Government Executive - Authors - Caren Bohan

A guide to Obama's staff reshuffling

Caren Bohan, National Journal — Fri, 25 Jan 2013 11:36:14 -0500

President Obama will tap Denis McDonough, a trusted longtime aide steeped in foreign policy and Capitol Hill experience, as his new chief of staff. Obama was set to announce the decision on Friday at 12:10 p.m. along with several other White House staff changes. The reshuffling is in keeping with Obama's management style of relying heavily on a tight inner circle of aides in his decision-making. Here is a look at the changes.

McDonough becomes Obama's fifth chief of staff: McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, is a foreign policy expert who worked for Obama during his days in the Senate and later advised the president's 2008 campaign. A White House official said Obama values McDonough's "intellect and good judgment." The official credited McDonough for playing a key role in the decisions from ending the war in Iraq to winding down the war in Afghanistan and in coordinating the U.S. response to the earthquake in Haiti and to the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan. McDonough, who is a former adviser to Sen. Tom Daschle, brings deep knowledge of Capitol Hill that could help Obama as he tries to navigate budget disputes with Congress and push a hefty legislative agenda of gun control and immigration. McDonough replaces Jack Lew, who has been nominated as Treasury secretary.

Dan Pfeiffer succeeds David Plouffe as senior adviser: Pfeiffer will succeed David Plouffe as a senior adviser, playing a big role in shaping Obama's message. Pfeiffer, a veteran of Obama's 2008 campaign, has been serving as White House communications director.

Jennifer Palmieri becomes communications director: Palmieri, who is currently deputy communications director, worked at the Center for American Progress think tank before she was tapped to work in the Obama White House. A former adviser to John Edwards's presidential campaign in 2004, Palmieri brings political seasoning and longtime relationships with many members of the press corps.

Other changes: Rob Nabors, the top White House liaison to Capitol Hill, moves to the job of deputy chief of staff. Tony Blinken, a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, becomes deputy national security adviser. Danielle Gray becomes assistant to the president and Cabinet secretary; Katy Kale becomes assistant to the president for management and administration; Lisa Monaco becomes as Obama's top counterterrorism adviser, succeeding John Brennan; Miguel Rodriguez becomes the new director of legislative affairs and David Simas becomes deputy senior advisor for communications and strategy.

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Why the former Washington governor is likely to join Obama's Cabinet

Coral Davenport and Caren Bohan, National Journal — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 16:05:47 -0500

President Obama hinted at his news conference this week that he would soon name some high-profile women to top jobs in his administration. Christine Gregoire, the former governor of Washington state, will almost certainly be one of them.

Gregoire, who has made energy issues a cornerstone of her gubernatorial tenure, is likely headed for one of three Cabinet-level jobs that are vacant now or will soon become vacant: Energy secretary, Interior secretary, or head of the Environmental Protection Agency. As a former head of Washington state's Department of Ecology, Gregoire is steeped in experience in energy and environmental issues. Her enthusiastic support for renewable energy has won plaudits from environmentalists, but she’s also known for her ability to speak effectively about the realities of the fossil-fuel economy.

After Obama nominated John Kerry as secretary of State, Chuck Hagel as Defense secretary, and Jacob Lew as Treasury secretary, he was hit with a barrage of criticism about the lack of diversity in his selections for plum jobs. In a column in The Washington Post, Ruth Marcus suggested that Obama ask to borrow Mitt Romney’s “binders full of women” to balance out a Cabinet that includes so many white men.

Gregoire would check that box but would also fill other crucial needs. Obama lacks an effective spokesperson within his administration for energy and environmental issues. Gregoire would fit that bill, bringing a comfort level on the national stage and an ability to tailor her message to a broad audience.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu has often quipped that he is a scientist and not a politician. He’s right. The Nobel Prize-winning physicist, who never relished the limelight, is expected to move on from his job early this year, though his departure has not yet been announced. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, who has already announced she is leaving, was considered a political lightning rod, limiting her ability to serve as a national spokesperson for Obama’s environmental agenda. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a former U.S. senator from Colorado who is leaving his post in March, does have an ease on the public stage, but he provoked controversy in 2010 with his vow to keep the administration’s “boot on the neck” of British Petroleum in the aftermath of the catastrophic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. More recently, Salazar was forced to apologize for another verbal gaffe when he was heard on tape threatening to punch out a reporter.

