I know that memoirs (self-serving as they usually are) contribute to our understanding of what goes on behind closed doors along the corridors of power. They add to the historical record and can sometimes spur needed changes in policy. But if I were the President, I’d want to have some confidence that whatever I said to my advisors wouldn’t be fodder for a book next week or next month. I’d want to know that the people I hired were there to help me and to serve the American public, and not just gathering material.
How about requiring WH aides, as a condition of employment, to sign a nondisclosure agreement for X years (2? 5? 10?) after leaving office? Make them fork over all or most of any profits from book or TV deals to the Treasury if they blab before the deadline. (Of course they could respond to subpoenas and/or report crimes).
Apart from national security issues, if you are an honest person serving the American People, and having taken the oath to support the Constitution, what is there to hide with a NDA?
Presidents and administrations want as much secrecy as they can get away with because it insulates them from criticism - and yes, it does help them speed things along. A leak or a tell-all book may not be in their best interests, but it’s in everybody else’s.
Building on Duckster’s point, I damn well want them to know that what they say or do, as long as it’s not a matter of national security, may well make it out to the public eventually. It (theoretically) helps keep them honest.
Why would it need to be specific to a White House aide? ISTM that your objections would apply to any politician and/or any politician’s aides.
Assuming you mean stuff not related to national security, my inclination is to say No, this is not needed. Sure, there will be more of a market for “see how President X was a jerk” than anything more serious, and you mentioned the self-serving nature of a memoir, but that is true of any history written by a participant.
So would I, but my experience is that a lot of aides are policy wonks and are not in it for the money. I don’t think a lot of aides make it to serving in the White House just because they want to write a book later.
It seems to me that there are also some natural disincentives to writing a tell-all book, in that you’re burning your bridges. Matt Latimer has a gig writing Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, but beyond that, it’s hard to see how he’ll ever work in Washington again.
To spell it out a bit more explicitly, he’s probably never again going to work in the area that he likely considers to be the top of his profession. To have worked for a President, and to know that it is unlikely that you will ever again work for a President, presumably comes at some cost, if you’re the sort of person who aspired to work for a President.
Putting aside whether it would be a good idea or not, I don’t think you could make a NDA that covers the types of stuff that are in Latimer’s book. My understanding is that NDA’s are made out to cover fairly specific classes of information, not a blanket ban on everything you heard or thought in relation to your job. And since the juicy bits of Latimer’s book appear to basically be office gossip (Bush said Hillary has a big butt!), such an NDA wouldn’t really stop these kind of things anyways.
If every OFFICIAL thing they say or do makes it out to the public, no matter how big or small then no problem.
But EVERYTHING, that is thought about, considered, debated or even just thrown out there as a piece of bait for debate?
The problem (to me) is that its now very easy to drum a story out of nothing, the President, in a blue funk one day calls the Queen an uppity bitch and that makes it into the book - how does that serve anyone’s needs?
Or to **spur debate **soneone suggests imprisonment without trail (as in six thinking hats theory)- in the book it comes out as the admistration seriously considered it - how does that really help anyone when it was never even close to being official policy.
The problem is that when you know that everything you say, do, suggest or even joke about can come back to haunt you it curtails a lot of honest exchange of ideas, not enhances it.