In October 2010, White House Chief of Staff/Junkyard Dog Rahm Emanuel split to run for mayor of Chicago. Emanuel probably made more enemies on the left for calling liberal activists fucking retarded to their faces in a White House meeting. Emanuel's departure was concurrent with the 2010 election season when Republicans were expected to and did make gains in Congress. Obama's choice to replace Emanuel was staffer Pete Rouse who was quite capable and well-known in Congress, but Rouse reportedly turned the job down after agreeing to serve as interim Chief of Staff while a replacement could be found. Then Obama did something weird. He hired this guy.
William Daley was the brother of the man Rahm Emanuel left to replace. Sounds like backwoods sex, though Daley was not a previous Obamanista in spite of his Chicago pedigree. One reason cited for choosing Daley was that Obama wanted to patch things up with the business community. Never mind the fact that his economic team was made up of a good number of pro-bidnis people. Let's not forget Secretary of the Treasury Tim Geithner who was practically CitiBank's man in Washington. When Obama told Geithner to restructure CitiBank, the discussion might have gone something like this:
"Restructure CitiBank."
"We puncture sins of plank?"
"Restructure CitiBank!"
"Green luster is a crank?"
"Restructure CitiBank!"
"Read Oscar's Swiss franc?"
"Forget it."
"Whatever you say boss."
Point being, Obama didn't need any more business insiders. What he needed was someone who fitted the job description who could be a competent congressional liaison. That is not to say that Daley could not grow into the job, but it was not his specialty and going into a "shellacking" at the polls was not the time to shift course to an unknown quantity. Presidents in jeopardy are often told that new blood is good to shake things up. Could be, but maybe not ANY old new blood.
Daley can't be blamed for everything bad that has happened, but his legions of nonfans go as high as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid who has described Daley as ham-fisted. It took a year after the 2010 elections for the White House to talk about jobs. And Obama is still on the outs with the business community (though he has raised more Wall Street money in this election cycle than all the Republican presidential candidates combined, shhhhhhh). This could all be related to why it was just announced that "some" of Daley's duties would be relinquished back to Pete Rouse. Hallelujah. The White House is spinning it as an efficiency move on the part of Daley. Yeah right. In other words, Daley agreed that things would work more efficiently if he was no longer doing them.
Daley had originally planned to stay through the rest of this term and he probably will do so. Only now he'll be spending more time on Facebook, or LinkedIn, or some secret social network for the ultra-exclusive like OnePercentertainment. Exactly what Pete Rouse can do at this point is probably limited with a Tea Bag beholden House and stalemated Senate. Bringing back a little team spirit and coordination to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue would be a welcome change.
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