PRESIDENT BARACK Obama yesterday appointed Bill Daley, a former commerce secretary with strong ties to the business community, as his chief of staff.
Mr Daley’s was the first of up to eight expected personnel changes at the White House. Mr Obama is expected to announce the appointment of Gene Sperling, an adviser to treasury secretary Timothy Geithner, as director of the National Economic Council today.
When he introduced Mr Daley in the east room of the White House, Mr Obama noted that he “has led major corporations” and “possesses a deep understanding of how jobs are created and how to grow our economy”. Mr Daley is the son of the legendary mayor of Chicago Richard Daley, whose son Richard is now the outgoing mayor. Alluding to the Irish-American dynasty in his home town, Mr Obama said: “Needless to say, Bill has a smidgen of awareness of how our system of government and politics works. You might say it’s a genetic trait.”
Mr Daley replaces the former congressman Rahm Emanuel, who returned to Chicago in the autumn to campaign for mayor – in other words, his successor’s brother’s job.
Mr Obama paid homage to Pete Rouse, his former Senate aide, who acted as chief of staff in the interim. “Thanks in no small part to his efforts, a period that everyone thought would be one of retrenchment turned out to be one of great progress for our country.”
Mr Obama will set the tone for the next two years in his State of the Union address later this month. Already, the choice of Mr Daley and the expected appointment of Mr Sperling mark the shift of emphasis from the ambitious policymaking of the first part of his administration to accomodation with the newly elected Republican House of Representatives.
As two of Mr Obama’s top aides – senior adviser David Axelrod and press secretary Rorbert Gibbs – leave the West Wing to work on the president’s re-election campaign, the “retooling” of the White House staff also signifies the beginning of the 2012 campaign.
Like many of Mr Obama’s choices, both Mr Daley and Mr Sperling are veterans of the Clinton administration. Both have extensive experience at reaching compromise with Republicans, and both have worked for major Wall Street banks. The president’s choices are seen as an attempt to improve his sometimes awkward relations with the business community. They will not, however, raise his standing with disillusioned liberals.
The Obama White House has been perceived as an insular bubble, and is portraying the reshuffle as a new start with fresh energy. Howard Dean, a former Democratic presidential candidate, called Mr Daley’s appointment a “huge plus” and said he would foster a “mutual atmosphere of respect and that’s a huge tone change”.
When he announced his departure on Wednesday, Mr Gibbs spoke of the exhaustion of working in the Obama White House. Two years is a common length of service for a White House staffer.
Mr Daley served as commerce secretary under President Bill Clinton and leaves a job as head of operations in the American midwest for JP Morgan Chase to become Mr Obama’s chief of staff.
Mr Sperling once worked as a consultant to the Goldman Sachs investment bank, where he ran a programme for poor women in the developing world.
More recently, as an adviser to Mr Geithner, he played an important role in negotiations between the White House and Republicans which reached a compromise deal on tax cuts last month.
If he is chosen to replace Mr Gibbs, the current deputy press secretary, Bill Burton will be the first African-American press spokesman. Jay Carney, a former journalist for Time Magazineand vice-president Joe Biden's chief of communications, is another candidate for that job.