William Daley, the president's pragmatic new chief of staff, shows the White House's new approach.

The Top 12 Potential White House Press Secretaries
The Resignation and departure next month of White House Spokesman Robert Gibbs means that administration will soon have a much different face making its case in the lead up to the 2012 Presidential Election. But it's unclear who that face will be. Many insiders expect that deputy Bill Burton will get the job, but other names have started to emerge, such as former Clinton and Democratic Party spokeswoman Karen Finney, that would substantially change the look and tone from the press podium. We'v...

New White House Team Supports Obama's Pragmatic Approach
This post originally appeared on Slate. (Credit: AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster) Last spring, when President Obama was considering whether to fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal, his top Afghanistan commander, some wondered whether the president really believed in the underlying Counterinsurgency strategy that McChrystal was pursuing. Those questions were answered emphatically when Obama picked Gen. David Petraeus, who co-authored of the manual outlining the strategy. The president has done a similar thing...

New chief of staff says he did not push Robert Gibbs out of White House...
Bill Daley, President Obama's new Chief of Staff, said Friday that reports he pushed Press Secretary Robert Gibbs out of the White House are untrue. A story in the London Telegraph, which was also linked on the Drudge Report, said Daley would not come to work if Gibbs was allowed to stay in the White House as a chief adviser. But Daley said in a statement that Gibbs's name "never, ever came up once in any discussion I had with the president or staff about me coming to the White House." "In my v...

Who is William M. Daley?
(NewsCore) - President Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff could help improve White House relations with the business community, but may harm White House relations with liberals, according to some observers. Daley replaces Rahm Emanuel, Obama's first chief of staff, who is running for mayor of Chicago. Daley's name is synonymous with Chicago politics, where his father and older brother have been mayor for most of the past half-century. • He left the Clinton Administration in mid-2000 to beco...

Who is William M. Daley?
(NewsCore) - President Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff could help improve White House relations with the business community, but may harm White House relations with liberals, according to some observers. Daley replaces Rahm Emanuel, Obama's first chief of staff, who is running for mayor of Chicago. Daley's name is synonymous with Chicago politics, where his father and older brother have been mayor for most of the past half-century. • He left the Clinton Administration in mid-2000 to beco...

Meet the New Boss: William Daley is Obama Chief of Staff
WASHINGTON — Overhauling his team at the top, President Barack Obama on Thursday named Banker and seasoned political fighter William Daley as his new Chief of Staff, hoping to rejuvenate both a White House storming into re-election mode and an economy still gasping for help. The choice of Daley immediately brought howls of Protest from the left flank of the Democratic Party, where advocates questioned his insider ties to Wall Street. Centrists, business leaders and Republican lawmakers r...

More Staffing News at the White House
The president's new staff is falling into place, though White House officials say the search for the replacement for departing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is just beginning. At a Manufacturing plant in Maryland today, the president will announce the appointment of Gene Sperling to head the National Economic Council, a job Sperling also held during the Clinton Administration. That post is being vacated by Larry Summers. The president will also name Jason Furman as assistant to the president ...

Business community lauds Obama's new chief of staff
Moderate Democrats and the business community on Thursday hailed President Obama's choice of banking executive William Daley as his next Chief of Staff while some progressive Activists balked at the return of a Centrist Washington Veteran whom they warned would alienate Mr. Obama's left flank ahead of 2012. In a brief East Room announcement, Mr. Obama described Mr. Daley, who served as commerce secretary under President Clinton, as "an experienced public servant, a devoted patriot." "Few America...

Obama's New Chief of Staff is 'The Wolf' of Pulp Fiction
In Quentin Tarantino's 1994 opus Pulp Fiction, two hitmen—portrayed by John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson—find themselves in a pickle after accidentally shooting of a colleague on a California freeway. Frantic, Jackson's character phones his gangster boss, pleading for help. Not to worry, says the boss, “Wait for The Wolf—who should be coming directly.” The Wolf—played brilliantly by Harvey Keitel—arrives on the scene, briskly barks directions and coo...

New Pecking Order in the White House
First Read: "Bottom line on the new White House staff shuffle: It's Daley and David Plouffe -- and then everyone else. Indeed, it will be much more top-down than the previous regime. By the way, it's Plouffe -- and not Daley -- who will lead the search for a new White House Press Secretary; Daley will have input, but the communications aspect of the White House falls under Plouffe and he'll have the biggest say." Meanwhile, Toby Harnden reports press secretary Robert Gibbs "wanted to be a presi...

Obama's full-court press to make up with business community
President Obama is making a full-court press to patch up his relations with the business community. Tea Party 101: Who are its followers and what do they want? The president has named William Daley, a JPMorgan Chase executive, as White House Chief of Staff. On Friday, he named Gene Sperling, an Economist who has done work for Goldman Sachs, to replace Larry Summers as head of the National Economic Council. Last month, he held a peace summit with 20 CEOs. And on Feb. 7, he will address America...

Daley Tapped to Be Obamas Chief of Staff
For his next act, President Obama has made a replacement for former Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appear, and it’s none other than William Daley, another member of Chicago’s Daley political dynasty—and one with close ties to Wall Street. —KA Daley—who served in the Clinton Administration and ran former Vice President Al Gore’s presidential race—came highly recommended by trusted White House figures. He traveled extensively with Vice President Biden during ...

