A Different Kind of White House
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, November 6, 2008
In selecting Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, President-elect Barack Obama is telegraphing that he intends his White House to operate very differently from President Bush's.
For one, Obama's decision to fill that job first indicates its return to its historical significance. In most recent White Houses, the chief of staff has essentially been a deputy president -- managing the staff, setting priorities, and putting his stamp on the presidency in any number of other ways. By contrast, during most of the Bush era, political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney loomed much larger than the chief of staff ever did.
Bush's first chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., was popular with his staff and oversaw the most leak-proof, on-time, on-message White House in history. But he was not a big influence on Bush. He was more like Bush's nanny.
Card spent many hours of his legendarily long work days aggressively monitoring and limiting the information flow to the president. "The president has to have time to eat, sleep and be merry, or he'll make angry, grumpy decisions," Card said in a 2004 radio interview.
Bush sacrificed Card in March 2006, in response to the growing complaints after Hurricane Katrina about the administration's incompetence. And Card's replacement, Joshua Bolten, by most accounts, has been much more assertive with Bush. But he remains mostly a technocrat, rather than a political player in his own right.
(More here.)
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, November 6, 2008
In selecting Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff, President-elect Barack Obama is telegraphing that he intends his White House to operate very differently from President Bush's.
For one, Obama's decision to fill that job first indicates its return to its historical significance. In most recent White Houses, the chief of staff has essentially been a deputy president -- managing the staff, setting priorities, and putting his stamp on the presidency in any number of other ways. By contrast, during most of the Bush era, political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney loomed much larger than the chief of staff ever did.
Bush's first chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., was popular with his staff and oversaw the most leak-proof, on-time, on-message White House in history. But he was not a big influence on Bush. He was more like Bush's nanny.
Card spent many hours of his legendarily long work days aggressively monitoring and limiting the information flow to the president. "The president has to have time to eat, sleep and be merry, or he'll make angry, grumpy decisions," Card said in a 2004 radio interview.
Bush sacrificed Card in March 2006, in response to the growing complaints after Hurricane Katrina about the administration's incompetence. And Card's replacement, Joshua Bolten, by most accounts, has been much more assertive with Bush. But he remains mostly a technocrat, rather than a political player in his own right.
(More here.)
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