Shall We Wake the President?

Tevi Troy is the founding president of the American Health Policy Institute, a former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and a best-selling presidential historian. He is a frequent television and radio analyst, and has appeared on CNN, Fox News, Fox Business, CNBC, C-SPAN and The News Hour, among other outlets. On August 3, 2007, Dr. Troy was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. As Deputy Secretary, Dr. Troy was the chief operating officer of the largest civilian department in the federal government, with a budget of $716 billion and over 67,000 employees. In that position, he oversaw all operations, including Medicare, Medicaid, public health, medical research, food and drug safety, and disaster preparedness. He served as the regulatory policy officer for HHS, overseeing the development and approval of all HHS regulations and significant guidance. In addition, he led a number of initiatives at HHS, including combating bio-terrorism and public health emergency preparedness. Dr. Troy has extensive White House experience, having served in several high-level positions over a five-year period, culminating in his service as Deputy Assistant and then Acting Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy. At the White House, Dr. Troy also specialized in crisis management, creating intra-governmental consensus, and all aspects of policy development, including strategy, outreach and coalition building. Dr. Troy has held high-level positions on Capitol Hill as well. From 1998 to 2000, Dr. Troy served as the Policy Director for Senator John Ashcroft. From 1996 to 1998, Troy was Senior Domestic Policy Adviser and later Domestic Policy Director for the House Policy Committee, chaired by Christopher Cox. Before serving on Capitol Hill, Dr. Troy was a Researcher at the American Enterprise Institute. In addition to his senior level government work and health care expertise, Dr. Troy is also a presidential historian, making him one of only a handful of historians who has both studied the White House and worked there at the highest levels. His 2013 book, What Jefferson Read, Ike Watched, and Obama Tweeted: 200 Years of Popular Culture in the White House (Regnery History), was a Washington Post bestseller. Dr. Troy is also the author of Intellectuals and the American Presidency: Philosophers, Jesters, or Technicians? (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), and has written over 150 articles, for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Forbes, The New Republic, Commentary, Reason, Investor’s Business Daily, National Review, Washingtonian, The Weekly Standard, and other publications. Dr. Troy has a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University and an M.A and Ph.D. in American Civilization from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives in Maryland with his wife Kami and four children.

Leaders in every sector must do one thing: expect the unexpected. Crises cannot be predicted nor necessarily prevented, and sometimes leaders have to manage multiple crises at once. In Shall We Wake the President?, Tevi Troy provides very useful information for leaders in government and business, as well as personal preparation tips for families, based on his considerable management experience in the Executive Branch. The book is a good reminder that it isn’t enough to prepare for the next day; instead, leaders must be well equipped to handle a crisis from day one.