Reince Priebus, Mike Pence and Paul Ryan Form Midwestern Power Center

Trio could carry huge influence over Donald Trump’s Washington


From left, incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President-elect Mike Pence will form an important new power center in Washington. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS, REUTERS, EUROPEAN PRESSPHOTO AGENCY

By GERALD F. SEIB
Nov. 14, 2016 11:40 a.m. ET 19 COMMENTS

Donald Trump won the presidency by winning votes and states in America’s solid, if not flashy, industrial Midwest. It is entirely appropriate, then, that the two men emerging as potentially the most important figures in his nascent administration are solid, if not flashy, sons of that same region of the country.

The two are Vice President-elect Mike Pence and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, newly appointed Mr. Trump’s chief of staff. As it happens, both are especially close with a third son of the industrial Midwest, House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Put the three together and you can see the rapid emergence of the most important power center in the new Washington.

Mr. Pence, who spent a decade rising into the House leadership before becoming Indiana’s governor, will be interpreter of Mr. Trump to Republicans in the Capitol, and vice versa. Mr. Priebus, of Wisconsin, will steer the all-important presidential schedule and information flow. Mr. Ryan, also of Wisconsin, will oversee the administration’s legislative agenda. Together, that is much of the ballgame in Washington.

Their problem is that, important as this triumvirate is, it won’t be the only new power center. Co-equal with Mr. Priebus on the White House organization chart is somebody with an entirely different style and agenda: Steve Bannon, the campaign’s chief executive and former head of Breitbart News. Mr. Bannon is the rabble-rousing populist to Mr. Priebus’s traditional conservative, and the hater of the Republican establishment whence Messrs. Pence and Ryan come. The seeds for an internecine battle have been sown.

There doubtless will be other power centers. It remains unclear precisely what role the Trump children and son-in-law Jared Kushner will play, but it figures to be important.

And in the absence of a larger circle of Trump loyalists with Washington experience, some of his cabinet appointees surely will have visions of carving out bigger-than-average roles for themselves.

But history teaches you that those who sit at the levers of White House daily operations, as Messrs. Pence and Priebus will now, tend to prevail. Perhaps the best illustration came in the early stages of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

Mr. Reagan rode in from California when he won the presidency in 1980 as an outsider not entirely unlike Mr. Trump now. His victory came as a shock to a capital where he had never spent much time, and his own party found his undiluted conservatism a shock to its internal system. He enjoyed more institutional support than Mr. Trump has now, but his California inner circle was something of an alien force landing in Washington.

Mr. Reagan tried to create a kind of hydra-headed White House management team, with Jim Baker—a man who twice ran campaigns that opposed the new president—as chief of staff, and California friends Ed Meese and Mike Deaver as something approaching co-equal White House aides. They became known as the troika.

Meantime, the strong-headed Alexander Haig became secretary of state and, sensing weakness and division in the White House management team, declared himself the “vicar” of foreign policy and started putting his elbows out to claim more power.

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Ultimately, though, Mr. Baker’s chief-of-staff position gave him an advantage, and he prevailed. That was in significant measure because the shrewd Texan knew how to work the system inside the White House, and, as a former high-powered attorney, knew how to manage his client, the president.

But he also had allies around Washington, including a teammate just down the hall, then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, whose campaigns he had run. As a former undersecretary of commerce, Mr. Baker also knew how to work the capital beyond the White House. The troika’s members all stuck around, but Mr. Baker became the clear greater among supposed equals.

That doesn’t ensure that things will work out the same way for the Pence-Priebus-Ryan team, of course. Mr. Trump is, as noted, more of an outsider and may be less interested in making his peace with institutional Washington.
Moreover, Mr. Bannon is hardly
a shy and retiring type, and he seems unlikely to fade into the background. And on some key issues—starting with trade—his impulses may prove more in tune with Mr. Trump’s.

Yet the fact is that, now that the dust has settled on the election, the epicenter of the Trump presidency lies not in his native New York City but in the industrial heartland, where the votes proved decisive and where Messrs. Pence, Priebus and Ryan have their roots.

On the question of internal influence, as on so many, the ultimate decision lies with Mr. Trump. He faces a megadecision on how much he wants to co-opt the Washington system, using this new troika, as opposed to simply battling it.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/reince-p...ter-1479141624