Folks like me -- government instructor types -- are supposed to tell folks like you -- government student types -- that loyalty is the most important trait of a presidential advisor.
Jacob Weisberg wonders if it is an overrated virtue:
The demand for absolute loyalty is a relic from the age of patronage, when political appointments were tied to the delivery of votes for a sponsor. A modern media politician does not depend on this kind of machine for his existence and has political control over only a thin sliver of top-level government jobs. The vast majority of public employees is protected by the Civil Service and can't be vetted for loyalty. As the complexity of the government has increased, so, too, has the importance of expertise and experience.
This is part of what has made George W. Bush's loyalty obsession such a throwback. Bush's first job in politics was as an "enforcer" for a father he thought was too nice to discipline traitors and freelancers. His own fixation on loyalty was born from the experience of watching top aides to his dad such as James Baker and Richard Darman put their own careers and images first. When his turn came, the younger Bush made personal loyalty a threshold test—and even seemed to regard private, internal challenge to his ill-considered preferences as an indication of untrustworthiness.
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Surrounding oneself with die-hard loyalists breeds insularity. Over time, the fixation with loyalty devolves toward a mafia view of politics that lends itself to abuse of power. The circle tightens, enemies are listed, paranoia blossoms. This happened in one way in LBJ's White House, where the president's mistrust of people tied to the Kennedys prevented him from hearing sound advice about Vietnam. It happened another way in the Nixon White House, where an obsession with national security leaks led to the reign of Haldeman and Erlichman. It happened in another way still in George W. Bush's White House, where so little internal dissent was allowed that truth became disposable. While the elder George Bush could live with a continual ooze of self-serving leaks from his friend Baker, who (like the unfaithful Henry Kissinger) was a highly effective diplomat, his son gave full "you are dead to me" treatment to any official—John DiIulio, Paul O'Neill, Scott McClellan—who allowed a hint of daylight between himself and the official White House line.
Conversely, the most successful presidents generate loyalty without sweating it. Roosevelt brought nonsupporters including Herbert Hoover's secretary of state, Henry Stimson, into his Cabinet. Even after his aide Raymond Moley broke publicly with him and became a Republican, FDR had Moley back to help with his 1936 convention speech. It's hard to think of a bigger turncoat than David Stockman, who gave a series of interviews about why Ronald Reagan's economic policies made no sense. But Reagan didn't fire his budget director. He merely asked him to pretend he'd been given a tongue-lashing (the concocted "visit to the woodshed"). After Reagan decided on airstrikes against Hezbollah in retaliation for the Marine barracks bombing in Lebanon in 1983, his secretary of defense, Casper Weinberger, countermanded the order because he thought it was a bad idea. Reagan let that one go, too.