If Obama chooses Gregoire for Interior, it would be in keeping with a tradition of naming Western governors or politicians to the job, though she has an equal shot at the Energy or EPA positions. People close to the administration say she has been on the White House's radar for one of the senior energy and environment slots since before the election.

The timing could work out well for Gregoire, too. She finished her tenure as governor this week and there is buzz that she is interested in heading to the nation’s capital.

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Who is Denis McDonough, Obama's expected pick for chief of staff?

Caren Bohan, National Journal — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 15:53:13 -0500

President Obama is poised to tap Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough to become his next chief of staff, turning to a member of his close inner circle to fill one of the most important jobs in his administration.

Here's what you need to know about McDonough:

Broad portfolio: McDonough, 43, is the No. 2 to National Security Adviser Thomas Donilon and has a broader portfolio than his title suggests. As an adviser to President Obama's 2008 campaign, McDonough has had a lot of face time with the president. He has been a part of the decision-making on a huge range of national security issues, from Asia policy, to Afghanistan, to the Arab Spring, to Europe and Latin America. He was among the small group of aides in the room in May 2011 when Obama was monitoring the Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

No-drama style: A native of Stillwater, Minn., McDonough is even-tempered and is known within the White House as someone who is not a showboater. Those qualities that are highly valued by Obama, a fellow Midwesterner who, dating back to his campaign, prefers to keep drama and ego clashes to a minimum on his team.

A favorite with White House staff: McDonough is well liked among the White House staff. He is known for leaving thank-you notes for staffers when they have worked hard on a project. Former White House Deputy Communications Director Jen Psaki recalls receiving one such note from him for her work on Obama's hectic first overseas trip as president in 2009 when he traveled to London for the Group of 20 before heading to France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Turkey, and Iraq.

Legendary work ethic: Psaki describes McDonough as the "hardest worker on the planet." The description is in keeping with those of other White House aides who have worked with McDonough.

Capitol Hill experience: McDonough is a former aide to Sen. Tom Daschle and would bring Capitol Hill experience that could be helpful to Obama as he spars with House Republicans over fiscal issues and seeks to make headway on legislative priorities such as immigration reform and gun control. Although his main area of expertise is foreign policy, he is no novice when it comes to domestic politics, as a veteran of the White House and a former campaign aide.

Experience with the press corps: McDonough began his tenure at the White House National Security Council as a senior strategist on communications, a job in which he got to know many members of the White House press corps. Interacting with the press has traditionally been a part of the portfolio of chief of staff, although the amount of time occupants of the job spend on this can vary greatly. McDonough has some solid relationships with members of the press corps but also has had some tense interactions. The Obama White House is known for taking reporters to task when aides dislike an angle in a story. McDonough did not shrink from that part of the job.

Devout Catholic: McDonough is a devout Catholic and lives in Takoma Park, Md. with his wife and their three children. He grew up in a family of 11 children, one of whom became a priest.

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What Will Obama's Choice for Chief of Staff Say About His Management Style?

Caren Bohan, National Journal — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 12:28:00 -0500

Denis McDonough and Ron Klain, two men steeped in Capitol Hill and West Wing experience, are both front runners to succeed White House chief of staff Jack Lew, who has been tapped by President Obama to become the next Treasury secretary.

The pick of either McDonough or Klain would be in keeping with Obama’s pattern of filling the top jobs for his second term with people he knows well and trusts implicitly. The next chief of staff will be Obama's fourth. Of the three men who have served in the job under Obama, the even-tempered Lew best fit Obama's "no drama" management style. Either McDonough or Klain would be in sync with that ethos, too. Both are known as loyal, efficient and highly skilled at making things run smoothly. But McDonough, the deputy national security adviser, and Klain, former chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, would bring very different portfolios to the White House chief of staff role and the decision will say a lot about how Obama plans to approach his own job in the next four years.

