>
Article snippet: Lost in the scramble to cope with Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, the response to North Korea’s nuclear provocations and the shock at President Trump’s instant alliance with Democrats was a little-noticed bureaucratic earthquake that shook the White House this week. At a staff meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s new chief of staff, John F. Kelly, announced a number of seemingly quotidian internal moves, capped by the appointment of Kirstjen Nielsen — his brusque, no-nonsense longtime aide — as an assistant to the president and his principal deputy. Few outside the White House marked the moment, but inside the building, this was a big deal. Mr. Kelly had just handed day-to-day operations to a forceful, empowered aide some of her new colleagues are already comparing to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the feared Vatican enforcer who eventually became Pope Benedict XVI. Perhaps the biggest problem Mr. Kelly, a retired Marine general, faces in taming his meandering, leaky, infighting-plagued West Wing staff is getting them used to the idea of functioning more or less the way previous White Houses have. Call it the old normal. Whether Mr. Kelly succeeds or fails will be a function of his tolerance for Mr. Trump’s mercurial management style and Mr. Trump’s willingness to tolerate military discipline, as well as Mr. Kelly’s skill in winnowing, wooing and harnessing his own staff. Ms. Nielsen, as he made clear this week, will be a central part of his attempt to right the president’s... Link to the full article to read more