l****z
发帖数: 29846 | 1 奥巴马的白宫主管William Daley辞职了，任职1年，来自华尔街；由预算主管Jacob
Lew接任
White House Chief of Staff William Daley resigns; budget chief Jacob Lew
fills post
By David Nakamura, Published: January 9
White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley resigned Monday, a year after
taking the job, shaking up the administration’s senior management just as
President Obama gears up for what is expected to be a tough reelection
campaign.
Last January, Obama tapped Daley to replace Rahm Emanuel with high
expectations. Daley, a former banker who also served as commerce secretary
in the Clinton administration, was expected to help the White House improve
relations with Wall Street as it implemented a series of financial reforms
in the recession’s wake.
But Daley never seemed comfortable in the job, drawing wide criticism for
his handling of the bitter and protracted legislative battles between the
White House and Congress during much of 2011 that helped drag down the
president’s public approval ratings.
Daley struggled to develop relations with members of both houses of Congress
, and after he relinquished day-to-day operations to senior adviser Pete
Rouse in the fall, his role seemed significantly reduced.
In a brief appearance at the White House on Monday, Obama announced that
Daley, 63, will be replaced by budget director Jacob J. Lew, effective at
the end of the month. Daley will stay in the job through the president’s
State of the Union address Jan. 24 to help ease the transition.
Traditionally, the role of a White House chief of staff has included
managing daily operations of the staff, weighing in on domestic and foreign
policy, and helping manage relationships between the White House and Capitol
Hill, Wall Street and other outside groups.
Whereas the fiery Emanuel, who had been a congressman before joining the
White House and left to run for mayor of Chicago, was intimately involved in
most of Obama’s decisions on politics and policy, the cooler Daley was
said to have taken a more CEO-like approach to the job. Congressional
Democrats complained privately that Daley acted as if they were “wasting
his time,” and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) never embraced
him.
Eventually, Daley’s influence began to wane as Obama increasingly relied
for political advice on trusted longtime aides such as senior adviser David
Plouffe.
In Lew, 56, Obama has selected a longtime Washington figure who also oversaw
the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton administration from 1998
to 2001.
Lew, who resumed oversight of OMB in November 2010, has played a critical
role as the administration tangled with Congress over how to tame the
country’s spiraling debt and survived a showdown over a payroll tax cut
that was extended last month.
Lew is taking “one of the most difficult jobs in Washington,” Obama said,
with Lew at his side. “But Jack has had one of the other most difficult
jobs in Washington. His economic advice was invaluable. He has my complete
trust.”
Obama becomes the third consecutive president to turn to his budget director
in a time of trouble. Bill Clinton appointed Leon E. Panetta in the
aftermath of Republicans taking control of Congress in the 1994 midterm
elections, and George W. Bush elevated Joshua Bolten after the
administration was criticized for its response to Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Yet Lew is not a political operative; the president will rely on a cast of
familiar faces from his 2008 campaign to direct his reelection effort,
including Plouffe, campaign director Jim Messina and campaign adviser David
Axelrod.
Rather, the choice of Lew reflects the White House’s anticipation of the
coming fight with Congress over how to pay for extending the payroll tax
holiday, scheduled to expire at the end of February, through the year’s end
. Administration officials have described that as the final “must-do”
legislative initiative before the White House turns its attention more fully
to the campaign.
Unlike Daley, Lew knows Capitol Hill well, having begun his Washington
career in 1973 as a legislative aide and spending eight years as House
Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr.’s principal domestic policy adviser.
Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, called
Lew’s promotion “a superb choice” and added that few “have Jack’s level
of experience and knowledge.”
Lew will remain at the budget office this month to wrap up work on the
administration’s fiscal 2013 federal budget proposal, which aides said is
expected to be completed in the coming weeks. Obama did not name a successor
to Lew.
Daley drew criticism during the White House’s fight with congressional
Republicans over debt-ceiling negotiations in the summer.
In one particularly embarrassing episode, Obama requested to speak to a
joint session of Congress in September only to be rejected by House Speaker
John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), who invited him instead to come a day later. The
White House claimed that Daley had earlier secured Boehner’s agreement for
the original date, but the speaker’s office denied that an agreement was in
place.
After that, Obama switched tactics, eschewing direct negotiations with
Congress in favor of a public barnstorming tour in which he contrasted his
efforts to create jobs with a legislature that the president said was mired
in partisan gridlock.
White House aides said that Obama will continue in that vein in the coming
months as he ramps up his reelection message that the administration is
fighting to improve the lives of middle-class Americans.
In his resignation letter to the president, Daley praised Obama’s
leadership during a year of “great challenge for the American people,”
citing his push in the fall to boost the economy through his jobs
legislation.
Obama’s focus on jobs growth “shows that you will not rest until our
fellow citizens recover,” Daley wrote.
Staff writers Cheryl W. Thompson, Ed O’Keefe and Paul Kane contributed to
this report. |
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