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“T love Reince,” said the president, with the faintest praise. “Who else would do this job?” Among the three men with effectively equal rank in the West Wing—Priebus and Bannon and Kushner—only a shared contempt kept them from ganging up on one another. In the early days of Trump’s presidency, the situation seemed clear to everybody: three men were fighting to run the White House, to be the real chief of staff and power behind the Trump throne. And of course there was Trump himself, who didn’t want to relinquish power to anyone. In these crosshairs was thirty-two-year-old Katie Walsh. 1 OK Ok Walsh, the White House deputy chief of staff, represented, at least to herself, a certain Republican ideal: clean, brisk, orderly, efficient. A righteous bureaucrat, pretty but with a permanently grim expression, Walsh was a fine example of the many political professionals in whom competence and organizational skills transcend ideology. (To wit: “T would much rather be part of an organization that has a clear chain of command that I disagree with than a chaotic organization that might seem to better reflect my views.’’) Walsh was an inside-the-Beltway figure—a swamp creature. Her expertise was prioritizing Beltway goals, coordinating Beltway personnel, marshaling Beltway resources. A head-down-get-things-done kind of person was how she saw herself. And no nonsense. “Any time someone goes into a meeting with the president there are like sixty-five things that have to happen first,” she enumerated. “What cabinet secretary has to be alerted about what person is going in there; what people on the Hill should be consulted; the president needs a policy briefing, so who’s owning the brief and getting it to appropriate staff members, oh and by the way you have to vet the guy... . Then you have to give it to comms and figure out if it’s a national story, a regional story and are we doing op-eds, going on national TV ... and that’s before you get to political affairs or public liaison... . And for anybody who meets with the president, it has to be explained why other people are not meeting with him, or else they’ll go out there and shit all over the last person who was in... .” Walsh was what politics is supposed to be—or what it has been. A business supported by, tended to, and, indeed, ennobled, by a professional political class. Politics, evident in the sameness and particular joylessness of Washington dress, a determined anti-fashion statement, is about procedure and temperament. Flash passes. No flash stays in the game. From an all-girl Catholic school in St. Louis (still wearing a diamond cross around her neck) and volunteer work on local political campaigns, Walsh went to George Washington University—D.C. area colleges being among the most reliable feeders of swamp talent (government is not really an Ivy League profession). Most government and political HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_019968