September 17, 2011
FAR TO WEAK A MAN...:
Suskind On Chicago and Obama (Timothy Noah, September 16, 2011, New Republic)
[I]n September 2008, as polls were starting to show that Obama was the likely winner, a meeting was called with three former Clinton chiefs of staff: John Podesta (who would later be Obama's transition chief), Leon Panetta (now defense secretary) and Erskine Bowles (later co-chairman, with former Sen. Alan Simpson, R.-Wy., of Obama's deficit commission). Obama was there, along with a trio of Chicagoans--Valerie Jarrett (now senior White House adviser), David Axelrod (until recently a White House senior adviser, now dispatched to prepare the 2012 campaign), and Daley, who was then an executive at JP Morgan Chase. Also present was Pete Rouse, a non-Chicagoan but an Obama insider who served as his Senate chief of staff; Rouse would subsequently serve temporarily as White House chief of staff after the departure of Rahm Emanuel (another Chicagoan, not present at the meeting).Obama asked the former top Clinton aides for advice about what to do if he became president. Bowles immediately answered: "Leave your friends at home. They just create problems when you get to Washington." The other two former chiefs of staff nodded in agreement. Axelrod and Jarrett, Suskind writes, "looked on, dumbfounded." Suskind doesn't describe what reaction, if any, Daley had to this declaration.
According to Suskind, after Panetta and Bowles talked awhile about the qualities Obama would need in a chief of staff, Obama cut them off and said, "Sounds like you're talking about Rouse" (who before working for Obama was chief of staff to Sen. Tom Daschle, D.-South Dakota and Senate Democratic leader, defeated in 2004). Rouse begged off for personal reasons. The group then proceeded to discuss other names for chief of staff. According to Suskind, Emanuel's name never came up.
The point of the story is that Obama did not follow the former Clinton chiefs' advice.
...to surround himself with competent peers. Consider the contrast to W, who hired former chiefs of staff and governors to fill out his team.
Posted by oj at September 17, 2011 8:08 AM
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