Partner to Power: The Secret World of Presidents and Their Most Trusted Advisers - Hardcover

Cummings, K. Ward

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1633883159 ISBN 13: 9781633883154

Publisher: Prometheus, 2018

Synopsis

A former congressional staffer and Capitol Hill veteran recounts the colorful history of presidential advisers, showing how influential these unelected appointees have been.This revealing book examines the relationships between U.S. presidents and their closest advisers from a psychological, personal, and professional point of view. The author, a Capitol Hill veteran, shows why such relationships are necessary, how presidents have employed them, how they have evolved over successive administrations, and why some believe they are not in the best interests of the nation. Cummingsdescribes relationships that have sometimes been tense, such as the fractious association between George Washington and Alexander Hamilton; or complicated, as seen in the often-troubled understanding between Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton; or controversial, as in the influence of Vice President Dick Cheney on the decision making of George W. Bush.There have also been close friendships, such as the bond between Abraham Lincoln and William Seward; the long-term partnership of Franklin Roosevelt and Louis Howe; and, more recently, the trusting reliance of Barack Obama on Valerie Jarrett. Whether their connection with presidents was close or strained, these "partners to power" had an impact on some of history's most important moments and decisions.Full of interesting vignettes, insights, and little-known facts, this is a fascinating insider's account of the exercise of power at the highest levels.

About this title

About the Author:

K. Ward Cummings is a former senior adviser to members of Congress. Before coming to Congress, he was director of the Division of International and Intergovermental Relations for the Maryland state government. He is a board member of the Harold W. Rosenthal Fellowship, a nonprofit that helps to secure government internships for young professionals. Formerly, he was a senior adviser to the Partnership for a Secure America (PSA), where he helped create the Capitol Leaders Program, a collaboration between Harvard University's Program on Negotiation and PSA to teach negotiation and conflict-resolution skills to senior congressional staffers. In addition, he was a member of the National Journal Group's Policymakers Council.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Introduction

On January 4, 1941, Harry Hopkins, President Franklin Roosevelt’s most trusted adviser, boarded a plane on a top-secret mission to Europe. The five-day trip would take him briefly behind German lines before landing him in southern England, where he would be met by an aide to British prime minister Winston Churchill. Hopkins’s health was precarious. The previous year, he had had a large portion of his stomach removed to stave off cancer. Since the operation, he was never without a small black satchel containing the enzymes he needed to inject each day—without which he would literally starve to death. President Roosevelt was fully aware of Hopkins’s poor health and his meager foreign policy experience, but the mission was too sensitive to be entrusted to anyone other than his right-hand man. When Hopkins finally arrived, Churchill’s aide was shocked by the sight of him. He sent ahead a message to the prime minister describing a shrunken man, as “skinny as a nickname” and too exhausted even to rise from his seat.

Yet Roosevelt had insisted that Hopkins take the trip. As he contemplated a larger role for the US in World War II, Roosevelt needed Hopkins to do what he could not do for himself—go to England to personally size up Churchill. Roosevelt had never met him, so he needed someone to assess whether the prime minister was the sort of man who could be trusted. Only a person like Hopkins, who enjoyed the president’s complete confidence, and who knew him as well as any other person in the administration, could make such an assessment.

Hopkins spent a month with Churchill, willing himself to keep pace with the prime minister’s punishing schedule of meetings, site visits, speeches, dinners, cocktails, and press conferences. The fact that a man in Hopkins’s state of health would undertake such a hazardous mission speaks to the quality of the special partnership he and the president shared.

Special advisers like Hopkins have existed since the earliest days of the American republic. Most Americans are aware of their existence, and although they may chafe at the idea of some unelected presence in the White House pulling strings from behind a curtain like the Wizard of Oz, they also somehow seem to appreciate its value to the president. The fingerprints of right-hand men and women can be found on many of the nation’s proudest achievements, from the Emancipation Proclamation and The Great Society to Obamacare. But the country owes many of its saddest moments to their influence as well. The Trail of Tears, for example, might never have occurred but for the terrier-like persistence of President Andrew Jackson’s closest adviser, John Eaton.

