TIMOTHY NOAH SEPTEMBER 16, 2011
-
Read Later
READ LATERAvailable only to subscribers. SUBSCRIBE TODAY
-
Listen
ARTICLE AUDIO
- Font Size
Earlier today I wondered what Ron Suskind's forthcoming book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, would have to say about White House chief of staff (and scapegoat du jour) Bill Daley. One thing it says, I have since learned, is that in 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. He brought Axelrod and Jarrett to the White House, made Emanuel chief of staff, and eventually replaced Emanuel with Daley. The rap against Obama's White House management style became that he was too dependent on old friends and fellow Chicagoans. Whether the debt ceiling negotiations would have gone better had Obama followed the three Clinton chiefs' advice and hired an old Washington hand--hiring old Washington hands is pretty much what old Washington hands always advise--is anybody's guess.
I don't know whether Suskind's book has anything more about Daley; this anecdote is about Daley only indirectly. Further details will have to await release of Suskind's book on Tuesday, or additional pre-publication press leaks.
11 comments
Since TN wasn't writing for TNR in 2008, it's only fair to inform him of the conventional wisdom at the time, at least the CW at TNR. And that CW was that Obama's biggest challenge in Congress would be the Democrats, not the Republicans; of course, this was also the time when many, some right here at TNR, predicted that the Republican Party would shrink to irrelevance. TNR praised the choice of Emanuel as chief of staff, saying that he, if anybody, was capable of handling the Democrats in Congress, in particular the cats, I mean the Democrats, in the House. It didn't take long to realize that the CW was wrong, that the bigger challenge for Obama were the Republicans in Congress, and that the Republican Party wasn't ready for irrelevance. Unfortunately for Obama, Emanuel's "style" didn't work so well with the Republicans, though it took months for both him and Obama to let go. Memories being so unreliable, especially for those in the thick of events, I thought I might contribute mine.
- rayward
September 17, 2011 at 8:39am
Perhaps Podesta, Panetta,and Bowles had read Ryan Lizza's profile of Obama as Chicago pol in July, 2008 in The New Yorker. THAT would have been enough to advise to leave his Chicago friends behind. At the time, I thought Obama should ask Daschle to be his Chief of Staff. Of course, Lizza's profile was one major factor in my deciding to not vote for Obama by November 2008. Looking forward to Suskind book - he did a fine job with Paul O'Neill's expose of the Bushies.
- K2K
September 17, 2011 at 8:55am
It wouldn't have made ANY difference. Look at the underlying pathology of the Republican attacks on Obama. We began to see the band-aid of civility tearing during the campaign. Palin's speeches liberated something ugly in parts of the electorate, which became a full-throated and really ugly movement of conspiracy theorists, racists, Islamophobes, religious nuts and Randians; 19th century style robber barons. Chicago had nothing to do with this. It's a disease of American culture. Take a real good look at some of the would-be Republican candidates for President, at TP congresspeople, at the right wing commentariat. The birth certificate thing alone was simply appalling.
- Sophia
September 17, 2011 at 12:51pm
While Emmanuel was/is from Chicago, he still qualified as "an old Washington hand", no?
- AaronW
September 17, 2011 at 7:49pm
I agree about Ron Suskind, K2K, and I am looking forward to reading his new book, as well.
- liberalref
September 17, 2011 at 9:13pm
I agree with Sophia that Chicago had nothing to do with it - Republican obstructionism is the real cause of the problems they're facing. If you're hell bent on placing blame within the administration, I think Timothy Geithner carries more blame than all the Chicago friends combined. I think there is also a lot of lazy reporting out there (not in this piece) about "Chicago Politics" that has an impact on how the media views the Chicagoans who have worked in the administration. It's important to remember that both Rahm and Daley served in the Clinton administration, and are consumate Washington insiders. Axelrod and Jarret are the only ones who came from a solid Chicago politics background, but they come from the Harold Washington strain of Chicago politics. It's not like Obama brought Dick Mell and William Beavers with him to the White House.
- Attrill
September 17, 2011 at 9:22pm
This is all too vague. Daley was never Obama's buddy. Couldn't it be that Daley's appointment was a sop to the business community as well as a judgment -- perhaps wrong -- that he'd be a good manager? Axelrod and Jarrett certainly are Obama buddies, but where's the specific suggestion that either of them have contributed to actual or perceived Obama missteps? I think that Axelrod was a liberal voice in the room, and he was gone by the time of the current nadir. Jarrett? I don't see any evidence that she's a bad influence. Rahm, the old Washington hand, wanted to give up on health care, and that was the consensus view of other old Washington hands at the time. In a noteworthy rebuke to old Washington hands everywhere, Obama basically said, "This is what I'm doing here, and I'm going to do it, though the heavens fall." And then the heavens fell, but health care got through. Profile in courage? It seems to me that our current problems are due to the jobs problem, which is due to the lackluster stimulus, which is due to not doing what Paul Krugman said to do, which is hardly due to "Chicago friends" like Valerie Jarrett, for heaven's sake, but due to the political impossibility of doing what's necessary. We like to imagine that those forces could have been turned around by sheer force of charisma, but I'm increasingly convinced that it doesn't work that way.
- JakeH
September 17, 2011 at 11:05pm
Also, it's pretty insulting to Chicago, which by any standards is a world-class, international city. I think, if there's fault to be found it's that Chicago people who've worked with Obama were to some or a great degree conditioned by this city and its intoxicating mixture of people and ideas and thus, simply didn't foresee the possibility that the US might take a turn back to the Middle Ages. Frankly it's difficult to believe some of the Republican antics period. That said, Chicago itself has issues with poverty and race. We could do better too.
- Sophia
September 18, 2011 at 1:42am
Until Obama tries to put his long time Chicago friend Valerie Jarret on the Supreme Court ala Bush and Harriet Miers I'll agree with those above that "Chicago doesn't matter."
- Pnaut
September 18, 2011 at 1:54pm
On the other hand, maybe Obama has a Geithner problem, or more broadly, an economic advisor problem in general: http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2011/09/geithner_didnt_listen_to_obama.html
- Sophia
September 18, 2011 at 2:14pm
Sophia: Obama should have nominated Sheila Bair as SecTreas even though she was doing a great job at FDIC. Geithner was instead the safe choice even if Geithner had been a wimp as NY Fed president with some oversight of Lehman Brothers. I am REALLY looking forward to Suskind's book if only to read about the Geithner-Bair tensions. Ms. Bair was fighting to deal with the housing/mortgage crisis from day 1, and I continue to think that the USA will not generate enough growth to get people working until the housing crisis is confronted. Another lesson from Texas, which, ironically, did not have a mortgage/price bubble because I guess the S&Ls dominate the Texas mortgage market, and S&Ls had been re-regulated after that debacle of the late 1980's. Not giving Perry any credit for that - just an observation about how Texas escaped invasion by Countrywide...
- K2K
September 19, 2011 at 11:19am