AP: Obama chooses Daley as next chief of staff

[Pale Blue Dot]

Source: MSNBC

The banking exec will replace interim chief of staff Pete Rouse.

WASHINGTON — Two administration officials tell The Associated Press that William Daley will be the next White House chief of staff.

President Barack Obama has chosen Daley, a former commerce secretary, to replace interim chief of staff Pete Rouse.

Rouse, who did not want to stay in the job and recommended Daley for it, will remain at the White House in a senior position as counselor to Obama.

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40948075/ns/politics-white_house/

---

Well, this make me unhappy, but I doubt that the President is worried about me.

[lamp_shade]

1. Wonderful. Good news.

[earthside]

Wonderful ...

... if you're Lloyd Blankfein.

They might as well just stop the charade at the White House and officially turn the Oval Office into the Goldman Sachs bureau station in the executive branch.

[earthside]

16. JP Morgan ...

Sorry, I got my casinos mixed-up.

I meant "Wonderful if you're Jamie Dimon."

But, really, what's the difference? We might as well call it the 'Banker's Branch' in the Oval Office.

[lamp_shade]

27. .oops

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[harun]

3. We need an amendment to the constitution to institute a separation of Corporations and State!

[abelenkpe]

6. +1 nt.

[still_one]

4. I now have a real concern that social security and medicare will be privatized /nt

[harun]

32. That is the agenda

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=439&topic_id=126681&mesg_id=126681

Third Way Board Chairman John Vogelstein added: “Bill will play a significant role in helping Third Way create and promote an economic growth agenda—reducing deficits, reforming entitlements, increasing exports, and driving investments in infrastructure and innovation. No one has better experience to bring to this task—as Commerce Secretary he oversaw a period of extraordinary economic prosperity, expanded trade and fiscal discipline.”

[abelenkpe]

5. Woo Hoo!

A big bank exec as White House chief of staff. How completely unexpected.

[Name removed]

37. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

40. I can defend this!

I can defend this!

[dflprincess]

45. !

:rofl:

[Blue_In_AK]

46. You're so bad.

:rofl:

[Spike from MN]

49. LOL!

:rofl:

[South End Liberal]

7. Mr. Pro NAFTA, JPMorgan Chase as chief of staff

From Yahoo News:
Daley made his name in politics as a special counsel to then-President Bill Clinton, coordinating the successful campaign to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement and then serving as Clinton's commerce secretary. Later, he ran Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign and the historic recount effort that ended with Gore conceding the race to George W. Bush.

Daley went into business after that race, and is now Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase.



The Daleys have a reputation in Illinois as the "Chicago Mob" of politics. They are to Democratic politics what the Bush family is to Republican politics.

Add to that background William Daley's efforts to get NAFTA passed and his current connections to foreclosure-gate Chase... could Obama have made a more revealing choice? :sarcasm:

[EFerrari]

12. Foreclosuregate. Hadn't thought of that.

Welcome to DU.

[Zen Democrat]

8. Howard Dean gave him the thumbs up last night. Good enough for now. nt

[closeupready]

30. Yes, because, among other things, they helped Kennedy win.

The Daleys can shift with political winds (sometimes, unfortunately, to the right), but they are good, committed Democrats.

[SteppingRazor]

50. If you're going to go that far back in history to defend the Daleys we could also bring up 1968.

Did the Democratic Convention in Chicago, and more importantly the police riot outside it, make the Daleys "good, committed Democrats," or good, committed cryptofascists?

Personally, I don't think it makes much sense to judge William Daley based on the actions of his father, good or bad. And looking specifically at the career of William Daley, I think it's a little tin-eared to put a career banker in as the White House chief of staff at a time when bankers are one of the few professions more loathed than politicians.

Of course, that's just the political aspect of it. (Also with regard to politics, this will provide ammo to the "OMG, Obama is part of the corrupt, Chicago political system" subgenre of conservative criticism.) But casting aside the political spin on this, which only seems to work in favor of Obama's critics, there's the meat of the argument -- namely, how good a chief of staff will William Daley be? And in that sense, as a former corporate president and COO, cabinet secretary and presidential campaign chairman, he's probably well-suited to the duties of the job. As an occasional critic of the president from the left, I myself am skeptical of Daley's ability to advise the president given his former role in high finance, but I'm largely agnostic on this, and would prefer to see how he pans out over the coming months.

[Historic NY]

9. I'd bet he can be the GOP's nightmare.

[bvar22]

10. Why not just give the Chamber of Commerce....

...their own wing at the White House? :shrug:

[PDittie]

11. 'Unsavory":

Much discussed has been Daley's fairly public disapproval of the president's health care reform package, which he castigated as either an overreach or a miscalculation. "The election of '08 sent a message that after 30 years of center-right governing, we had moved to center left -- not left," he told The New York Times.

Equally illuminating, however, is the stance Daley took on the other major piece of domestic legislation passed during the past two years: financial regulatory reform. Daley, reportedly, was not exactly enamored with a new consumer financial protection agency, a key element of the plan and one of the president's most cherished provisions, going so far as to lobby White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to drop the idea.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/04/william-daley-rumored-chi_n_804254.html

Thinks healthcare reform was a bad idea because it was 'too left'. One of the top guys at JPM Chase -- they took bailout money, didn't they? -- and then decried financial reform, and pulled strings with Rahm to get the administration to shitcan it.

I think the world of Dean -- as indicated in my sig line -- but I can't line up with him on Daley. He's an enemy of the middle class, the working class, and a heavyweight hippie-puncher. CoS is the president's gatekeeper. Someone wrote the other day that Obama has nearly no progressives advising him as it is. Daley is much less coarse than Rahm, but has the same mentality and is probably even worse when it comes to progressive interests.

