White House Chief of Staff

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President Joe Biden walks with Chief of Staff Ron Klain along the Colonnade of the White House.

File:Jimmy Carter meets with Jack Watson, cabinet secretary, in the Oval Office - NARA - 176952.jpg

Chief of Staff Jack Watson (1980–1981) meets with President Jimmy Carter in the Oval Office.

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President George H. W. Bush sits at his desk in the Oval Office Study as Chief of Staff John Sununu stands nearby.

File:Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks into the Oval Office as President Donald Trump reads over his notes, March 2017.jpg

Chief of Staff Reince Priebus looks into the Oval Office as President Donald Trump reads over his notes.

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President Barack Obama meets with White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel in the Oval Office.

The White House chief of staff is the head of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, a position in the federal government of the United States.

The chief of staff is a political appointee of the president of the United States who does not require Senate confirmation, and who serves at the pleasure of the president. While not a legally required role, all presidents since Harry S. Truman have appointed a chief of staff. James Baker is the only person to hold the office twice or serve under two different presidents.

In the second administration of President Donald Trump, the current chief of staff is Susie Wiles, who succeeded Jeff Zients on January 20, 2025. The chief of staff is the most senior political appointee in the White House. The position is widely recognized as one of great power and influence, owing to daily contact with the president of the United States and control of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

Historical background

Originally, the duties now performed by the chief of staff belonged to the president's private secretary and were fulfilled by crucial confidantes and policy advisers such as George B. Cortelyou, Joseph Tumulty, and Louis McHenry Howe to presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, respectively. The private secretary served as the president's de facto chief aide, in a role that combined personal and professional assignments of highly delicate and demanding natures, requiring great skill and utmost discretion. The job of gatekeeper and overseeing the president's schedule was separately delegated to the appointments secretary, as with aide Edwin "Pa" Watson.

From 1933 to 1939, as he greatly expanded the scope of the federal government's policies and powers in response to the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt relied on his 'Brain Trust' of top advisers. Although working directly for the president, they were often appointed to vacant positions in federal agencies and departments, whence they drew their salaries since the White House lacked statutory or budgetary authority to create staff positions. It was not until 1939, during Roosevelt's second term in office, that the foundations of the modern White House staff were created using a formal structure. Roosevelt was able to persuade Congress to approve the creation of the Executive Office of the President, which would report directly to the president. During World War II, Roosevelt created the position of "Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief" for his principal military adviser, Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy.

In 1946, in response to the rapid growth of the U.S. government's executive branch, the position of "Assistant to the President of the United States" was established. Charged with the affairs of the White House, it was the immediate predecessor to the modern chief of staff. It was in 1953, under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, that the president's preeminent assistant was designated the "White House chief of staff".

Assistant to the president became a rank generally shared by the chief of staff along with the other most senior presidential aides such as the White House counsel, the White House press secretary, and others. This new system did not catch on immediately however. Presidents Kennedy and Johnson still relied on their appointments secretaries instead, and it was not until the Nixon administration that the chief of staff took over maintenance of the president's schedule. This concentration of power in the Nixon and Ford White House (whose last chief of staff was Dick Cheney) led presidential candidate Jimmy Carter to campaign in 1976 with the promise that he would not appoint a chief of staff. And indeed, for the first two and a half years of his presidency, he appointed no one to the post.

Average tenure in office

The average tenure for a White House chief of staff is just over 18 months. The inaugural chief of staff, John R. Steelman, under Harry S. Truman, was the president's only chief of staff; Kenneth O'Donnell alone served in the position during John F. Kennedy's unfinished term of 34 months in office. Andrew Card and Denis McDonough each served at least one entire presidential term of office under presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively.

Role

Chris Whipple, author of The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency, loosely describes the role of a White House chief of staff through his interview with former president Barack Obama:

During the last days of his presidency, Barack Obama observed: "One of the things I've learned is that the big breakthroughs are typically the result of a lot of grunt work—just a whole lot of blocking and tackling." Grunt work is what chiefs of staff do.

The responsibilities of the chief of staff are both managerial and advisory and may include the following:

• Selecting senior White House staffers and supervising their offices' activities
• Managing and designing the overall structure of the White House staff system
• Control the flow of people into the Oval Office
• Manage the flow of information to and decisions from the Resolute desk (with the White House staff secretary)
• Directing, managing and overseeing all policy development
• Protecting the political interests of the president
• Negotiating legislation and appropriating funds with United States Congress leaders, Cabinet secretaries, and extra-governmental political groups to implement the president's agenda
• Advise on any and usually various issues set by the president

These responsibilities have recently extended to firing of senior staff members. In the case of Omarosa Manigault Newman, who published a tape she alleged was made in the Situation Room of her firing by Chief of Staff John Kelly, the chief of staff said that his decision for her departure was non-negotiable and that "the staff and everyone on the staff works for me and not the president."

Richard Nixon's first chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, garnered a reputation in Washington for the iron hand he wielded in the position. Referring to himself as "the president's son-of-a-bitch", he was a rigid gatekeeper who would frequently meet with administration officials in place of the president, and then report to Nixon on the officials' talking points himself. Journalist Bob Woodward, in his books All the President's Men (1974) and The Secret Man (2005), wrote that many of his sources, including Mark Felt, later revealed as "Deep Throat", displayed a genuine fear of Haldeman.

List of White House chiefs of staff

Denotes acting capacity.

Image	Name	Start	End	Duration	President
File:Steelman-Conciliation-Service (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1945–1953)
File:GLSAAdams (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=2 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1953–1961)
File:Wilton Persons taking the oath of office (cropped).png		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Kenny O'Donnell (cropped).jpg	De facto	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1961–1963)
File:Walter Jenkins 1963 (cropped).jpg	De facto	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=5 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1963–1969)
File:Bill Moyers clock 21 July 1965 (cropped).jpg	De facto	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Jack Valenti Portrait (cropped).jpeg	De facto	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Portrait officiel de W. Marvin Watson (cropped).jpg	De facto	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:James Robert Jones (cropped).jpg	De facto	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:H R Haldeman, 1971 portrait (cropped) 2.png		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=3 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1969–1974)
	Vacant	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Alexander Haig photo portrait as White House Chief of Staff black and white (slightly cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
					rowspan=3 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1974–1977)
File:Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General George S. Brown at a press conference in the Pentagon (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Richard Cheney with another member of the Ford administration staff at the White House (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
	Vacant	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=3 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1977–1981)
File:Hamilton Jordan - NARA - 173802 (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Watson 1977 (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:James Baker, Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff ME671-1 (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=4 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1981–1989)
File:Donald Thomas Regan, Secretary of the Treasury ME352-10 (cropped) 3.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Howard Baker 1989 (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Kenneth Duberstein (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:GovJohnSununu1 (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=3 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1989–1993)
File:Samuel K. Skinner (2009-09-10) (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:James A. Baker III, U.S. Secretary of State (2380044355) (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Menem con Thomas McLarty (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=4 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(1993–2001)
File:Leon Panetta, informal photo (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:President Obama meets with Fiscal Commission co-chairs Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:John Podesta official portrait.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Andrew Card Visits HUD - DPLA - 7bc5bd60c24e35fa59744b7f7736cb26 (cropped) (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=2 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(2001–2009)
File:Assignment- 48-DPA-N OPM Pres Awards) President's Quality Awards 2005 ceremony, (honoring progress made by federal agencies in improving management systems and work processes, at Wa - DPLA - 1a5f294a5afe6060b5f7ec481aa3d2e5 (cropped).JPG		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Rahm Emanuel, official photo portrait color (cropped) 2.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=5 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(2009–2017)
File:Pete Rouse in the Oval Office (cropped).jpg	Acting	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:William M. Daley official portrait (cropped) 2.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Jacob Lew official portrait (cropped) 2.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Secretary McDonough, official photo (cropped) 2.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Reince Priebus (32319663313) (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=4 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(2017–2021)
File:John Kelly official Transition portrait (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Mick Mulvaney official photo (cropped) 3.jpg	Acting	Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Mark Meadows, Official Portrait, 113th Congress (cropped) 3.jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Ron Klain, White House Chief of Staff (slightly cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd	rowspan=2 style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(2021–2025)
File:Jeff Zients, WHCOS (cropped).jpg		Template:Dts	Template:Dts	Template:Ayd
File:Susie Wiles July 2025.jpg		Template:Dts	Incumbent	Template:Age in years and days	style="background: Template:Party color;" |	(2025–present)

See also

• Chief of staff
• Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States
• Officer of the United States
• Staff and line
• White House Deputy Chief of Staff