Obama Remakes Staff To Gear Up for 2012

The most plausible explanation for the significant personnel changes being made in the White House is that President Barack Obama is trying hard to improve his reelection chances in 2012. It's not that personnel changes are uncommon at the two-year mark of presidencies of both major parties. People in top jobs at the White House work long hours and are expected to be available and on-call 24/7, which can take a toll on the most vigorous person and play havoc with ordinary family life. Two years is a good run for many people.

It is also not unusual in these days of the Campaign Eternal for a president to start taking steps to win an election two years or more in advance — not that most politicians ever stop at least thinking about the next election. For President Obama, who took what he described as a "shellacking" in the November midterms, this is especially crucial and entirely predictable.

Exhibit A in the reelection scenario is the appointment as chief of staff of veteran Chicago political manager William Daley. Mr. Daley was Commerce secretary during the Clinton administration, when a divided government (and a period of technological innovation no politician planned) yielded a healthy economy and a federal deficit that eventually declined to zero and became a surplus. The president would love for voters to imagine that such an era was now in the offing.

Some commentators have noted that Mr. Daley's ties, as a high official with JPMorgan Chase since 2004, to the business and financial communities should lead to less overt hostility to the Obama agenda than has been displayed in the recent past.

Sure enough, Thomas Donohue of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which donated heavily to the Republican candidates in the most recent election cycle, called Mr. Daley's selection "a very, very strong choice."

It is only half true that Mr. Daley has strong business ties. As the son and brother of two legendary Chicago mayors, he has spent most of his life at the intersection of business and politics — hired by banks and others, for example, not so much to promote deregulation (which few large businesses actually favor) as to shape regulations to the benefit of those paying his salary. Mr. Donohue called Mr. Daley "a business person who understands politics," but it would be more accurate to call him a political operator who understands big business.

Still, the common perception of Mr. Daley can help to promote the perception that a president characterized by a fairly hard-left set of political ambitions is moving toward the center.

Likewise, the choice of Gene Sperling, also with ties to the Clinton administration, to replace top White House economic adviser Larry Summers can be seen as swapping an ivory-tower academic for a pragmatic "let's make a deal" insider with strong Clinton rebound credentials.

Press secretary Robert Gibbs will no doubt be replaced by somebody a little less sharp-tongued and less inclined to say things everybody knows are true but political calculation discourages acknowledging, like last summer's comment that House Democrats were in deep trouble. Top adviser David Axelrod will move to formally running the reelection campaign.

Whether shuffling these deck chairs will lead to strong prospects for re-election is still an open question.

REPRINTED FROM THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER.

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