http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=8BD4AA2E-9448-4FD6-A157-7FA357EFF45F Key Barack Obama aides eye White House exits
By: Edward-Isaac Dovere and Carrie Budoff Brown
October 23, 2014 05:04 AM EDT
White House chief of staff Denis McDonough has asked senior aides to tell him if they’re going to stick around for President Barack Obama’s final two years in office, with a West Wing restructuring after the midterms possible.
The process, which began in recent weeks, is focused on keeping people at the White House, with the expectation among senior administration officials that whoever’s in place next summer would remain through the end of the presidency.
Among those being mentioned are some of Obama’s longest-serving aides: senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer and deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes, whom the insular president trusts and feels comfortable with and who, over the years, have learned to anticipate the president’s thinking. Also on the speculation list is communications director Jennifer Palmieri, who has helped guide the White House response on nearly every major challenge it has confronted in Obama’s second term.
The possible moves are largely part of the natural post-election inflection point, and the exits that come six years into any presidency. Both factors are especially pressing for a White House where there hasn’t been much turnover.
But the changes being discussed would mean more departures by the original Obama crew and could carry particular significance for a president who has leaned heavily on his inner circle in and around the West Wing. These people won’t just leave job openings to fill — they had unique roles in Obama’s world. The president has struggled to connect with outsiders brought in at senior levels, and has always needed some of the old guard around to keep him grounded.
“Spending in some cases six years working in the White House can be grueling, but losing these folks would be a big blow,” said a Democrat familiar with West Wing thinking.
None of the aides whose departures are being speculated about would comment for the record. But conversations with more than a dozen people inside and close to the White House identified them as the most likely to leave — though many of those interviewed said there also could be very little turnover at the senior ranks, particularly if the midterm election results are better than expected.
McDonough himself has been on the job for nearly two years, approaching the normal shelf life for a chief of staff. On the one hand, he’s seen as so much of a loyalist that West Wing aides say he might be there to turn off the lights in January 2017. But McDonough could also be the one to take the fall if Democrats demand a major shakeup should the party lose the Senate. No other departure would show as strongly that Obama understands the dissatisfaction with his White House.
McDonough has long been viewed as untouchable. He is well regarded in the West Wing, his regimented leadership style keeping the staff focused despite the political challenges of the second term. He won good reviews from congressional Democrats for his attempts to be more inclusive. Most importantly, he’s close to Obama — almost too close, his critics say, because they often make decisions in isolation. Even after the embarrassing rollout of HealthCare.gov last year, McDonough never appeared seriously in danger of losing his job, in large part because of the loyalty he’s shown the president and earned from the senior staff.
But in a slight, yet telling, shift, Democrats on both sides of the Capitol seem more willing to criticize McDonough than at any point over the past two years. Democratic aides who work closely with the White House say he’s now less trusted to be a person who can get through to the president and give him advice he doesn’t want to hear. That disenchantment could grow after the election, putting pressure on the president.
It’s still hard for many in the West Wing to imagine the White House without McDonough. But possible successors include new Ebola response manager Ron Klain and Jeffrey Zients, the chief economic adviser who led the overhaul of HealthCare.gov.
One of the biggest changes would come if Pfeiffer goes through with his long-expected departure. He took on a role that had already been refashioned when transferred from David Axelrod to David Plouffe to him. No final decision has been made, but Pfeiffer hasn’t disabused people of the speculation that he’ll head for the door sometime between next year’s State of the Union and the spring.
There is no heir apparent to Pfeiffer. Those sometimes chattered about as possible replacements, including Palmieri, White House political director David Simas and legislative affairs director Katie Fallon, are all well respected but don’t have as long-standing a relationship with Obama as Pfeiffer.
Though Pfeiffer’s position could remain even if he leaves — it has the lofty title of senior adviser to the president and an office across the hall from the Oval Office, which could help attract talent to a lame duck White House — some of the responsibilities could also be shifted or partly folded in with the senior counselor role held by John Podesta. That job will also likely be changed should Podesta transition out as expected to help run Hillary Clinton’s anticipated presidential campaign. He committed to spending only a year at the White House, and that year is almost up.
There’s no set candidate for Podesta’s job either, which has an office just next to the chief of staff’s (and technically is a few steps closer to the Oval Office). Podesta’s role has already been different from all-purpose fixer-slash-management-guru Pete Rouse, who held the job for the first five years of Obama’s presidency.
Ron Klain is also a possibility for the position but, for either job, he’s never quite clicked with Obama like McDonough or Pfeiffer has. Klain has wanted in at the White House for a while, both for the chief of staff job that went to McDonough and for the White House counsel opening that went to Neil Eggleston.
After three years of nonstop crises — and a daily commute from her Annapolis home — Palmieri is also considering her departure.
Palmieri accrued influence that eclipsed her title. Insiders describe the Clinton White House veteran as one of the key figures who orchestrated the rescue of Obama’s signature domestic achievement by helping run the response to the HealthCare.gov launch.
Possible successors include Ben LaBolt, the 2012 Obama campaign press secretary, though that would require him to leave the small firm he started with former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs; Brent Colburn, an adviser to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel who also served as communications director on the reelection campaign; and Amy Brundage, the deputy White House communications director. White House press secretary Josh Earnest is expected to stay in his current role.
Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, could also be heading out.
One of the president’s longest-serving aides, he started as a speechwriter for Obama’s 2008 campaign and eventually assumed the White House role of principal communicator on foreign policy. He’s maintained a brutal schedule writing the major foreign policy speeches, appearing as a spokesman on TV and serving as a counselor. He and his wife are expecting their first child — and though that may mean his schedule changes rather than that he leaves, his potential departure has become a topic of conversation in and around the White House.
Given Rhodes’s multiple roles and unique relationship with Obama, his exit — like Pfeiffer’s — would likely have an impact on Obama far beyond the exact job responsibilities.
“He will be hard to replace,” said one official who is close to the White House.
But some key players are seen as certain to stay, though their portfolios may be expanded or rejiggered. Those include Zients, senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, domestic policy adviser Cecilia Muñoz, Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman and Broderick Johnson, who runs the Cabinet Affairs office.
Staring down the prospect of a Republican-controlled Congress, the White House will likely be leaning on them more heavily to produce executive actions out of the White House and the agencies.