McDonough’s foreign policy expertise could be a big plus since many two-term presidents choose to give a heavy emphasis to global affairs in their second four years. Obama’s first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, was a hard-driving former congressman who devoted a huge amount of time to pushing Obama’s domestic agenda through Congress, including the 2009 economic stimulus package and the president’s signature health care law. McDonough, a Minnesotan, has strong connections on Capitol Hill, having served as a foreign policy adviser to former Senator Tom Daschle.

McDonough, who has been a member of Obama’s tight inner circle since the 2008 campaign, has a much closer personal relationship with the president. While serving as foreign policy adviser to Obama during the 2008, McDonough logged many hours on the plane with the then-candidate. He was a top adviser during the transition before moving to the White House National Security Council, where his initial role was shaping the NSC's communications strategy. When Tom Donilon became national security adviser in 2010, McDonough moved to the No. 2 job at NSC.

Obama has long had a tendency to rely heavily for advice on a handful of close aides. Some critics see this approach as too insular but as Obama prepares to take the oath of office for a second time, he has not shown any inclination to want to change this aspect of his management style. Many people also believe he needs to do more to reach out to important constituencies, including Congress and the business community. David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official and expert on the NSC, says more outreach to Congress would be helpful for Obama but adds that either McDonough or Klain could become an important player in that effort.

Rothkopf says McDonough’s strong rapport with Obama would be an asset in the job. “Denis has the advantage of being close to the president,” he says. “In this White House, having the trust of the president is absolutely sine qua non if you want to actually be a player. And this president is very parsimonious with his trust.”

Klain also brings many strengths. Rothkopf describes him as a “formidable professional” who gets along well with people and “gets things done.” But Klain’s main ties to Obama are through Biden. Klain, who also served as chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore, played a big role in advising Gore in the 2000 election recount and was later portrayed by Kevin Spacey in a movie about the saga. After working for Biden for two years, he left the administration.

If Klain were to be chosen, it would indicate the rising influence of Biden within the administration. Donilon is a former Biden aide. Chuck Hagel, Obama’s nominee for defense secretary, and John Kerry, the nominee for secretary of state, both served with the president in the Senate but their ties with Biden, a 36-year Senate veteran, go back even further.

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Savvy strategy, not mandate, key for Obama on fiscal cliff

Caren Bohan, National Journal — Thu, 08 Nov 2012 09:05:55 -0500

Obama hopes to use the seven-week negotiations over the “fiscal cliff” of expiring tax cuts and automatic spending reductions to lay the ground work for a grand bargain that would involve Republicans agreeing to higher revenue in exchange for Democratic agreement to slowing the growth of spending on entitlements such as Medicare. The president got an initial signal of Republican willingness to engage when House Speaker John Boehner, R.-Ohio, said the GOP would be "willing to accept more revenue under the right conditions,” referring to the possibility of a broad reform of the tax code.

Indeed, Obama and his Democratic allies feel confident that they wield substantial leverage in the cliff negotiations because of the scheduled expiration of all of the Bush-era tax cuts at the end of this year. If no deal is reached, the rates go will up and Republicans could face an uphill battle trying to insist on reinstating the cuts for the wealthiest Americans along with the renewal of middle-class tax breaks that Democrats are seeking.

Still, jumping off the cliff could bring huge political fallout to all players involved, including President Obama. The stock market might panic at the prospect of $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts hitting an already sluggish economy and consumer confidence could plummet, a scenario that could play out as Obama is preparing to take the oath of office in January for a second time. And even if a temporary solution is found to the cliff, Obama must brace himself for extremely difficult negotiations, said Dick Gephardt, the former House Democratic leader and a veteran of past budget and tax negotiations.

