Obama Reshuffles White House Staff

by John M. Curtis
(310) 204-8700

Copyright December 24, 2010
All Rights Reserved.                                

            Faced with an uphill climb to reelection, President Barack Obama has begun to reorganize his White House staff.  Dealt a blow Nov. 2 in the midterm elections, Barack had to take a honest inventory of what went wrong during his first two years.  Slapped at the polls on Election Day, the president got rude awakening of how fast the honeymoon ends in presidential politics.  When he swept into office Nov. 4, 2008, he considered his victory a mandate to implement his progressive agenda.  What the polls didn’t tell him was that Bush-Cheney fatigue, more than a desire for a liberal agenda, drove Democrats’ sweeping victory in 2008.  Soon after Barack took office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) jumped on overhauling the nation’s health care system.  When the dust settled, Democrats had railroaded the most partisan legislation in U.S. history.

            All administrations go through personnel changes, especially where the track record hurts the president’s approval ratings.  Ohama’s strategic team should have been mindful from day-one of a legislative agenda that could upend the chances of reelection.  Barack’s first pick for chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, worked closely with Pelosi and Reid to push for national health care.  While there’s nothing wrong with pursuing lofty legislative goals, it shouldn’t be at the expense of the president’s approval ratings.  Barack’s decision to pursue health care reform hurt his approval ratings by alienating independents and crossover Republicans.  Barack’s recent bipartisan legislative successes, especially a renewal of Bush-era tax cuts, has helped his approval ratings with the same group.  When he let Pelosi, Reid and Emanual call the shots, Barack got into political trouble.

            Barack’s most important pick involves replacing outgoing National Economic Council director Lawernce H. Summers.  While two Clinton-era picks, Treasury Secretary advisor Gene Sperling and Wall Street investment banker Roger C. Altman, remain frontrunners, the economy must be Barack’s top priority.  He needs a confidence-building economic expert, like PIMCO’S bond experts Mohamed el-Erian or William Gross, to reassure markets and investors that the White House means business when it comes to the economy.  “You’re not going to see wholesale changes, but there will be significant changes.  I think that’s desirable,” said White House chief strategist David Axelrod, who’s leaving the West Wing to head back to Chicago to coordinate Obama’s reelection bid.  Axelrod makes no apologies for the president’s miscalculations with respect to White House priorities.

            When Rahm left the White House Oct. 1, Barack lost his lightening rod for political dissent.  Despised by Republicans in Congress, Rahm worked closely with Pelosi and Reid to muscle Barack’s liberal agenda, creating enemies in his wake.  Replacing Rahm with more affable Pete Rouse, now Barack’ interim chief of staff, has helped reverse Rahm’s aggressive partisanship.  Whatever Republicans do to demonize his presidency, Barack’s knows his best defense is more bipartisanship.  Showing he can work on both sides of the aisle neutralizes his critics painting him, day-in-and-day-out, as a radical socialist.  Obama’s right wing critics can’t expalin for his support of Bush wars and tax cuts.  While there’s much speculation regarding Barack’s real political leanings or preferences, letting Rahm, Nancy and Harry set his legislative agenda created a bad first impression

            Reshuffling the deck at the White House has more to do with Barack stepping into his own skin.  Over-reliance on Congressional Democrats kept Barack looking too partisan to mainstream voters.  Fashioning five pieces of bipartisan legislation helped reset Obama’s aura as a compromising centrist committed to seeing both sides of the big picture.  Barack rejects the idea of “triangulation,” something popular during the Clinton years where the White House deliberately adopted the same views as his political enemies.   When former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton talked of a “vast right wing conspiracy,” she saw the extremes to which conservative would go to discredit Clinton’s political agenda.  Barack’s enemies too won’t accept his attempts to reach out to the GOP.  Regardless of the opposition’s official view, Barack must reach across the aisle to get things done.

            Looking to reset his administration in advance of the next presidential sweepstakes, Barack aims to deliver on his promise of more bipartisanship. He took the right message from voters on Nov. 2 when Congressional Democrats loss 65 seats in the worst “shellacking” since the 1992 midterm when former President Bill Clinton lost the House and Senate in what became known as Rep. Newt Gingrich’s (R-Go.) “Republican Revolution,” where Clinton lost both house of Congress.  Changing faces in the West Wing, Barack must prove over the next two years he’s broken the yoke of Congressional Democrats, when the more conservative Congress convenes in January.  If Barack changes faces without showing more bipartisanship, he can expect his critics to call for his resignation or at least eventual defeat.   New faces make a good window dressing but there must be real change.

About the Author

John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He's editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.

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