This is one of those stories that I think most folks will probably look at and go, "huh... okay, whatever," and move on about their lives. They probably shouldn't, though, because this is about a job that is nearly as important as the job of President of the United States.
And so Bill Daley is out as White House Chief of Staff. Jacob Lew is the new Chief of Staff.
Mr. Daley, a native of Chicago, like the President, didn't last very long. Less than a year. There was evidence that it wasn't going to work out for him back during the debt ceiling fight. This, from Karoli at Crooks & Liars lays it out pretty clearly:
If messaging is a part of the Chief of Staff's duties, and I believe it's one of the central parts, then Daley clearly fails on all counts. Every single issue is framed inside right-wing themes, from the decision to suspend new EPA standards to the debt-ceiling debate. There is no progressive message, not even a small bone offered up to progressives who might be able to swallow a short delay in implementation if there is some small sensible reason. Yet, time after time, Daley offers up those nuggets to the Chamber of Commerce, the Republican Party, and conservatives, presumably in the hope that some will be reasonable. There's a term for that. In some circles, some might call it insanity. I call it a failure to serve a wider constituency.
A month after that, the president demoted him, effectively taking away half of Mr. Daley's portfolio.
Mr. Daley, a long-time political operative from Chicago who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000, has been stripped of day-to-day management responsibilities, which have been handed to Pete Rouse, a longtime Obama confidant and Capitol Hill veteran.
The job of White House Chief of Staff (really, any chief of staff) is effectively two jobs. One, you have to manage "up" -- that is, manage the president and his schedule and really his life day to day. Whatever the president does, says, reads, or whoever he meets with is cleared by you. And that means you have to be pretty damn good at prioritizing.
Two, you have to manage "down" -- that's managing the staff and the many constituencies beholden to the president. I can't speak to the first part, but it is this second job function where it is evident that Mr. Daley fell down, hard. To be tone-deaf to the political base coming in to an election year was just going to be a non-starter.
My guess is that Mr. Daley couldn't wait to get back to Chicago, and will make a fine co-chair of the Obama re-election campaign.
I remember Mr. Lew when he was the OMB Director in the Clinton Administration -- everyone called him "Jack".
If White House Chief of Staff is the second-hardest job in Washington (POTUS being the first), then I'd venture that OMB director is the third-hardest. Certainly the top five. Hey, no one really wants to be in charge of the purse strings and the rules.
It's a tough job, but I would suspect that it has prepared Mr. Lew well for the job of White House Chief of Staff. Is he up for the second part? We'll see.
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