If Reince Priebus is, in fact, the chief of staff and operating as chief of staff, he is the most important staffer the president Donald Trump has. And it is not unusual for a president to set up some competing power centers, as Ronald Reagan did, but there`s nothing like being the chief of staff, which has so much say over what the president reads, who the president sees, who`s the last person the president talks to before he makes a decision.

The thing that is different I think from the years ago, when I was covering the shutdown at the Clinton White House. Then, it was a different political landscape. At that point, a third of House Republicans in the 1995 shutdown were in congressional districts that had been won by Bill Clinton. 7 percent of House Republicans are in congressional districts that were won by Barack Obama shows you how much more partisan the whole country is. A lot of the bridges that used to be used to reach a deal when you needed to reach a compromise have been blown up in the past years.

The perfect antidote to envy is not, as you may suspect, perfect success. The perfect antidote to envy is self-love - when you know deep inside that you are on the absolutely right path for yourself, or you are in the process of uncovering what that path is, and you are doing the best you can right now given all the external and internal parameters.

I think there are only two things you should really expect Congress to do.One is to pass a short-term funding bill, because it's not in their political interest to shut down the government when the fiscal year comes into effect, the new fiscal year, on October 1. The second thing, I think, is Zika funding. This has been put off and off for months and months.

If Reince Priebus is, in fact, the chief of staff and operating as chief of staff, he is the most important staffer the president Donald Trump has. And it is not unusual for a president to set up some competing power centers, as Ronald Reagan did, but there`s nothing like being the chief of staff, which has so much say over what the president reads, who the president sees, who`s the last person the president talks to before he makes a decision.

Ending Islamic terrorism, Trump made a big point of using that phrase because that`s the phrase that Barack Obama declined to use. I think he promised to eradicate. I think eradicate was the word he used. That is a big promise. And setting up a standard for himself.

Steve Hadley is an interesting option as secretary of state because he is somebody that is, you know, familiar to power, served in the White House, and did not oppose Donald Trump the way a lot of the Republican foreign policy establishment did. But his name was not on that list, at least at the moment.