The names floated so far to replace Rahm Emanuel, as reported by Jake Tapper,are likely to be these below:
Ron Klain (chief of staff to Vice President Biden)
Pete Rouse (senior adviser to President Obama)
Tom Donilon (NSA Advisor)
Jim Messina (WH Deputy Chief of Staff)
Former Senator Tom Daschle (failed HHS Secretary nominee)
David Plouffe (President Obama's former campaign manager)
One interesting note other than the possibility of Sen. Daschle as President Obama's chief of staff is that most of these possible nominees have had a connection to Senator Daschle, as seen in their profiles. What kind of a potential chief of staff will they be to President Obama, and would the nominee constitute a "shake-up" in the White House which would be good for progressives?
The latter question leads to a "no" answer because President Obama's ideology was close in alignment with Rahm Emanuel's, and he likely would be looking for the same ideology in a potential chief of staff. This means that we would still be pretty much getting the same mindset in a potential CoS nominee from any of these men above, and most of them are not what you'd call a progressive.
It would be rather surprising if President Obama were to choose an actual progressive as his chief of staff, and it'd be a very remote chance of happening from my observation. With that said, below are brief profiles of the possible CoS nominees:
The Next Chief of Staff?
Who is Pete Rouse? Excerpt from the New York Times:
As chief of staff to Mr. Daschle, when he was majority and minority leader of the Senate, Mr. Rouse helped negotiate the terms of the Clinton impeachment. He has known Mr. Daschle since 1973, when both men worked as young legislative aides to former Senator James Abourezk of South Dakota. When Mr. Daschle lost his seat in 2004, the same year Mr. Obama was elected, Mr. Obama aggressively recruited Mr. Rouse to take a demotion and come to work in his new Senate office.
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Who is Ron Klain? Ron Klain is the chief of staff to Vice President Biden, and was on Al Gore's legal team for the recount in Florida in 2000. He also was formerly a lobbyist for five years from 2000 to 2005, and lobbied for airline merges, to relax regulations for Fannie Mae, and for pharmaceutical companies. Here's more about the work he did on the Senate Judiciary Committee when he was appointed to be chief counsel by then-Majority Leader Tom Daschle:
When Klain was chief counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, he wrote most of the omnibus crime bill that was vetoed by President George H.W. Bush, and, working for the Clinton campaign, he suggested the future president’s initiative to add 100,000 new police officers. Klain was a key player in the passage of President Clinton’s new crime bill that included more police officers, and he used his contacts on Capitol Hill to help push the House to pass an assault- weapons ban.
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Who Is Tom Donilon? Tom Donilon is currently the NSA advisor to President Obama, and was instrumental in helping craft the strategy for the surge in 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. He has worked in the Carter and Clinton administrations, and was on the Biden presidential campaign in 2008. He also was a former executive at Fannie Mae, and was employed by the same firm that had employed Ron Klain as well.
Donilon's wife, Cathy Russell, is also the chief of staff to Vice President Biden. You can find more on Donilon here at Wikipedia. | |
Who Is Jim Messina? Jim Messina is the deputy chief of staff to President Obama, and was the former chief of staff for Senator Max Baucus. As this excerpt below shows that Messina was instrumental in the Senate legislative fights in which his boss at the time, Senator Max Baucus, supported the 2001 Bush tax cuts:
Messina is primarily a campaign guru, but he served as Senate Finance Chairman Baucus’ top aide during a number of key fights over health-care reform, Social Security and Bush’s controversial 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. Baucus defected from his party to support those tax cuts in 2001, but later pulled back on that position.
He also was instrumental as a legislative liasion during the health insurance reform fight in the past year. However, Messina is also known for his involvement in the ugly firing of Sherryl Sherrod. Here's more from the Wikipedia entry as well. | |
Who Is Senator Tom Daschle? Senator Tom Daschle is mostly known to us for his failed nomination for the HHS Secretary, and the controversy over his consulting with UnitedHealth while working with the Obama White House as an informal advisor on health insurance reform. Senator Daschle also was one of the earliest backers of President Obama's presidential bid:
Daschle exited the Senate just as Obama entered in 2004 and suggested that Obama take on some of his staffers.[35] These included Daschle's outgoing chief-of-staff Pete Rouse who helped to create a two year plan in the Senate that would fast-track Obama for the presidential nomination. Daschle himself told Obama in 2006 that "windows of opportunity for running for the presidency close quickly. And that he shouldn't assume, if he passes up this window, that there will be another."
Senator Daschle's leadership in the Senate also has been written about extensively here on Dailykos, as you can see here, here, and here. | |
Who Is David Plouffe? David Plouffe is well-known as the successful campaign manager of the Barack Obama presidential campaign. He also was formerly the chief of staff of Rep. Gephardt.
Plouffe spent three years in Iowa, working on the senate and presidential campaigns of Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). In 1992, he left Harkin and was in charge of a campaign for the first time: the winning bid House bid of Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.). For years, Plouffe was a political nomad, running campaigns in Delaware and New Jersey and served as campaign director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in 1995 before joining the staff of House Minority Leader Rep. Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) in 1997. He was highly successful as the executive director of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for one year in 1999 — the DCCC raked in a record $95 million for House races in that cycle. In 2000, he joined political consultant David Axelrod at AKP&D Media and Message, and he became a partner at that firm in 2004 after returning from Gephardt’s presidential bid.
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Which of these nominees would I prefer? I'd definitely prefer David Plouffe since he at least has a sense of what is going on in the ground, and didn't perform as a lobbyist. But would he be chosen as the next chief of staff? I don't think so, given that Plouffe may be needed to get out the vote for the midterms. Which would make sense, given the speculation over Pete Rouse being named as interim chief of staff, if the preference is for David Plouffe to take the role of CoS further down the road.
Who do I personally think would be the worst possible pick for chief of staff? Senator Thomas Daschle, for one, given the publicization of his not having paid back taxes during the Senate confirmation hearings, and the conflict of interest from advising clients such as insurance companies (i.e. UnitedHealth) while informally working on the health insurance reform plan. Would the pick of Daschle happen? It possibly could despite these aforementioned issues.
These two candidates for the chief of staff nominee role are the "outsiders" that would theoretically bring in fresh blood and new ideas to the administration. Only one of them does that, and that'd be Plouffe.