The Gray Area with Sean Illing14 Mar 2017

Denis McDonough on how to run the White House

How do you actually run a White House? What is the president’s actual job? What is the chief of staff’s role? What happens if you screw up? These are questions I’ve been reflecting on rather a lot lately, for obvious reasons. And so I asked Denis McDonough on the podcast to talk about them.McDonough served as President Barack Obama’s chief of staff from 2013 to 2017 — a position in which he earned the nickname “Obama’s Obama.” This is his first lengthy interview since leaving the White House, and he was thoughtful, reflective, and sober about both the job he did, and the job his successors must do.This is a discussion about running the most important organization in the world well — and what happens when you fail. McDonough and the Obama administration did have their failures, and those failures taught them hard lessons.This discussion, to me, speaks to a great vulnerability opening up under the Trump White House. They are trying to pursue their agenda, but they are not effectively managing the vast organization they’re in charge of. That’s going to lead to mistakes, and those mistakes could come to define, or even destroy, this administration.Which is why, if there’s anyone who should listen to this podcast, it’s the current occupants of McDonough’s old workplace. This discussion is full of advice that’s useful to anyone running anything big, or anyone interested in how big things are run. I learned a lot from it. You will too. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(764)

If AI can do your classwork, why go to college?

What’s the point of college if no one’s actually doing the work? It’s not a rhetorical question. In the age of AI, it's incredibly easy for students to offload their assignments. AI tools can write es...

30 Jun 202555min

Is Trump winning?

We’re nearly six months into Donald Trump’s second term as president, and a lot of us are still trying to figure out what that actually means. Not just politically. But culturally. What kind of countr...

16 Jun 202548min

A right-wing economist makes his case

For decades, the American right has stayed on brand: the economy. Low taxes. Free markets. Deregulation. Those have been the buzzwords for more than half a century. But that doctrine is now being chal...

9 Jun 20251h 4min

What "near death" feels like

Sebastian Junger came as close as you possibly can to dying. While his doctors struggled to revive him, the veteran reporter and avowed rationalist experienced things that shocked and shook him, leavi...

2 Jun 202552min

Machiavelli on how democracies die

Almost nothing stands the test of time. Machiavelli's writings are a rare exception. Why are we still talking about Machiavelli, nearly 500 years after his death? What is it about his political phi...

26 Mai 202547min

Do you have moral ambition?

We’re told from a young age to achieve. Get good grades. Get into a good school. Get a good job. Be ambitious about earning a high salary or a high-status position. Some of us love this endless cli...

12 Mai 202556min

The science of ideology

What do you do when you’re faced with evidence that challenges your ideology? Do you engage with that new information? Are you willing to change your mind about your most deeply held beliefs? Are you ...

5 Mai 202551min

A new analysis of the pandemic

There are lots of stories to tell about the Covid pandemic. Most of them, on some level, are about politics, about decisions that affected people’s lives in different — and very unequal — ways. Cov...

28 Apr 202547min