Oval Office confrontations are rare and unpredictable but not unprecedented - Washington Examiner

President George W. Bush talked about people waiting in the West Wing waiting room waiting to give him a piece of their mind.

When coming face-to-face with the U.S. commander in chief, at the very seat of presidential power, most people choose to avoid confrontation.

The Oval Office is a place of high-stakes meetings among people with strongly held beliefs, so it's not surprising that tempers flare sometimes.

Frida Ghitis : President Lyndon B. Johnson yelled at Robert F. Kennedy in the Oval Office in 1967 .

She says Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back on Obama 's call for peace talks with Israel in 2011 , Clinton fuming.

Ghitis says Obama was furious after Netanyahu said, “It’s not gonna happen.” She says Clinton and Obama got to make their points, but at the cost of alienating the American president.

At the same time, the Oval Office is very much the president’s home turf, which makes the endeavor a tough one for the challengers. Washington Examiner contributing writer Tevi Troy is a senior fellow at the Ronald Reagan Institute and a former White House aide for George W. Bush . He is the author of five books on the presidency, including, most recently, The Power and the Money: The Epic Clashes Between Commanders in Chief and Titans of Industry..