Bill Daley, who has directed Obama's White House since January of 2011, has handed in his resignation. See some of history’s best and worst chiefs of staff.
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Obama’s new chief of staff, Jacob Lew, has been in and out of Washington for decades. He started his career as a congressional aide in 1973. Lew, the current director of the Office of Management and Budget, served in the same position under President Bill Clinton. A member of the Council on Foreign relations, Lew has worked in the State Department and served as the chief operating officer at Citi Global Wealth Management. He has also been an executive vice president of New York University..
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This Chicago native son grew up in one of America’s most lauded political households. Both Daley’s father and brother served as mayor of the Windy City, recreating Chicago in their own image. According to Newsweek’s Jonathan Alter, Daley’s appointment had less to do with the challenges that face Obama in Washington than the 2012 election. The former manager of Al Gore’s presidential campaign, Daley is the consummate political executive whose charge was getting Obama re-elected in 2012. Unfortunately, he won’t make it to the election. Daley demoted himself this fall after repeatedly butting heads with both parties’ congressional leaders. Just months later, he stepped down entirely, reportedly surprising the president with his wish to spend more time with his family.
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Rouse, the once and future chief of staff, will reportedly return to managing the West Wing. Previously, Rouse worked as interim chief of staff for Obama, bridging the gap between Rahm Emanuel and Daley. He served for only a couple months before Daley took over, but they were wild months that saw the Obama administration go from its midterm shellacking to its eleventh-hour legislative successes. Rouse will be well suited to his half of the chief of staff duties: the longtime Obama consigliere is known around Washington as an impeccable behind-the-scenes operator.
Pete Souza / The White House
The architect of the Democrats’ successful 2006 congressional election and veteran of the Clinton White House, Rahm Emanuel was well on his way to his dream of becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House before his fellow Chicagoan Barack Obama asked him to take the top White House job. Everyone has a favorite “Rahm” story—first name only, please—from the time he sent a rival operative a dead fish to the day he lost his middle finger working the meat slicer at Arby’s. Hard-nosed and potty-mouthed, Emanuel brought a street fighter’s instincts to a White House said to be unfamiliar with the ways of Washington. In October 2010 he resigned from his position as chief of staff in order to run for mayor of Chicago, a position vacated with the retirement of Richard Daley, Bill’s brother.
Pete Souza / The White House
In a White House full of swaggering Texans, Andrew Card was a Massachusetts Yankee, although his ties to Bush Land stretched back to 1980, when he drove George H.W. Bush around the Bay State. Card later served in Bush Sr.’s Cabinet as transportation secretary. A one-time automobile executive, Card was George W. Bush’s chief of staff from 2000 to 2006, the longest stint of anyone since the Truman days. Card’s image will be forever embedded in American history because of his cameo on Sept. 11. It was Card, captured in an infamous photograph, who informed Bush that the nation was under attack.
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Mack McLarty became a cautionary tale for all future presidents about the dangers of giving an old pal from home one of the toughest gigs in Washington. Friends with Bill Clinton since kindergarten, McLarty was so nice that he earned himself the nickname, “Mack the Nice.” But warmth didn’t translate into a winning performance. Many complained that the disorder that dominated the early years of the Clinton White House fell at McLarty’s door. Clinton veteran Alice Rivlin once said of McLarty, “He’s not tough enough to be chief of staff.”
Danny Johnston / AP Photo
If Mack McLarty wasn’t tough enough to be chief of staff, Clinton figured that Leon Panetta, then the head of the Office of Management and Budget, might be up to the job. The longtime California congressman held onto the position from 1994 to 1997. His influence continues today in Washington, where he now works as secretary of defense. But Panetta’s reign wasn’t without difficulties. He had trouble finding common cause with Dick Morris, the opportunist political consultant Clinton welcomed to the White House in 1994. Later, after Panetta had left the White House, it was his intern, Monica Lewinsky, who was found keeping company with the president.
