Kristoffer Tripplaar-Pool/Getty Images
Jack Lew, President Obama and William Daley at the White House on Monday.
President Obama announced today chief of staff William Daley turned in his resignation. Budget Director Jack Lew will now be taking over the gig in his place, effective at the end of the month.
"No one in my administration has had to make more important decisions more quickly than Bill, and that's why I think this decision is difficult for me," Obama said during a press conference at the White House. "But in the end, the pull of the hometown we both love ... was too great."
Initially, when Daley turned in his notice last week, Obama said he made Daley think it over more. Daley ultimately stood by his decision to return to Chicago. No other specifics were really given, but he's reportedly had a rocky relationship with Democrats for a while now.
Daley started working in the West Wing last January, replacing Rahm Emanuel, who first left the job to campaign for Chicago mayor — an office he later won.
Coincidentally, Daley's brother and father formerly held the position of Chicago mayor.
Lew will be Obama's third chief of staff.
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oops. old Newsvine account. will repost.
I don't get the White House structure. Who is it that will run roughshod over White House messaging? Is it Plouffe? Does he have the speechwriters working under him or are they POTUS direct reports? With Lovett gone, who is doing speeches besides Favreau?
Anyone know?
That guy must be hard to work for, people are jumping ship like it is going down.
If you recall, this administration began with the goal of having representation from the full political spectrum. The idea was that conservatives and progressives, Democrats and Republicans, would hash out the issues to reach legitimate compromises that would serve the best interests of the country. The extremist influence of the "Tea Party" made this goal impossible. From the start, under Boehner's leadership, the right wing absolutely refused to compromise. Some who came into office as Democrats while pushing a continuation of right-wing policies found that the president, although willing to listen and work with them, was not willing to sell out. There is a line that he won't cross, and this has proved to be very frustrating for those who assumed that Obama would be a push-over.
Of course, beyond this core issue, there is nothing unusual about people who leave their positions during the administration of any president, whether Republican or Democratic. There is always an especially large turn-over between terms. We've seen this with every administration in recent decades.
I bet we will find Daily directly involved with an Obama superpac...to do things for Obama's re-election that he can't do from within the White House. Obama is merely gearing up for the campaign fight and putting his "war team" together.
You mean William Daley, not Jon Daily, I assume. Had you been watching Barack Obama since the days of his campaign, you would know that he is not inclined to do what you indicated. Obama has actually had a very interesting strategy. Instead of going into battle mode, wasting his time the way that Bill Clinton did, he essentially just gave the Republicans enough rope to hang themselves. They've been doing a good job of it, too. What the Tea Party did to the Republican Party can be compared to what the Yippies did to the Democratic Party -- pushed the party to such extremes that they ended up looking like idiots.
This comment is not germane to this thread but I will put it here anyway. I am tired of both Republicans, Democrats and pun-dents regarding the employment picture. Let's get real, adding 1MM hamburger flippers, Walmart merchandisers, office cleaners and any part-time or full-time position that pays the minimum wage in 1 month is hardly something to be proud or happy about. Let's face it folks, we want our goods and services cheap and, as a result, we have a very large portion of the population working for far less than a living wage, businesses bottom fishing the world for the cheapest labor and regulatory costs (we love our Apple Products but look where they are made and what kind of labor is used) and outsourcing to those countries, and a loss of the traditional local store to internet commerce as well as the conglomerates. One day we all will wake up and realize Henry Ford had a most valuable conviction, better to pay a fair wage with benefits and leave some profits on the floor so his employees could afford to buy a Ford car than to treat them as a mere commodity and pay them little. How else do we expect to return to traditional families where one parent earns a sufficient salary to provide for the family's financial needs and the other is at home tending to the household needs and, most critically, attending to their children's needs throughout the day. Recall when the traditional family broke-down. It was not gay marriages, promiscuity and the like but it was during the high inflation during the early 70's that forced mom to go to work to help put food on the table and save the home. The problem is mom did not return home from the workplace but, rather, the family sacrificed traditional family values for a financially higher standard of living. Had the post WW II US economy continued as it was during the 70's, 80's, 90', and now would there be an unemployment problem driven, in part, for the need of 2-family wage earners? Not that I am suggesting this is the correct solution but if businesses were required to pay at least a living wage and health and welfare benefits to all of its employees (full-time and part-time) such that one parent could remain home to raise the family and tend to the household, would there be a dramatic drop in unemployment, poverty, morbidity, crime, substance abuse, high school drop-out, and other indices of a health nation? Yes, we all would pay a bit more for goods and services but look at the benefits that would be gained. I think it is worth a shot than continuing to dummy down the US to that of a 3rd-world nation which is were we are heading.
Interestingly, poverty is what drove men out of the house, and it was Republicans who mandated that single parents put their children second to their jobs. Beyond that, social issues aren't the cause of the mess we're in. The very "Founding Fathers" warned future generations to guard against allowing the richest few to have too much power in govt. We saw corporate power grow since WWll. In the late '60s/early 70s, there was a lot of focus on reminding the public to guard against allowing corporations/the rich to gain excessive power. Then Reagan was elected. Deregulation turned corporations into ravenous monsters that have left a path of destruction. Clinton took this to a higher level. Through NAFTA, taxpayer dollars were redistributed to corporations which used this money to build factories and offices in foreign countries, shipping our jobs anywhere they could find the cheapest labor. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were shipped out. At the same time, Clinton ended the American entitlement to poverty relief; as jobs were disappearing, Clinton increased the number of people desperate for jobs. This desperation increased the power that corporations have, enabling them to pull down wages, eliminate workers' rights and protections and crush unions. Ultimately, we watched as corporations have enjoyed years of record-breaking profits while the US sinks deeper into poverty, becoming a Third World country. I think it is probably too late to reverse course, restoring those policies that were central to America's era of progress and prosperity.