BOHICA

[frylock]

13. gee just the other day we were all assured by the usual suspects that this was a BS rumor

[FiveGoodMen]

15. The usual suspects are out of their god-damned minds.

[frylock]

20. well now they're trying to convince everyone what a great decision this was..

howard dean is cools with it. :eyes:

[somone]

14. Great. A tried and true corporate whore

who will work tirelessly for the poor and the middle class, I'm sure

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

41. You're getting the swing of it.

Bravo!

[msongs]

17. what? no republicans available lol nt

[Bragi]

36. Or no-one from Goldman Sachs? /nt

[onehandle]

18. Comment withheld. nt

[FarCenter]

19. Daley is a politician, not a banker

JP Morgan Chase hired him about the time of the Bank One merger with JP Morgan Chase.

Bank One was by then headquartered in Chicago as a result of the prior merger with First Chicago NBD.

In order to placate the Democratic machine in Chicago, JPMC hired the mayor's brother with a big title and big compensation (but with no organization to manage nor any actual banking responsibilities) as JPMC's public relations honcho for the midWest.

[deminks]

21. Great. What new names will this one call us? Rahm 2.0

I am so excited. And I just can't hide it. I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.

[FlyByNight]

22. The more things change...

...etc., etc., etc.

Not surprised. I would've been shocked if anyone vaguely left of center was picked for CoS.

[EFerrari]

23. It would have been nice to pick someone whose company wasn't turning people out

of their homes illegally.

[alp227]

24. ick, i knew this was gonna happen

As Cenk Uygur predicted yesterday. I doubt that holding hands with big corporate types will help Obama in 2012; aren't voters angry at those types already now?

[placton]

25. it's always hard for me to decide

will this new guy be Goebbles or Himler? Yet another reason not to EVAH vote for Obama.

[AngryAmish]

26. Gotta keep an eye out for the Boss

[lamp_shade]

28. This thread is hysterical. n/t

[closeupready]

31. I agree. At the same time,

I think people are habituated to being disappointed in Obama's choices, so maybe some people here are on auto-pilot?

[EFerrari]

34. Where is the humor? This guy headed up Chase while it was turning families

out of their homes illegally. Lobbied against financial sector reform, was against Obama's health insurance bill.

Someone is on auto pilot but it's not us. :)

[mvd]

43. Agree. This is not the direction I want Obama to go in

Bad sign for the next two years.

[lamp_shade]

38. Kinda looks that way, doesn't it.

:banghead:

[Frank Booth]

48. Is there a good reason not to be disappointed with this choice?

[closeupready]

29. Good, I like the Daleys.

Good Democratic history. :)

[seafan]

33. Bill Daley, 2009: To the liberals, sit down and STFU. We must steer a more moderate course.

Obama names William Daley as new chief of staff, January 6, 2011

All that is required for the Democratic Party to recover its political footing is to acknowledge that the agenda of the party's most liberal supporters has not won the support of a majority of Americans -- and, based on that recognition, to steer a more moderate course on the key issues of the day, from health care to the economy to the environment to Afghanistan.

.....

----William Daley, in an op-ed in the Washington Post, December 24, 2009

But when White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel called a top J.P. Morgan executive to ask for the bank's support in creating a new consumer-protection agency, the executive--former Commerce Secretary William Daley--said no, according to people familiar with the conversation. His boss believed that sufficient consumer safeguards were already on the books.

----Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2010, via Sam Stein at HuffingtonPost

Mr. Daley, who has not responded to requests for comment, is also known to offer blunt advice and criticism. He thought the president and Democratic leaders in Congress overreached on some of their priorities in the last two years.

“They miscalculated on health care,” Mr. Daley said in an interview last year with The New York Times. “The election of ’08 sent a message that after 30 years of center-right governing, we had moved to center left — not left.”

A decision to bring Mr. Daley into the heart of the administration could further annoy Mr. Obama’s liberal base, who frequently accused Mr. Emanuel of encouraging the president to compromise on liberal principles to achieve legislative goals.

Mr. Daley, who was chairman of Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign, helped Mr. Clinton pass the North America Free Trade Agreement, which is blamed by many union workers and liberals for helping to move jobs overseas.

Mr. Daley is also the Midwest chairman of JPMorgan Chase & Co., who also serves as the bank’s head of corporate responsibility. If selected to join the Obama administration, his ties to Wall Street are among the elements of his background that would likely be criticized by left-leaning groups.

.....

NYTimes, January 3, 2011

To recap, William Daley opposed the creation of a consumer protection agency; opposed health care reform with a public option; helped Clinton pass free trade agreements; is a Wall Street bankster; is pushing a "more moderate course" on the environment and Afghanistan; pointedly marginalizes liberal voices. This is much more than we need to know to assess this appointment.



So he deserves to have the constant ear of the president? Obama thinks so.


There is no misreading this appointment. Nor any credible defense of it.


We should just simply clap more loudly, fellow liberals.

[mvd]

44. Seeming "moderate" may help win a campaign, but..

governing like you care about everyone but your base will not keep the momentum going. When McConnell is happy about a choice, there's need for worry. Too much corporate focus in this administration.

[pam4water]

51. Would that a be golf clap?

[Frisbee]

35. ..."but I doubt that the President is worried about me."

That depends, are you a corporation?

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

39. This needs to be at the top

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

42. for a month or three

[mbperrin]

47. Why does no one mention this is the son of one Mayor Daley and

the brother of another?

Reading the stories is like, this guy is just some prominent national politician. Let's face it - he's part of the Daley machine.