Joe Marquette / AP Photo
With the possible exception of Peter Rouse, James Baker is the only man to have served as chief of staff more than once. Baker was Ronald Reagan’s first chief of staff and George H.W. Bush’s last. The pre-eminent Republican wise man, Baker’s ties to the Republican establishment date back to his days when he was George H.W. Bush’s doubles partner at the Houston Country Club in the 1950s. Between his chief of staff gigs, Baker filled in as treasury secretary. After that, he switched over to secretary of state. By 2000, Baker was called upon by George W. Bush to be the front man of the Republican’s Florida recount fight.
Charles Tasnadi / AP Photo
“I’ll be doing the whole thing now.” That was Donald Regan’s message to Ronald Reagan when took over as chief of staff in 1985. In Regan’s estimation, the Reagan White House was in need of strong-minded director to make sure the administration’s star could think beyond the daily script. By reputation, Regan was viewed as overplaying his hand, appointing himself America’s prime minister. That the Iran-Contra fiasco was carried out under his nose didn’t further Regan’s reputation. Perhaps his biggest rival was Nancy Reagan, who liked to change her husband’s schedule based upon a reading of zodiac signs.
Dennis Cook / AP Photo
A veteran of the Nixon administration, Donald Rumseld served as Gerald Ford’s chief of staff. The two first became friends during their years together in the House of Representatives in the 1960s. Rumsfeld was kicked upstairs—appointed Ford’s defense secretary—during the Halloween Massacre of 1975 when a number of cabinet members were given more conservative replacements. Rumsfeld, of course, would go on to have many other acts in Republican administrations, most memorably his term as defense secretary under George W. Bush. He resigned from that position following the Abu Ghraib scandal.
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Dick Cheney was given his first promotion in Washington when he was offered a position on Donald Rumsfeld’s staff at the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1969. In 1975, Cheney followed Rumsfeld again, this time in the chief of staff’s office under President Gerald Ford. Cheney was only 34-years-old, becoming the youngest man to ever hold the position. It wouldn’t be Cheney’s last appearance in the White House. When George W. Bush was looking for a vice president, he appointed Cheney to do the looking. Cheney came up with Cheney. By the end of the Bush years, most liberals convinced themselves that they had actually lived through the Cheney presidency.
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H.R. Haldeman spent 51 months as chief of staff in Richard Nixon’s White House. He then spent 18 months in prison for what he did there. Haldeman was notorious for keeping Nixon at a distance from other staffers. After playing a leading role in the Watergate scandal, Haldeman was forced to resign. In 1975, Haldeman was sent to prison, convicted on charges of conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Halderman prided himself on his loyalty to his boss, bragging once that he called himself “the president’s son-of-a-bitch.”
A former Army general, Haig was appointed chief of staff by Richard Nixon following H.R. Halderman’s resignation. While Nixon tended to the fallout from Watergate, Haig was the one who kept the White House afloat—if just barely. He provided some continuity after Nixon’s own resignation when he agreed to stay on as President Gerald Ford’s chief of staff. Haig was later appointed secretary of state by Ronald Reagan. (He memorably burst into the White House pressroom following an assassination attempt on the president to declare, “As of now, I’m in control here in the White House.”) Haig’s presidential ambitions never subsided. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in 1988.
Steelman is the first—and likely only—chief of staff to be described in his New York Times obituary as a “onetime hobo from Arkansas.” He’s also considered the first person to hold the chief of staff position, after he was promoted to assistant to the President in December 1946. Steelman, fit for a man who once rode the rails, preferred being called “the President’s chief chore boy.” His biggest claim to fame was his role in ending a 52-day strike by steel workers, one of the most damaging work stoppages in U.S. history.
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A lawyer by training, Leo McGarry served as labor secretary before being made chief of staff by The West Wing’s fictional President Josiah Bartlet. In fact, it was McGarry himself who traveled to New Hampshire in 1997 to convince the New Hampshire Governor to seek the Democratic nomination. McGarry eventually ran as the Democrat’s vice-presidential candidate but died before serving in office. Leon Panetta [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/media/west_wing/spencer.html] once observed, “Any administration that would have Leo McGarry as a chief of staff would be very, fortunate.
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