‘Drama, Action, Emotional Power’: As Exhausted Aides Eye the Exits, Trump Is Re-Energized

By Maggie Haberman and Katie Rogers

President Trump has gone overseas to embark on some of the most consequential diplomatic negotiations of his tenure, threatening an all-out trade war with allies and seizing a chance to make peace with a nuclear-armed menace.

But back home, he left behind a West Wing where burned-out aides are eyeing the exits , as the mood in the White House is one of numbness and resignation that the president is growing only more emboldened to act on instinct alone.

Mr. Trump, a former reality television star, may soon be working with a thinned-out cast in the middle of Season 2, well before the midterm elections. Several high-profile aides, including John F. Kelly , the president’s chief of staff, and Joe Hagin, a deputy of Mr. Kelly’s, are said to be thinking about how much longer they can stay. Last week, Mr. Kelly told visiting senators that the White House was “a miserable place to work,” according to a person with direct knowledge of the comment...........To Read More......

My Take - Making former Generals Chief of Staff wouldn't be the direction I would go. First of all, there are two groups of people everyone thinks of as leaders. Military officers and PhD's. Both conclusions are wrong.  These are usually very competent intelligent people who got to the top of their professions by going along to get along.

Give them a mission and they'll carry it out with great ability, and probably successfully.  However, military officers who stand against their superiors don't get promoted - especially if they prove their superiors wrong.  PhD candidates don't get promoted by telling other PhD's they're all wrong, and prove it, during their oral dissertations.  Being the rock in the current is completely alien to them.

Don't ask them to stand against consensus. That's not who they are by nature and experience in life.  And the habits of a life time are as strong as life itself.

If Kelly doesn't like it he should leave, and it wouldn't be to another high ranking job in govenrment as he may be wanting if it were up to me. Perhaps he need's to just go home.   But one thing is clear.  Trump will not change and he's had a great many people around him in his businesses for decades.  Apparently it can't be that bad.  And it's clear he likes stirring up the pot if for no other reason he doesn't trust those around him, and he has good reason.  They're bureaucrats, and if a bureaucrat hates anything more than change I don't know what it is because that means they'll have to think and work.....at the same time.....and that's just asking too much of bureaucrats, especially Washington's Deep State bureaucrats, many of whom are still there from the Obama administration.

As for this idea the Chief of Staff is to "serve as the president’s confidant and gatekeeper". That's for the President of the United States to decide, not the New York Times, and not the Chief of Staff.