Yesterday I explained why presidents don’t delegate more policy decision-making power to their cabinet. Instead the president makes the big decisions, supported by his White House staff. This makes the White House staff powerful. Now let’s peek inside the White House.

What are the most powerful policy jobs in the White House?

First, a few caveats.

• In this post we’ll look only at the top tier of White House staff, each of whom has the rank of Assistant to the President. That’s an oversimplification but a useful starting point.
• My answer is based on my experience in the George W. Bush (43) White House. Your mileage may vary.
• The various senior roles have different forms and tools of policy power. I may write about that in a separate post later but won’t do so here.
• Here I’m focusing on the power that derives from the position and the operating patterns of the White House. Some particularly effective advisors “punch above their weight” and have a policy impact larger than their role might suggest here.
• I’m using White House a bit loosely. Technically a few of these advisors (OMB, CEA, CEQ, OSTP) are part of the broader Executive Office of the President and aren’t formally in the White House. In practical terms there’s little difference.
• I’m excluding “policy czars” that existed in the Obama White House but not in Bush 43.

OK, let’s dive in. I’ll divide the senior White House advisor jobs into three buckets:

1. five policy advisors who run the policy processes within the White House;
2. six non-policy advisors who have a different principal function but nevertheless play a major role in advising the president on big policy decisions; and
3. four policy advisors that are the leads for specific areas of expertise.

In terms of total policy impact I rank the buckets 1-2-3. Those in bucket 2, however, often are more powerful than the policy council directors in bucket 1 if we’re thinking about more than just policy impact, and also when we’re talking about tradeoffs among issues.

I’m going to leave the Vice President and the White House Chief of Staff out of the following. Both play at a level above all of what follows.

Bucket 1: The most powerful policy-only jobs in the White House are:

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