Partner to Power is a study of the extraordinary relationships between US presidents and their right-hand men and women. It delves into their psychological underpinnings in order to understand how they function and why they are necessary. Although dozens of right-hand men and women throughout history will be discussed, nine are the main focus of this book, each of whom represents one of the five most frequent archetypes: (1) cabinet officer, (2) senior adviser, (3) chief of staff (or chief of staff analogue), (4) family member and (5) vice president. Thinking about the different types of right hand a president can choose from may help us address the following questions: Are such relationships in the best interests of the nation? Are these powerful right-hand men and women sufficiently accountable for their actions? Who are they, and how are they chosen? How do their friendships and working styles impact the decisions presidents make?

Debates continue to swirl about the nature and impact of such advisers and their influence on the president, and Partner to Power opens a window on a compelling and contested area of American governance at its highest levels. But, at its heart, this book is about personalities and friendships—some of the most significant in history . . .

George Washington and Alexander Hamilton worked closely together for a decade, creating the office of the presidency as they went along. They shared a partnership so seamless it was as if they knew each other’s thoughts. Each man needed the other to achieve his best self, and Hamilton remained at Washington’s side long after most of his advisers had gone their separate ways . . .

Abraham Lincoln and William Seward started out as rivals, but they ended up the closest of friends and political allies, fighting to hold the Union together even as men in Lincoln’s own cabinet worked against them . . .The collaboration between President Woodrow Wilson and Edward House would endure a world war and facilitate the founding of the League of Nations, but petty jealousies and misunderstandings would eventually drive them apart . . .

FDR’s first right-hand man, the gnome-like and unmistakably working-class Louis Howe, was so strikingly dissimilar from the young, patrician Roosevelt that many people were surprised they even knew each other. And yet their collaboration became one of the most important in American presidential history as the New Deal programs they created helped lift millions of Americans out of poverty during the Great Depression. Their relationship had been established years earlier, before Roosevelt contracted polio; Howe had moved in with the Roosevelts to help Franklin recuperate from his illness and ended up staying for twenty years . . .

When Clark Clifford started working for President Harry Truman, he was a lowly naval assistant, emptying ashtrays in the War Room. A year later, he was counsel to the president and one of the most powerful men in the world. As he worked behind the scenes to advance the president’s Middle East policies over the objections of the secretary of state, Clifford demonstrated how few limits existed on the power of the president’s right-hand man . . .

The uncommon power Sherman Adams enjoyed as President Dwight Eisenhower’s chief of staff stands unequaled to this day. Like most right-hand men and women before him, Adams preferred to work behind the scenes and rarely spoke to the press. Nevertheless, no one doubted his role. Few were surprised to learn that, during the short period in which the president recovered from his heart attack, Adams secretly ran the government in his place . . .

James Baker, Michael Deaver and Ed Meese were three men who acted as one for the benefit of President Ronald Reagan. Together they oversaw White House operations and policymaking. The skills and qualities each man brought to the task enhanced his individual power, but, more importantly, together they were an unstoppable force. No one would learn this better than Reagan’s embattled secretary of state . . .

Although she was not able to get there on her own, for a brief period Hillary Rodham Clinton could say she was “co-president of the United States” as she and her husband translated their unique partnership from the governor’s mansion in Little Rock to the White House . . .

And Dick Cheney, the self-professed “Prince of Darkness” and close partner of President George W. Bush, was the most powerful vice president in American history. During the tumult of September 11, 2001, as Bush flew safely above the nation in Air Force One, Cheney was running the government from a bunker buried deep beneath the White House. At one point, a military officer informed the vice president that an unidentified passenger plane had been spotted entering DC airspace and was presumably headed toward the White House. Without skipping a beat or taking a breath, Cheney ordered it shot down.

For the most part, right-hand men and women are chosen because their strengths and temperaments serve the purposes of the president. Though most of them choose to wield their influence out of the spotlight, even from the shadows they impact our lives in deep and lasting ways. These are their stories.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1633883159
• ISBN 13: 9781633883154
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272