Archive: Tevi Troy on the U.S. Presidency

Great Antidote host Juliette Sellgren is on vacation so we're digging into the archives during her absence.

By Bryce McCullough

In this episode of The Great Antidote, Tevi Troy talks with host Juliette Sellgren about his book Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump. Troy wanted to push back on the claim that the political infighting in the Trump Administration was “unprecedented.” “Unprecedented” sounds the alarm for historians. So, Troy looked for precedents and found plenty. 

Tevi Troy is the former United States Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services during the George W. Bush Administration, the current CEO of the American Health Policy Institute, and is a best-selling presidential historian. Troy also served as a senior White House aide in the Bush administration from March 2005 to July 2007.

To begin the episode, Sellgren asks Troy the question she asks all her guests: “What is the most important thing that people in my generation should know that we don’t?” Troy believes that there is a lack of appreciation for the idea that you can disagree with one another without being disagreeable. He advises that we should take “Republicans only” or “Democrats only” out of our Tinder bios because political disagreement does not equal social incompatibility. 

Many people do not like fighting, but they also don’t like groupthink. Think of Lyndon B. Johnson suppressing internal debate on the Vietnam War. Groupthink leads to bad public policies. So, what should Presidents do?

Troy suggests finding a happy medium. Fighting, backstabbing, and leaking are problematic because people are afraid to say what they think for fear that someone will do something damaging to them. At the other end of the continuum, everyone agrees so much that you don’t hear dissenting voices. Troy, in 2020, said that the ideal White House is a place where cabinet officials can engage in robust debate, which helps the President listen to all sides fairly and make a reasoned policy decision everyone is inclined to unite behind. 

Troy shares tales of what infighting looked like under different Presidents. You will hear of Truman and Eisenhower’s “button-down approach”, the feud between Lyndon B. Johnson and Bobby Kennedy, President Ford’s “nice guy” problem, and Truman’s Secretary of State who never spoke to another advisor again after Truman chose to honor his approach to Israel instead. 

You will also hear Troy touch on a history of the progression of the President’s Cabinet. Before Truman, the aides to the President were the cabinet secretaries. There wasn’t a White House Staff like there was today. In the Roosevelt administration, the government started to grow. There became a sense that there was too much going on for the President to handle with just cabinet secretary support. The Brownlow commission published a report that said, “the President needs help.” That help should come, they said, via a series of aides with a “passion for anonymity.” Thus, the modern White House Staff was born. And it wasn’t until the Reagan Administration that the Chief of Staff position was consistently filled. 

Troy concludes that presidents have three levers in their control if they want to limit infighting: ideological disagreement, listening to all voices before making decisions, and Presidential tolerance. When asked what advice he would give President Biden, Troy advised that any president should have an ideologically aligned staff, a fair process, and be very clear that personal battles should never take priority over the country. 

Sellgren ended the podcast by asking Troy to share something he believed at one point in his life that he later changed his position on. Troy replied that he did not think he would ever get married. He has now been with his wife for over 20 years and has 4 kids. The lesson here? “Sometimes you think something at one stage in your life and then you realize you are better off going in a different direction.” Never stop learning – you never know what changing your perspective could lead to. 

“There is a Lack of appreciation for the idea that you can disagree without being disagreeable.” 

“I decided to write the book because everyone was claiming that the fighting within the Trump White House today was unprecedented. As an historian, when I hear the word “unprecedented,” I start looking for precedents.” 

Tevi Troy on the U.S. Presidency

About the podcast
Introducing The Great Antidote Podcast with Juliette Sellgren

The guest

Personal Profile; Professional bio; Wikipedia entry

Recent commentary

Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump.