There is no typical road to the White House for the aspiring staffer. Although a good many staff members, especially the key ones, had had previous experience with the President and were well-known by him, a majority of the White House staff members had not had a significant relationship with the President prior to their appointment this was particularly true during the Eisenhower period.
In response to the questions, “Could you tell me how the initial contact was made with you about the possibility of a White House job?” and “What was your Previous relationship to the President?”, most of the White House staff members interviewed in this study emphasized “chance, circumstance, and a good bit of luck” as the key factors in their appointment. For instance, one Eisenhower staff member (a recently retired Democratic precinct chairman) was looking for a research post in Washington, and thinking primarily about the CIA, when he bumped into an old army friend of World War II days who happened to be on the Eisenhower White House Office staff. The unemployed friend was quickly added as an assistant.
Another Eisenhower staff member was picked up from a relatively minor government post after he gave testimony before a government committee which impressed. Sherman Adams. Another Eisenhower staff member was appointed after a Harvard dean had been asked to recommend a Republican lawyer with political experience under the age of thirty. This man emphasizes that he got the second offer for the position. One Roosevelt staff member was appointed primarily because Ed Flynn and Henry Wallace thought the President was losing interest in politics and needed someone around to stimulate his interest. One Truman staff member was. appointed because Truman remembered a bill he had written for him when he first 7 entered the Senate.
Few White House staff members have been appointed because of their special expertise in a particular subject matter of interest to the President with the major exception of press relations. Moreover, few White House staff members have been obvious choices, indispensable members of the President’s team before he reached the White House men like Sorensen, O’Brien, Moyers, Jenkins, Adams, Persons, and Howe are exceptions to this rule.
Usually, the staff appointee simply happened to know the right people frequently another staff member, a Corcoran, Murphy, Adams, Sorenson, or Moyers and be available at the right moment.
One reason for the lack of prior relationship to the President for most staff members at the time of their appointment is that most of the presidents have come to the office from positions where they maintainéd relatively small staffs. This was particularly true for Truman and Johnson both of whom had been operating with modest staffs in the Vice-Presidential office.
For the two Presidents who have come to the office fresh from critical electoral victories since 1939, the presidential campaign staff has been a major source of White House Office staff material. About two-thirds of Eisenhower’s initial staff members had been active, usually full time, in some phase of the 1952 campaign. About one-half of the initial Kennedy staff members had earned their Stars as full time members of the 1960 campaign staff and others like McGeorge Bundy, Walt Rostow, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. had been advising from the sidelines.