Doyle McManus: A retooled White House
[Doyle McManus, Washington columnist for the Los Angeles Times, has reported on national and international issues from Washington for more than 25 years.]
Barack Obama's White House is looking more like Bill Clinton's every day.
Last week, for example, President Obama named William M. Daley as White House chief of staff and Gene Sperling as economic policy czar. Daley is a former Clinton Cabinet secretary and Chicago banker who plants himself squarely in the center of the political spectrum. Sperling was a top Clinton advisor for all eight years of that tumultuous presidency.
Obama has even accepted a bit of private coaching from Clinton himself since the Democrats' shellacking in November's congressional election.
By themselves, the top appointments may not look like massive change. In his chief of staff choice, Obama installed one Chicago-born Washington insider, Daley, in place of another, Rahm Emanuel. In the economic job, he chose a Clinton-trained policy wonk, Sperling, to succeed another one-time Clinton aide, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.
But the changes reflect a confirmation and continuation of Obama's move toward the political center, which began last year and was most evident in his decision to compromise with Senate Republicans over the extension of upper-income tax cuts. Equally important, the staff shifts also reflect a change in the core mission of the Obama White House...
Read entire article at LA Times
Barack Obama's White House is looking more like Bill Clinton's every day.
Last week, for example, President Obama named William M. Daley as White House chief of staff and Gene Sperling as economic policy czar. Daley is a former Clinton Cabinet secretary and Chicago banker who plants himself squarely in the center of the political spectrum. Sperling was a top Clinton advisor for all eight years of that tumultuous presidency.
Obama has even accepted a bit of private coaching from Clinton himself since the Democrats' shellacking in November's congressional election.
By themselves, the top appointments may not look like massive change. In his chief of staff choice, Obama installed one Chicago-born Washington insider, Daley, in place of another, Rahm Emanuel. In the economic job, he chose a Clinton-trained policy wonk, Sperling, to succeed another one-time Clinton aide, former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers.
But the changes reflect a confirmation and continuation of Obama's move toward the political center, which began last year and was most evident in his decision to compromise with Senate Republicans over the extension of upper-income tax cuts. Equally important, the staff shifts also reflect a change in the core mission of the Obama White House...