The women of President Barack Obama’s White House saw themselves as a team among themselves. There was a regular dinner of female Obama senior officials where they discussed issues specific to being women working at senior levels in the administration.
Alyssa Mastromonaco, deputy chief of staff, said the purpose of the dinners was “to support one another through the gender imbalance in the West Wing.” The senior staff women even had a gender-specific name for themselves: “the Vagiants.”
This gynocentric self-designation was off-putting to some of the pro-Obama but less senior aides not in the Vagiant club. As Obama stenographer Beck Dorey-Stein wrote: “Why does ‘Vagiant’ make me feel bad. … I wouldn’t especially love it if the men in the West Wing nicknamed themselves the 10-Inch Senior Staffs.” The Vagiants also appeared to have certain privileges not granted to other aides. As Dorey-Stein observed, with more than a touch of envy regarding their leave to wear brighter colors than lower-level White House aides could, “Only the Vagiants can wear any shade from the J. Crew catalog.”
The “Vagiants” joined together in an alliance to advance the ideas of women in the administration. The tactic they adopted was named “amplification.” It called for the women to echo the views of other women, and specifically, to agree with comments other female aides made in meetings. The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin took note of the amplification stratagem and wrote that “it forced the men in the room to recognize the contribution—and denied them the chance to claim the idea as their own.” Eilperin also quoted Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett’s approving comment on these efforts: “It’s fair to say that there was a lot of testosterone flowing in those early days. Now we have a little more estrogen that provides a counterbalance.”
The Obama women would also occasionally pursue gender-specific crusades, often to the confusion of the men with whom they worked. Mastromonaco, for example, spends three pages of her memoir detailing her effort to get a tampon dispenser placed in the women’s bathroom in the West Wing. At the end of this successful effort, she announced it at the White House senior staff meeting. She admits that none of the male aides opposed the idea, and with her announcement, they offered no opinions on the matter. Yet, Mastromonaco was thrilled, saying, “No one said a word, but it felt really good.”
Gender-based concerns could elicit other clear violations of the Dan Pfeiffer rules for Obama aides: “no a–holes” and “no leaks.” When a New York Times article noted that Mastromonaco had long managed Obama’s “logistical and travel arrangements” and described her quite senior position of deputy chief of staff as “responsible for overseeing scheduling, personnel and much more,” she interpreted it as a gender-based slight. The article also called her one of a number of “well-regarded women” in senior slots, although the coverage also noted that none of those women were being considered for the position of chief of staff at that time, during the beginning of Obama’s second term.
Mastromonaco was extremely unhappy with the article. By her admission, she “went apes—” and griped that if a male aide such as Jim Messina had received a similar appointment, “they would have said he ran the White House.” She blamed the New York Times slight on colleagues diminishing her position in conversations with the press and felt that it was an instance of not supporting team members. As she complained in her memoir, “You don’t talk about your colleagues on background, and you definitely don’t on-the-record them.”
Mastromonaco’s reaction to the perceived slight did not fit into the “no drama Obama” ethic. When she received the offending article in a group email that went to the entire White House senior staff, she “replied-all with a very cutting, infuriated response.” White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler “amplified” via reply-all as well, echoing Mastromonaco’s concerns. Mastromonaco was still angry, but she thought that was the end of the matter: “I was fuming but I didn’t think it was a big deal.”
The next day, Obama summoned her to his office. She was not sure why — the White House deputy chief of staff is typically in regular contact with the president, on a wide-ranging set of issues. Obama greeted her with, “So, I hear you sent quite an email.” Mastromonaco was surprised by this and “started going over that distribution list in my head to figure out who had narc’d on me,” with a thought toward who “deserves another irrational email.” Obama sensed what she was thinking and cut off that train of thought, saying, “It doesn’t matter who came to talk to me.” He then scolded her a bit over the email, telling her that “I could not send emails like that because they—I am paraphrasing—freak everyone out.” The message was clear: “When the president of the United States tells you your words are powerful, it can be pretty shocking.” She also admitted that she had miscalculated, recalling that “I honestly didn’t think anyone would give a s— if I sent a snippy email.”
The story is revealing on a few levels. It shows that no drama Obama was a good theory, but it did not always work in practice. One of the ways it broke down was that burgeoning gender consciousness often magnified perceived slights. But also, to his credit, Obama was willing to confront officials directly to enforce the no drama Obama rules. He was always willing to make clear that he wanted to keep internal dissent to a minimum. When he fired Gen. Stanley McChrystal over disrespectful comments about senior administration members published in Rolling Stone, he called his national security team together to impose order. At the meeting, he made his desire to avoid backstabbing clear, telling the assembled staff: “If people can’t pull together as a team, then other people are going to go. I mean it.”
Tevi Troy (@TeviTroy) is a best-selling presidential historian and former White House aide. He is the author of Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump, published Feb.11. This is a lightly edited excerpt from the book.
