A long-standing axiom of U.S. presidential politics is that White House staff are meant to be seen and not heard. Even in Abraham Lincoln's time his two secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, were not widely known to the public until after they left his service and wrote his first authoritative biography. Their successors have largely labored in obscurity until the latter part of the20th century, when staffers such as James Baker and Michael Deaver (under President Ronald Reagan), Leon Panetta (Bill Clinton), Karl Rove (George W. Bush), and David Axelrod (Barrack Obama) gained prominence that helped define the White House. Often this person is the chief of staff, chief political adviser, press secretary, or, occasionally, the national security adviser.

Even in Franklin Roosevelt's White House only Harry Hopkins was known to the outside world, primarily because he headed several New Deal agencies, such as the Works Progress Administration, dispensing...

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