erskine Bowles and John Podesta and with strong input from First Lady Hillary Clinton, resurrected Bill Clinton’s struggling presidency, fixing a dysfunctional White House and setting the stage for Clinton’s reelection.
– George W. Bush’s long-serving chief Andrew Card would be unable to quell the infighting among the president’s feuding advisers. As the decision to invade Iraq loomed, no one was acting effectively as the president’s honest broker.
– Barack Obama’s presidency was profoundly affected by his chiefs of staff. With Rahm Emanuel at the helm, Obama succeeded in staving off another Great Depression, saving the auto industry, and passing his landmark Affordable Care Act. And Emanuel’s successors helped achieve the Paris Climate Accord, the Iran Nuclear Agreement, and the diplomatic opening to Cuba. But Obama’s inability to pass legislation, his failure to get a grand bargain on the budget, and the bungled health-care rollout can be attributed not just to political gridlock, but to his chiefs.
The seminal moments of a presidency don’t unfold on a public stage. It’s the intimate conversations, the backroom bargains, and the closed-door debates that often determine history. When the president makes life-and-death decisions, often the chief is the only other person in the room. In THE GATEKEEPERS, Whipple pulls back the curtain to expose how the nation’s levers of power are operated by these right-hand advisers, offering us a new way of measuring the presidency.
About the Author: CHRIS WHIPPLE is an acclaimed writer, journalist, documentary filmmaker, and speaker. A multiple Peabody and Emmy Award–winning producer at CBS’s 60 Minutes and ABC’s Primetime, he is the chief executive officer of CCWHIP Productions. Most recently, he was the executive producer and writer of Showtime’s The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs. As a print journalist, Whipple has covered stories ranging from apartheid in South Africa to presidential campaigns in the United States. He has been published in Newsweek, LIFE, People, Politico, The Daily Beast, and American History, and on ABC.com. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors in history from Yale College. He lives in New York City with his wife Cary.
Related Posts: