The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, 'How is the president?'
I'm not going to comment on White House personnel selections.
Every president, if you watch what they look like when they come into office, you can see their hair turn white because it's such a hard job.
The president of the United States can't even fire his chef. I'm not kidding.
Presidents live and work in a house of history. They dwell with ghosts. Present power and the weight of the past are ambient realities of daily life in the presidency, and the two are intimately connected.
My role is not to be the President’s friend….When I am no longer the Chief of Staff, I expect to be the President’s friend.
Presidential biography is, by its nature, out of scale; no character is bigger, no action greater, than the person and the doings of the American president.
If I'm just at the White House, I have meetings in my office, I sign letters, I plan different things. Late in the afternoon, I'll quit working and wait for my husband to get home.
Sometimes the FBI is assigned to do background checks on people who are coming into government in the executive office of the president. Other times, not. A lot of times there are people who are arriving with clearances that already exist.
I once told Nixon that the Presidency is like being a jackass caught in a hail storm. You've got to just stand there and take it.
Sometimes at night, when I leave and ride by the front of the White House and the lights are on, it is so beautiful, I have some sense of, 'Hey, that's where I work, and Jimmy is President now.' But day in and day out, it's a job.
As you probably know, I've written a lot about the presidency, so it's obviously exciting when you get to interview a president and write about it.