“When you’re talking about big fiscal issues of the kind we’re talking about here, my view is that nobody has a mandate and nobody has leverage. There’s nothing good in any of this politically. That’s what you have to understand. From a politician’s standpoint, a member of Congress in either party, at the end of the day, they really don’t want to vote for any of this stuff because it’s all bad. It’s all pain. It’s all toxic,” Gephardt told a National Journal panel on the fiscal cliff on Wednesday.

Both Gephardt and former Republican Sen. Bob Bennett, who also spoke at the National Journal panel, said it would be crucial for Obama to draw from the lessons of the 2011 debt limit debacle and try a different approach to his negotiations with Congress that involves engagement, not just with Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R.-Virginia, but also efforts to reach out to a broad swathe of Republican and Democratic lawmakers as well as stakeholders outside of Congress.

“There are a lot of calculations going on right now at leadership levels, in both houses, in both parties, with the White House breathing a huge sigh of relief that the (pre-election) polls all were right” but also trying to figure out how to approach the fiscal cliff, Bennett said.

Many Democrats expect Obama to begin a campaign-style tour to try to rally support for his positions on the fiscal cliff and long-term budget issues. Even before the election, the White House began setting the stage for the upcoming negotiations, trying to reassure liberal advocacy groups about the importance of tackling the effort at a grand bargain. The White House believes that without a budget deal, it will be much harder to move on to other items on Obama's second-term agenda, such as immigration reform.

Bennett said Obama should consider at some point convening a large “summit” of lawmakers at Camp David or another location away from the Capitol. Ahead of the 1990 budget agreement under President George H.W. Bush, intensive rounds of talks took place at Andrews Air Force Base.

Criticizing the White House strategy during the 2011 debt limit talks, Bennett said Obama needs a “creative, get-down-in-the-weeds” approach this time. During the debt limit saga, Obama held a handful of secret meetings at the White House with Boehner that were later widened to include Cantor. While the talks covered the broad outlines of what a bipartisan budget deal might look like, they did not involve nitty-gritty details. “He was still the college professor at the University of Chicago who got a few of the faculty together and said let’s talk this through. Well, this process doesn't work that way,” Bennett said.

Speaking to reporters as he flew home to Delaware from Chicago on Wednesday, Vice President Biden acknowledged the enormous task ahead on fiscal issues. Pressed on his view of the message from the election, the vice president said: “My takeaway is that we've got a lot of work to do.”

Biden, who is sure to be a crucial player in the fiscal cliff negotiations, did signal that he thought that Democrats had a mandate on the tax issue, saying that Republicans needed to “digest” the signal voters were trying to send.

But House Deputy Whip Peter Roskam, R.-Illinois, sounded equally confident that Democrats eventually would give ground on the upper-income tax cuts, noting that prior to the election their public statements had sometimes left some “ambiguity about who’s rich,” with Obama putting the threshold at $250,000 in annual household income while some other Democrats suggested it might be better to peg it at $1 million. What that means, Roskam said, is that the president will be able to show "dexterity" and extend current rates to next year as a bridge to tax reform, Roskam predicted.]]>

Treasury chief wrestles with legacy amid Libor scandal, economic worries

Caren Bohan, National Journal — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 09:19:00 -0400

“I find that deeply offensive,” Geithner said. “I think it’s deeply unfair, unjustified.”

The secretary, who will wrap up a four-year tenure at the helm of Treasury in January, is struggling to shape his legacy as worries persist about the health of the economic recovery and a scandal over manipulation of the Libor interest rate gives fresh ammunition to critics who accuse him of coddling the financial sector.

Geithner, a former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York who served as a top lieutenant to then-Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin during the Clinton years, is President Obama’s longest-serving economic adviser.

When he chose Geithner for Treasury in 2008, Obama viewed him as essential to rescuing the economy from its worst crisis since the Great Depression. As Europe's debt crisis and a “fiscal cliff” standoff in Congress threaten to derail an already fragile economic recovery, all indications are that Obama has every bit as much confidence in Geithner as he did four years ago. Perhaps even more.

