Who Serves? Competence and Loyalty in the Trump White House Staff

• In Event: Managing the White House and Federal Agencies

Abstract

Several best-selling books describe the Trump White House as a dysfunctional hotbed of intrigue, rivalries, and controversy. As evidence of its dysfunction, they point to the historically high rate of Trump White House staff turnover. But what explains that turnover? More generally, who was recruited to work at the Trump White House, and why? How well did their prior experience prepare them for their White House jobs? To answer these questions, we analyze an original data set containing the backgrounds of more than 200 Trump commissioned White House aides, focusing on the link between staff backgrounds, and their White House staff role. How many aides are recruited primarily due to their partisan ties or personal loyalty to Trump? How many are hired because of a particular task or subject expertise? How do these recruitment patterns affect turnover? And do these recruitment patterns comport with the hiring process in previous White House staffs? This research is part of a larger project examining the background of more than 2400 White House aides serving during the period 1929-2020.

Authors

• Matthew J. Dickinson

• Kate Reinmuth, Stanford University