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Comparing staff turnover in the first year of the Trump White House to that of the five immediate predecessors, I find Trump's turnover is record-setting, more than triple that of Obama's and double that of Reagans. I argue that Trump has experienced such high turnover because he has valued loyalty over qualifications and suffered from a White House that has functioned in a chaotic manner. Both features have made it difficult to retain top-level staff and contributed to the governance difficulties he has encountered. If history is any guide, staff recruitment and retention during Trump's second year could prove challenging as well.
Keywords: White House, staffing, turnover, Trump, Reagan, Bush, Obama, Clinton, recruitment, retention, presidency
Throughout the campaign and even into his presidency, Donald Trump promised to hire "top, top people" and fill his administration "with only the best and most serious people" (Pace 2017). Having won the election wherein he frequently invoked his "drain the swamp" slogan, President Trump was unimpressed by political experience and prized loyalty over all else. In addition, the small size of his presidential campaign, reportedly one-fifth the size of Hillary Clinton's (Fredericks 2016), meant that the most logical pool of candidates was a rather small one. At the same time, President-elect Trump and senior aides blacklisted those Republicans who had opposed him during the campaign, effectively shrinking the recruiting pool a bit more (Nakamura 2017). Finally, the president-elect fired his transition chair, Chris Christie, shortly after his election victory and tossed aside all the work his transition team had completed (Thrush and Haberman 2017).
It seemed like the odds of hiring the "best" people may have been stacked against the newly elected president. Nevertheless, the incoming president and his transition aides moved at a reasonably steady pace to assemble his senior White House staff and had selected most of them by late December 2016.2
As the glow of election night faded and inaugural celebrations concluded, the demanding work of governing awaited team Trump. Like many new presidents, the first few months of the administration were plagued by missteps. The transition from campaigning to governing often proves to be surprisingly difficult and catches many off guard.3 Incoming staff members find that their new jobs bear little resemblance to their...