Indeed, when Geithner’s family had to move back to New York a year ago so his son could finish high school there, Obama went to lengths to persuade the secretary to stay on at Treasury and even made a special plea to Geithner’s wife to get her on board with the decision.

But throughout his tenure, Geithner has remained the ultimate insider, wielding huge clout within the administration, even as he has come under fire at times with members of Congress. Although he has a dark sense of humor that the president and his colleagues appreciate, Geithner is often reserved in public. He is far more in his element leading a meeting at Treasury or debating economic policy in the Oval Office than he is at playing the role of economic salesman on television or in the industrial heartland.

As much as he tried, he can’t seem to shake the perception that he has hewed too closely to Wall Street’s views in his policy stances on everything from housing to the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform legislation.

It is a perception that dates back to Geithner’s days at the New York Fed when he became a chief architect of the Troubled Asset Relief Program--the $700 billion bailout of the financial sector. The view has also been reinforced by a series of books on the Obama economic team, including a new one called Bailout, by Neil Barofsky, the former TARP watchdog, and another one, The Escape Artists, released earlier this year, by New Republic Editor Noam Scheiber.

The criticism has an even greater sting to it for Geithner at a time when the Libor case and a series of other scandals have heightened the public’s distaste for Wall Street and Too Big to Fail Banks.

In the Charlie Rose interview, Geithner lamented that many people believe that he arrived at Treasury via Goldman Sachs, the Wall Street firm once headed by Rubin, the secretary’s predecessor and former mentor. In fact, Geithner has spent almost all of his career in public service and has never worked for a private bank.

Lee Sachs, a former top adviser to Geithner at Treasury who is now chief executive at Alliance Partners, said that the secretary has never been guided by anything but a desire to do what was needed to boost jobs growth and lift the economy.

“Every single decision that we made was viewed through the lens of what’s best for Main Street, not what’s best for Wall Street,” Sachs said.

“When you’re in an environment where the economy is shrinking at a 9 percent annual rate, where the country is losing 800,000 jobs a month, where businesses and households and … municipalities can’t borrow, the best thing you can do for Main Street is to put out those financial fires,” he added. “If we hadn’t done that, millions and millions more people would be out of their homes.”

Indeed, many economists believe that Geithner’s instincts as a financial firefighter served the economy well in the aftermath of the September 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers.

“I see Tim Geithner’s strengths and weaknesses as being two sides of the same coin,” said William Galston, a scholar at the Brookings Institution and a former domestic policy adviser to President Clinton. “He understands how Wall Street and the banking systems operate. That kind of intuitive, experience-based feel served the administration reasonably well during the peak moments of the crisis.”

But Galston added, “That very same experience and outlook blinded him to some of the other dimensions of that crisis and its consequences, including the sense of outrage that many Americans felt.”

Ross Baker, a political-science professor at Rutgers University, agreed that Geithner’s tenure will be remembered as a complicated one.

“History is going to be wrestling with Tim Geithner’s role for years,” Baker said.

But even before history renders its judgment, either Obama or Mitt Romney will face an important decision in a few months when one of them will need to pick a successor to Geithner.

Rubin, with his unflappable manner and Goldman Sachs seasoning, was once seen as a model for many Democrats and even some Republicans of a modern-era Treasury secretary. Nonetheless, President George W. Bush departed from that model, naming former captains of industry Paul O’Neill and John Snow as his first two Treasury secretaries before turning later to former Goldman Sachs chief executive Henry Paulson.

Rubin was succeeded by his deputy, Lawrence Summers, a Harvard economist who had also served as chief economist at the World Bank.

Few names have surfaced yet as potential Geithner replacements in either a second Obama administration or a Romney administration.

But The New York Times has mentioned Gary Gensler, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, as someone who could fit the bill. Other names tossed around should Obama win reelection include Princeton University professor Alan Blinder and former FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair--although Bair’s odds of getting the job might be slim because she has often clashed with members of the Obama administration, including Geithner.

Potential Republican picks could include Glenn Hubbard, a former White House economist under Bush and a current adviser to Romney, or Phil Gramm, the voluble former senator from Texas.]]>