Talk:White House Chief of Staff

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Contents 1 Capitalization 2 Official Title 3 What is wrong with this page? 4 Chiefs list 5 Merge proposed 5.1 new and old Assistants 6 Facts don’t agree

[edit] Capitalization

I think that under standard rules of grammar the phrase chief of staff shouldn't be capitalized in most of its occurrences in this article. Wiki style may be different. Does anyone know the Wiki rule? For sure, the plural phrase "chiefs of staff" should NEVER be capitalized.

Under Turabian, Merriam-Webster, and most newspaper style guides, an office holder's title would generally be capitalized only if it precedes her name, as in Chief of Staff C.J. Cregg.

The US GPO style manual seems to advocate capitalizing it all the time (except plural), but grammar is beyond its Constitutional powers and it's certainly not binding on Wikipedia.

Any thoughts? Nadirsofar 18:40, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

This problem is grossly endemic to Wikipedia. Americans tend to capitalize anything that sounds important, particular job titles. As a professional writer and business consultant, I struggle against this at the level of "Customer Service Representative," so I for one am not about to challenge the vast Wikiocracy that has decided in favor of "Vice President" and "Chief of Staff." As a side note, even animal species are capitalized here. --Tysto 03:50, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Official Title

Is 'White House Chief of Staff' the official title? 'White House' tends to be used more in a figurative sense and seems inappropriate for an official title. I would imagine Executive Chief of Staff or Presidential Chief of Staff to be more official-sounding. Kent Wang 22:58, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)

WhiteHouse.gov uses President's Chief of Staff in the only direct reference to the title that I found, so take that for what it's worth.

Is it true that if (for example) the President should die and the VP refuses to take office the Chief of Staff would become President? Ive heard this often, but never had any real confirmation. If true, it should probably be added to the article.

Not true at all. The Chief of Staff could never become president. If the VP for some reason refused to become president (which would be very odd since that's what he's there for) then it would fall to the Speaker of the House (see United States presidential line of succession). Ddye 20:00, 15 Feb 2005 (UTC)

thanx:)

[edit] What is wrong with this page?

At least with Firefox, which is what I generally use, this page has all of the text in a narrow line running on the left hand side of the page, taking up about half of the page, and then the infobox at the end of the text, on the right hand side of the page. Zoe 03:40, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

It doesn't show like that on my Firefox. john k 15:41, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

I'm using the Classic skin. Zoe 23:11, August 16, 2005 (UTC)

It shows incorrectly on mine. The right hand side infobox overlaps with the COS infobox at the bottom, and Clinton's name is replaced with a White House logo RickiRich

[edit] Chiefs list

I'm changing the sentence "Presidents Kennedy and Johnson never did [have a C of S]" because Marvin Watson was Johnson's chief of staff. As evidence, I'd point to the book "Chief of Staff" by Marvin Watson. (The JFK Library Web site explicitly states JFK did not have one.) Nadirsofar 17:29, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposed

The Assistant to the President of the United States article is a single sentence. The position itself was merged with the White House Chief of Staff position, so it only makes sense that the articles should thusly be merged. --Cparmar

The articles Assistant to the President of the United States and White House Chief of Staff should be merged. This is so because they are the same position only the name of the position was changed. It would be a great benefit to others if these two articles were merged into one.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.96.110.93 (talk • contribs).

Also, Assistant to the President is now a title held by all the snior members of the Executive Office of the President. For example, on the White House salary lists, Karl Rove is "Assistant to the President, Senior Adviser, and Deputy Chief of Staff For Policy". Thus the "Assistant" page should not be merged but simply have its content altered. --Woolgab

The problem with this merge is that there are several Assistants but only one Chief. For instance Donald Rumsfeld was Assistant to Richard Nixon but not Chief. Karl Rove is Assistant to George W. Bush but not Chief. The proposed merge does it wrong. Doing it right would require considerable work on the Deputy White House Chief of Staff stub. Metarhyme 21:41, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

The Assistant to the president is the former title of the white house chief of staff job, so it should be merged under the history section of the chief of staff article.

Merge it. Luke C 10:12, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe two different pages? One with the old definition of Assistant to the President (the position now known as White House Chief of Staff), and one with the new definition, which is a more general title, normally given in conjunction with another one (Press Secretary, Communications Director, etc) Penguin22 08:30, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Merge - for those of us studying American politics it is not nice to have several articles that overlap each other. The older article has very little content too, so it can easily me merged into it's own paragraph. DJR (Talk) 14:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] new and old Assistants

I was cleaning up a red link in the "Donald Rumsfeld" article when I found this merge discussion. Could there be enough information on the "new" Assistants (sounds like a pop-band) to use the "Assistant to the President of the United States" article space for these new assistants with a top-side "see also" link to the "White House Chief of Staff" article for the "old" Assistants? To that end I roughed out (a true first draft) the following:

Assistant to the President is a junior executive branch position, and a President may have many Assistants. Assistants attend meetings in the head of state's stead. They also prepare exective reports informing the head of state. While it might seem natural that the Vice President of the United States would be a key right-hand man to the President of the United States, this second from the top position is almost always chosen on a purely politial basis — for this reason Assistants are the President's trusted deputies.

--Charles Gaudette 21:58, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I thought this was a good idea, and was working on revising the draft, but then I noticed that the Executive Office of the President of the United States article already includes this good explanation:

Organization

Senior staff within the Executive Office of the President have the title "Assistant to the President". Second-level staff have the title "Deputy Assistant to the President", and third-level staff have the title "Special Assistant to the President". Very few are required to be confirmed by the Senate, although there are a handful of exceptions to this rule (Office of Management and Budget Director, United States Trade Representative, et cetera). However, the core White House Staff do not require approval.

This article also includes a list of current assistants (including the Chief of Staff), deputy assistants and special assistants.

I suggest that we simply change the "Assistant to the President" redirect so that it points to Executive Office of the President of the United States instead of Chief of Staff. I'd also add a sentence to the Chief of Staff article stating that the Chief of Staff still usually holds the "Assistant to the President" rank.

Hickoryhillster 00:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Facts don’t agree

According to the table, Watson served for Johnson’s entire administration. That doesn’t agree with the W. Marvin Watson article, though, which says he became the chief of staff in 1965. Johnson took office in 1963. The Watson article also says he became the postmaster general in 1968, but Johnson’s term didn’t end until 1969. Would it be appropriate to add “vacant” spots above and below Watson’s entry in this table?

I’ve removed any reference to Johnson from the third history paragraph since it doesn’t really seem relevant. Johnson’s administration was called “short” even though it was longer than Carter’s and George Bush’s, and since Watson apparently didn’t serve the entire time Johnson was president, he didn’t really need to be explicitly excluded from the factoid. --Rob Kennedy 23:55, 28 December 2006 (UTC)