Is Trump's new chief of staff the right pick?

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The facts: A Democratic House majority, a potentially damning report from Robert Mueller, a slew of investigations into the president’s businesses and a reelection campaign. In 2019, the White House’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, will begin his new job at the start of what could be the most challenging year yet for the Trump administration. After a troubled, public search for a new chief of staff during which several frontrunners removed themselves from consideration, President Trump announced on Twitter last week that he had tapped Mulvaney, his budget chief and a South Carolina congressman from 2007 to 2011, for the job. Mulvaney will take the reins from outgoing chief of staff John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general who is set to leave the administration at the end of 2018. The position has been somewhat of a revolving door, and was first held by Reince Priebus, a former RNC chairman who left after six months. That rate of turnover is not unprecedented: President Barack Obama had three chiefs of staff and one interim chief of staff during his first four years in office.

Mulvaney is up against a chaotic administration, and it’s up for debate whether he will have more success than his predecessors in bringing order to the Trump White House.

The opinions

No chief of staff can bring order to the Trump administration. “While it is possible that a skillful COS might bring order to the Oval Office — as Kelly appeared to do early in his 16-month tenure — he will always be subservient to a President who sows chaos,” Princeton University professor Julian Zelizer wrote for

CNN.

Mother Jones’s Washington bureau chief, David Corn, who co-authored “Russian Roulette” with

Yahoo News Chief Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff, said, “I think at this point it doesn’t matter who the chief of staff is. … Trump will do whatever the heck he wants.”

Mulvaney understands how Trump works. “Mulvaney knows going in what will work and what won’t. He’s not going to change this president and shouldn’t try,” Ed Rollins, who has served in four presidential administrations, wrote for

Fox News. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., agreed with Rollins, noting that Mulvaney “will let Trump be Trump.”

Mulvaney’s background will be an asset for the Trump administration. The

Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, “His conservative principles will be crucial in the next two years as Democrats and perhaps some in Mr. Trump’s family try to lure the President into expanding the entitlement state or raising taxes.”

As a former congressman, Mulvaney’s ties to Capitol Hill could help Trump in the face of impeachment. The

Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote, “Mr. Mulvaney’s ties on Capitol Hill will also be an advantage as a wartime consigliere once House Democrats gin up their impeachment machinery.” Rollins wrote for

Fox News, “Mulvaney’s experience serving in the House as a Republican representing South Carolina for six years gives him an understanding of politics and how Congress works.” Jonathan Slemrod, who ran Mulvaney’s outreach to Congress, pushed back against criticisms of Mulvaney’s relationship with Congress, stating, “Mick has stronger relationships on the Hill than the press wants to write. He’s willing to compromise. He’s willing to work with both sides.”

Once Mulvaney’s on the outs with Trump, conservatives will lose a valuable fiscal ally. The

Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe writes, “When the relationship between Trump and Mulvaney blows up (which it inevitably will, as it would with any chief of staff pick), the White House will lose one of its few truly competent fiscal conservatives. Second, placing Mulvaney front and center will render his entire strategy to manage his relationship with Trump impossible.”

What the key players said

President Trump:

Mick Mulvaney, new acting chief of staff:

Mulvaney in 2016: Trump is a “terrible human being.” A spokesperson for Mulvaney said the remarks were “old news” made before he had met Trump.

Nick Ayers, the VP’s chief of staff, was widely considered Trump’s top pick but is leaving the White House:

Chris Christie, who turned down the job: “It’s an honor to have the President consider me as he looks to choose a new White House chief-of-staff. However, I’ve told the President that now is not the right time for me or my family to undertake this serious assignment. As a result, I have asked him to no longer keep me in any of his considerations for this post.”

What happens next

As acting chief of staff, Mulvaney will have the ear of the president. But he’ll have to find a way to manage a president who hates being managed.

Mulvaney will also stay on in his role as budget chief while he takes on new chief of staff duties, though Russ Vought, his deputy, will handle daily operations of the Office of Management and Budget, the White House said in a statement. As budget chief, Mulvaney helped persuade House Republicans to increase their budget request for Trump’s border wall from $1.6 billion to $5 billion — a move now at the center of a fight that could lead to a partial government shutdown. (While in Congress, he pushed congressional leadership for government shutdowns to ensure conservative victories.)

The chief of staff role is powerful and usually highly sought, but given Trump’s unpredictability, the job appears to be viewed as risky, given the number of contenders who turned it down. Though much focus has been directed toward the “acting” part of Mulvaney’s title, a senior Trump administration official said that his appointment won’t be limited in scope. “There’s no time limit. He’s the acting chief of staff, which means he’s the chief of staff,” the official told Yahoo News. “He got picked because the president liked him. They get along.”

It remains to be seen whether Trump will keep Mulvaney in the role permanently. Chris Whipple, an expert on chiefs of staffs, said the search process has been “sad to watch.” Whipple said, “In his first two years, Trump devalued the position by failing to empower anyone to perform the job. The only thing more broken and dysfunctional than the White House itself seems to be the search for the new White House chief of staff.”

Trump quickly rebutted Whipple’s analysis. He tweeted: “For the record, there were MANY people who wanted to be the White House Chief of Staff.”