Obama announced Monday that Daley, who three months ago said he would remain in the post until after the 2012 election, would be replaced by budget director Jacob Lew, whose White House experience dates to President Clinton's administration.
Daley's sudden departure was a surprise, and came after he went to Chicago and Mexico over the holidays to spend time with his wife and grandchildren. Democratic Sen. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, a friend who spoke to Daley on Monday, said Daley told his family he was ready to "come back to Chicago."
When he returned to Washington, Daley asked to talk with the president right away, and he told Obama in a meeting last week that he had decided to leave. The president asked Daley to take 24 hours to think it over.
"It was surprising to all of us," said one senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss an internal matter.
Daley’s departure really did stun Obama, who didn’t have a successor immediately in mind (Apart from Lew, some in Obama’s circle suggested that the president tap recently departed legislative affairs guru Phil Schiliro.) Obama and his former interim chief of staff Pete Rouse didn’t want to reprise the Rouse interregnum for two reasons: 1) Rouse doesn’t want to do it and 2) Obama wanted a decision maker in the post (Rouse is better known for crafting detailed battle plans than for execution).
People close to the situation say Daley isn’t dumb, mean or maladroit. He’d simply been out of the D.C. game too long, more than a decade, and had no intuitive feel for the insular circle of close advisers the president surrounds himself with.
Lew has a MUCH better relationship with Hill Democrats — especially Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer — than Daley who angered Reid and others with his blunt manner and habit of delegating interactions to perceived subordinates (including Lew). Lew has very good relationships on both sides of the aisle, but especially with the Democrats.
Irony: Obama has just tapped a budget impresario known for cutting complex, non-acrimonious deals with the Hill — at the same time he’s been telling everyone who will listen that his political strategy is to circumvent the GOP-controlled House and fili-busted Senate. Lew, a former budget chief and Hillary Clinton ally, puts a legislative expediter at the helm in the West Wing; he’s a guy who can make a deal if one’s in the offing — or figure out how to make the numbers work if the GOP obstructs.
Daley wasn’t exactly a dead man walking inside the White House, but everyone knew he was a goner and that limited his influence. Moreover, he still remained unpopular among junior staffers, despite reinstituting the popular 8:30 a.m. meeting he scrapped after Rahm Emanuel left to become mayor of Chicago. One former aide, speaking to me a few weeks ago, attributed a number of recent staff departures to frustration with Daley.
This comes at a lousy time for Obama politically, but better to have the machine functioning smoothly during the upcoming budget battles, staffers say. And while Daley’s list of achievements in the job were not, ahem, long he did manage to defuse some of the tension between Obama and Chamber of Commerce business types. And Daley’s Wall Street orientation was simply less relevant now that the president seems intent on banging the economic populism drum.
And here’s the big point Daley’s departure suggests: Since the departure of the outsize, brilliant and oxygen-sucking Emanuel, Obama hasn’t had an effective commander on deck. Moreover, the churn suggests he doesn’t have much of a vision yet of what a non-Rahm chief of staff should do. And that remains a serious problem.
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