Demonstrated loyalty. Political savvy. Personal rapport.
And, as a bonus, a decent golf game.
President Donald Trump had long made clear the qualities he was looking for in his next chief of staff. And when his first pick turned him down, sparking a frantic search, the president turned to the man he'd already tapped for two previous jobs in his administration: Mick Mulvaney, a blunt, fast-talking former South Carolina congressman turned budget chief who had told Trump months ago he wanted the job.
It was an obvious choice to many outside the administration that reflects the challenges ahead: Trump will soon be fighting for re-election as he contends with a House controlled by Democrats eager to use their new subpoena power to investigate his administration and business dealings.
And the Russia investigation continues, with the drip-drip of new allegations mounting daily.
But for Trump, a notoriously mercurial president who has already cycled through two chiefs of staffs in as many years, the decision was as much about current appearances as future negotiations: Spurned by several front-runners and angry over the growing narrative that he couldn't find someone to take the job, Trump made the offer Friday afternoon at a meeting that had originally been scheduled to discuss the ongoing budget showdown that threatens a holiday shutdown.
Mulvaney accepted - and even kept his current position as director of the Office of Management and Budget.
Trump had made clear to confidantes that, for his third chief of staff, he wanted someone that he liked personally and who would not try to rein him in as John Kelly had during the first months of his soon-to-sour tenure.
Trump missed the more freewheeling feel of the Oval Office under his first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and wanted someone he could get along with - someone he could trade gossip with, who would complain along with him about his favorite subject, the "fake news," as well as someone with the political savvy he felted Kelly lacked.
But Mulvaney was not always fond of Trump. At a November 2016 event in South Carolina, Mulvaney said "Do I like Donald Trump? No" but added that he was a better choice for president than Hillary Clinton.
The then-congressman, who was captured on video unearthed by The Daily Beast on Saturday, added that he was backing Trump "as enthusiastically as I can, given the fact that I think he's a terrible human being."
Mulvaney "will let Trump be Trump," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who knows both men well, said in an interview Saturday. While other top advisers in the administration have tried to steer the president's policies, Paul said, Mulvaney gets Trump and shares some of his instincts on both domestic and a non-interventionist foreign policy.
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