Obama picks Daley to run White House
President Obama will tap banking executive William Daley, a former Clinton Cabinet official, as his new White House Chief of Staff, numerous news outlets reported Thursday morning. Mr. Obama will formally announce the news at an afternoon Press Conference, capping several days of speculation over a permanent replacement for Rahm Emanuel, who left last fall to run for mayor of Chicago. Senior adviser Pete Rouse had been filling in temporarily and is expected to remain as a top adviser to Mr. Obam...

Obama Could Benefit from a Fresh Face to Replace Robert Gibbs
With the announcement that White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs will soon step down from his post, the big question in Washington is who will take his place? President Obama's choice could potentially send a potent message about the direction he plans to take over the next two years. And recent White House history may offer the president some guidance on what kind of replacement he should be seeking for Gibbs. When President Bill Clinton's first press secretary, Dee Dee Myers, left the post ...

Barack Obama's Clinton makeover cannot hide fatal flaw
The convening of a new Congress is traditionally an occasion when the White House allows the denizens of Capitol Hill their day if not in the sun, then at least on the Cable News channels. That was not the case on Wednesday when John Boehner, the new Speaker of the House, accepted an outsize gavel from Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco liberal who became the first woman to occupy the post four years ago. Just over a mile away, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, President Barack Obama was intent on mak...

The NYT's Clintonite Fuzzy Math
I’m trying to understand the math in today’s NYT story by Michael Shear about Bill Clinton people in the Barack Obama Administration, begged to the announcements of Bill Daley as Chief of Staff and Gene Sperling to head the National Economic Council. Key quotes: The appointments add to the already significant ranks of Clintonites in Mr. Obama’s administration. Still, as some of Mr. Obama’s longtime advisers leave the White House, his decision to revamp his staff by tappi...

Things We Learned in 2010
from CFIF In life, there are good years and bad years. Then there are years like 2010, when the countdown to New Year’s feels like a Parole hearing. 2011 is looking up, with a new batch of Conservatives on Capitol Hill, a presidential contest that will soon get underway in earnest, and news that the Obama Administration is now taking an official stand against Torture (I refer, of course, to Robert Gibbs’ departure as White House Press Secretary).  But before we leave 2010 to our generatio

White House Hits Back At Liberal Critics of Bill Daley
Source: CBS News It's not hard to understand why liberals are confused and angry over the choice of Bill Daley to be White House Chief of Staff. The President Obama they know and love spent the last two years bashing Wall Street executives, calling them "fat cats" and lecturing them for their "greedy" ways. Now, in a turn of events that has the Left Wing aghast, one of those fat cats will soon be setting policy at the White House. Daley, after all, spent 7 years at JP Morgan where he's believed ...

Obama picks Daley as new chief of staff
Stephen Collinson, Agence France-Presse · Thursday, Jan. 6, 2011 WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama chose former commerce secretary William Daley as his new Chief of Staff Thursday, bringing a shrewd powerbroker on the wavelength of Wall Street into his retooled administration. His move delighted the business community but dismayed liberals who fear that Daley, who hails from a prestigious political dynasty in Mr. Obama’s adopted hometown of Chicago, is too conservative and too...

Is There a Rooney Rule in Politics?
Word is trickling out from the White House that the great mentioning of names to succeed outgoing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs includes several women because new Chief of Staff William Daley would like to see a woman in the job. That's all well and good -- there are several Democratic women with the chops for the job, and it could be good politics heading into an election cycle in which the White House could have to rely even more heavily on female voters -- but why is it necessary to say so? I...

Perino: Don't Focus on Gender in Press Secretary Search
Former White House Press Secretary Dana Perino says the Obama administration should quash any reports that the president's new Chief of Staff is looking specifically for a woman to replace departing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, or else it could risk hurting the next spokesperson's credibility before he or she even walks into the West Wing. Reports Friday said William Daley, Obama's incoming chief of staff, allegedly wants the next person behind the briefing room podium to be a woman. Former Dem...

Matt Bai: No ideological shift
Matt Bai breaks with the conventional wisdom, arguing that the William Daley pick does not portend an ideological shift on Obama's part: [I]f the appointments of Mr. Daley and Mr. Sperling portend some kind of ideological break from where the Obama White House has been the last two years, then it isn't entirely clear how. Mr. Daley's politics are essentially indistinguishable from those of the man he replaces, his fellow Chicagoan and protégé Rahm Emanuel (who, like Mr. Daley, got rich work...

Obama appoints new White House economic adviser (AP)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama named Veteran adviser Gene Sperling as director of the National Economic Council Friday, placing a Washington insider with a Bipartisan nature in the White House as the administration contends with a divided Congress. Sperling's appointment coincided with the release of the December jobs report, which showed the Unemployment Rate dropping to 9.4 percent, its Lowest Level in nearly two years. But job growth fell short of expectations, and Obama said tha...

Obama names new chief of staff, drawing outcries from the left
WASHINGTON — Overhauling his team at the top, President Obama named Banker and seasoned political fighter William Daley as his new Chief of Staff yesterday, hoping to rejuvenate both a White House storming into Reelection mode and an economy trying to maintain growth. The choice of Daley immediately brought Protest from the left flank of the Democratic Party, where advocates questioned his insider ties to Wall Street. Centrists and business leaders rallied around the move, one that unders...

Robert Gibbs' Successor: How About a Woman as White House Press Secretary?
The White House is looking for a successor to departing Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, and the top prospects -- as usual -- are men. But Politico's Mike Allen says new Chief of Staff Bill Daley would like a woman in the job. A woman as the face of this administration -- why, that would be something new and different. The most important qualities in a Press Secretary include access to the president, clarity of expression, ease on camera, and good relations with reporters. The names in the mix so f...