According to
Bloomberg, President Obama began in August to re-assert control over his staff. The bumbling we've been seeing from the President's political and policy advisers has been going on for well over a year and half now. Justifiable harshness deserves to be put
especially on Bill Daley, who
ought to be fired. The Bush tax cut extension. The shutdown fiasco. The ridiculous farce of the debt ceiling negotiations. The clean air decision. The fumbled snap of the jobs speech scheduling. A sudden and substantial decline in the polls after holding relatively steady even through the heat of the healthcare debate and the 2010 election catastrophe. If the reporting is accurate, all this has finally convinced the President that enough is enough:
In the aftermath of the debt-ceiling debate, the president held meetings to assess the damage, identify mistakes, and adjust his messaging and his team to put his candidacy on a stronger course, according to Senator Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat who is close to the White House.
“Their new approach is to speak out for what they believe in and take it to the American people,” he said.
...
Obama also is trying to streamline the day-to-day management inside the West Wing. With Chief of Staff Bill Daley at the helm and senior adviser David Plouffe managing political strategy and message, it was at times unclear who was in charge of the process during the debt debate, said people aware of the internal dynamics who requested anonymity because they aren’t authorized to speak publicly on the issue.
Since then, senior adviser Pete Rouse has been re-engaged in handling more of the daily operations, said people familiar with the internal adjustments who spoke on the basis of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss personnel matters.
Pete Rouse has been with the President a long, long time and is probably the best inside man in Washington. The President, however, still needs a hatchet man (Obama still does way too much of the attacking himself) and a much better communications operation than what we've been getting from Dan Pfeiffer and the awful Jay Carney. Simply put, it is better for Daley to stay away from day to day operations and go raise corporate money. Personally, I think rearranging the deck chairs isn't enough, but I'll hope to be proven wrong. But any news that Bill Daley will stay away from politics, policy, and day to day operations is good news. Ben LaBolt over at campaign high command in Chicago recently unveiled a better strategic approach as well.
I think the President himself is definitely on his job as of late, as I'm sure his continues press from the Rose Garden today will attest. But if people are to be fired, it is better to get them out of here now rather than during the heat of the campaign. That is, if people are being told to step up or else. But we still really really need a hard-headed newsmaking hatchet man to keep the GOP off-balance and on the defensive. That means saying the things that a president cannot say.