In many, if not most, US administrations, some figure emerges who convinces the press that the president simply couldn’t function without him. But, as the dismissal of White House Chief Strategist Stephen Bannon has once again shown, such fixtures of the modern presidency are almost never indispensable.
WASHINGTON, DC – In many, if not most, US administrations, some figure emerges who convinces the press that the president couldn’t function without him (it’s yet to be a her). The indispensable aide is, indeed, one of the most well-worn tropes of the modern presidency. Karl Rove was “Bush’s Brain”; Harry Hopkins held Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prolific White House team together; Bill Moyers appeared on a magazine cover as “Johnson’s Good Angel.” Without such a figure, the story inevitably goes, the administration would be a mess, if not a disaster.
WASHINGTON, DC – In many, if not most, US administrations, some figure emerges who convinces the press that the president couldn’t function without him (it’s yet to be a her). The indispensable aide is, indeed, one of the most well-worn tropes of the modern presidency. Karl Rove was “Bush’s Brain”; Harry Hopkins held Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s prolific White House team together; Bill Moyers appeared on a magazine cover as “Johnson’s Good Angel.” Without such a figure, the story inevitably goes, the administration would be a mess, if not a disaster.