“The biggest problem I sense with Mulvaney is because of his own politics, he tends to push Trump further to the right than even Trump might want to go,” said Leon E. Panetta, who held the job under President Bill Clinton. “As chief of staff, your greater responsibility is to present to the president the options for what he should decide.”
Mr. Mulvaney has told people that he makes a point of doing just that, ensuring that the president hears different points of view. During the deliberations over the Affordable Care Act, allies noted that Mr. Mulvaney made sure that Mr. Trump heard objections lodged by the Justice Department and White House counsel.
While Mr. Mulvaney has kept the essence of Mr. Kelly’s policy-development procedure, he makes a point of consulting with Mr. Trump earlier in the process to get his direction. Although he was known as a firebrand in the House who stood up to Republican leaders, he is deferential to Mr. Trump, calling him “boss,” while making a point of spending off hours on the golf course with him.
In the West Wing, Mr. Mulvaney is seen as someone who knows when to fight battles, as opposed to Mr. Kelly, who often found himself at odds with Mr. Trump’s adult children and informal advisers. He does not try to manage access to the president as Mr. Kelly did. Rather than fight Mr. Trump’s natural desire to meet and talk with a variety of people, Mr. Mulvaney has taken a decentralized approach that he calls chief of staff by committee, empowering different advisers to provide the president their guidance.
It is a style most associated with Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, each of whom resisted having a strong chief of staff at first, preferring what was called a “hub and spoke” model in which many people had access to the Oval Office. Both eventually abandoned the approach, concluding that it did not work, and Mr. Mulvaney eschews the hub-and-spoke term to avoid associations with those failed experiments.
People close to the president say Mr. Mulvaney gets too much credit — or blame — for Mr. Trump’s rightward turn on policy. Mr. Trump’s instinct is to appeal to core supporters who he fears will leave him, and he is the one who wants to demonstrate to them that he is continuing a hard line on immigration.
David Bossie, president of the conservative group Citizens United and a former deputy campaign manager for Mr. Trump, said the president was adjusting to a changing political environment.
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