WASHINGTON — William Daley is stepping down as White
House chief of staff and budget director Jack Lew is taking over
President Barack Obama’s team as it heads into a tough election year.
Daley gave his letter of resignation to the president
in a private meeting in the Oval Office last week, recounting the
administration’s successes of his one year on the job and saying it was
time for him to return to his hometown of Chicago.
Obama announced the change in leadership in a public
event Monday afternoon. The official shift will take place at the end of
the month, giving Lew time to complete the administration’s budget
proposal while Daley leads the team through the crafting of the State of
the Union address due in two weeks.
The choice of Lew puts a veteran staffer of the White
House, Capitol Hill and State Department in a critical position at a
difficult time for the president. Obama hopes he can work through tough
budget and economic issues with Congress this year despite fierce
opposition from Republicans in the GOP-led House. Having a strong team
captain who can deal with lawmakers, staffers and business leaders is
considered crucial to their strategy.
But aides say Obama had faith in Daley to lead that
effort, and that he had not been discussing making any changes prior to
last week. Daley’s letter took the president by surprise, said three
officials familiar with the personnel discussions that followed. They
requested anonymity to speak about the internal talks in advance of the
public announcement.
In October, Daley told Chicago reporters that he was
looking forward to returning to his hometown but that he would serve the
president through the duration of the re-election campaign. It had been
a grueling year for Obama that included a summer of fighting with
Republicans over the debt ceiling and related budget issues.
In November, Obama directed a change in the flow
chart at the White House, keeping Daley in charge but shifting many of
the day-to-day operational duties to Pete Rouse, a trusted aide who had
served as interim chief of staff. Friends said Daley would focus on
high-level managerial duties and be adviser and surrogate for the
president.
After winning an end-of-year victory in the extension
of the payroll tax cut, Daley went to Mexico and to Chicago to
celebrate Christmas and spend time with his wife and grandchildren. When
he came back, he told Obama right away that he had decided to leave.
“I have been honored to be a small part of your
administration,” Daley said in a letter to the president, dated Jan. 3
and obtained by the Los Angeles Times and Tribune Washington Bureau. “It
is time for me to go back to the city I love.”
During that meeting last Tuesday the president asked
Daley to take 24 hours to think it over. Daley returned the next day to
make it official.
In the Wednesday conversation, the officials said, Daley suggested to Obama that Lew be appointed as his replacement.
Lew served as budget director under President Bill
Clinton, and as deputy director of the Department of State under Hillary
Rodham Clinton before taking the budget job in the current
administration.
He has extensive experience on Capitol Hill, where he was a senior policy adviser to the late Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill.
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