President Obama and Mrs. Obama Honor Team USA at the White House

Of course, it's more important to me that Goolsebee is a Mac User...

Let's not play games. This Tax Cut Calculator is an important thing to learn about, but seeing that 15-inch MacBook Pro is somehow reassuring.

"Wonks have a preference for the bold plan, the single solution, the sweeping stroke. [Problem is, wonks] don't tend to get much done."

Mentioned ever so briefly in a post from yesterday, this is the most frequent complaint amongst my ideological colleagues (and folks like Sullivan). The President isn't doing enough. He needs to fight. He needs to lead more.  Blah-blah-the @#$%-blah...

Change the record already...

Here, Ezra goes into far more detail about the White House's thinking than I ever could:

The Obama administration's theory of policymaking amid divided government is a frustrating one. What most people want from the president is to lead. And leading, in this case, means giving a speech, getting behind some unpopular ideas, trying to change public opinion. It means acting like Jed Bartlet in the final five minutes of an episode of "The West Wing." "What are the next 10 words in your budget?" Obama is supposed to ask the Republicans after delivering his bout of tough fiscal medicine. "Your taxes are too high? So are mine. Give me the next 10 words. How are we going to do it? Give me 10 after that, I'll drop out of the race right now."

But the White House has come to the conclusion that that type of leadership doesn't work. It believes that the quickest way to kill a controversial proposal in a polarized political system is to have the president endorse it. Once a high-profile proposal is associated with the White House, Republicans (correctly) view its passage as a threat to their political fortunes. That's why the Obama administration didn't endorse a payroll tax holiday until after the election, when it emerged as part of the tax deal. Endorsing it before the election would've "poisoned the well," one administration official told me after. Republicans would have had to attack it, and that would have made it impossible for them to endorse it later.

Greenstein sees a similar theory at work in the budget. "I don't think Obama could’ve been clearer that he wants a bipartisan commission on Social Security like they had in the early '80s," he says. "But if you look at what came out of that commission, if those items had been in Reagan's budget the previous February, they would've been dead in 30 days."

Obama echoed this argument at his news conference Tuesday. "If you look at the history of how these deals get done," he said, "typically it’s not because there’s an Obama plan out there; it’s because Democrats and Republicans are both committed to tackling this issue in a serious way."

And are Democrats and Republicans committed to tackling this issues in a serious way? I guess we'll find out. "We're going to be in discussions over the next several months," Obama continued. "This is going to be a negotiation process."

The most serious work being done is in the Senate, where Mark Warner (D-Va.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) are meeting regularly to create legislation based off the Fiscal Commission's final report. In theory, that's the sort of project Obama is looking for: a negotiation between sitting senators of both parties. I asked Warner about this today. Should the White House have put its shoulder behind his process? "We're not at the point where the president should get involved yet," he replied.

Wonks -- myself included -- have a preference for the bold plan, the single solution, the sweeping stroke. Slow and incremental just isn't how people who care about policy tend to think. They want to solve problems, not make a bit of progress on them. And from that perspective, the budget was a huge disappointment. That's particularly true when compared to the Fiscal Commission's report, which took on the military, entitlements and tax expenditures. Love it or hate it, it was, at the least, ambitious. And policy types like ambitious.

But policy types don't tend to get much done. And although this administration has been enormously frustrating, what with its preference to let Congress take the lead, to draw few lines in the sand and to let the process play itself out, it's gotten a lot done. Much more than its critics would've expected at the beginning of any particular policy campaign the White House has kicked off. "Let’s face it," Obama said at his news conference Tuesday, "you guys are pretty impatient. If something doesn’t happen today, then the assumption is it’s just not going to happen. Right? I’ve had this conversation for that last two years about every single issue that we worked on, whether it was health care or 'don't ask, don't tell.' "

White Board: Goolsbee on the National Wireless Initiative (VIDEO)

Goolsbee speaks to the propeller head in us all:



In this White House White Board Austan Goolsbee, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, explains the National Wireless Initiative, which will help America win the future by building a 21st Century infrastructure.

Saying Farewell to Robert Gibbs (VIDEO)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Fare-thee-well, Robert Gibbs...

See you in Grant Park, in 2012.

The Bill Daley rundown...

Jonathan Bernstein:

When I was describing Rouse's strengths, I listed: "he's a problem-solver, he doesn't cultivate enemies, he knows the Washington landscape well, he has an excellent working relationship with the president." As far as I know, those all apply to Daley, as well, with the possible exception of an as yet unproven working relationship with Barack Obama. I'd say it's also a plus that Daley knows his way around a presidential campaign, since keeping the presidency running during one of those is going to be one of his challenges over the next two years. I like the idea that when the campaign demands that Obama absolutely, positively needs to be in San Dimas tomorrow or else California is lost, Daley will have a good idea of how to evaluate that request.

I can also say that my biggest hesitation about Rouse, enough to make me suggest at the time that Obama would be better off seeking someone else, was that Rouse does nothing to address the administration's biggest weakness, which is its administration of the executive branch departments and agencies. Daley, as a former cabinet secretary, should be more oriented towards that side of the presidency than the numerous former Hill staffers in the Obama WH (and, perhaps more to the point, the former Senator in the Oval Office) tend to be.

Greg Sargent:

This has all been argued already at length by others, but here goes. Obama's approach to the crises he inherited were by any sane measure mostly moderate and reasonable. The stimulus was smaller and less ambitious than most liberals wanted. The health care plan he adopted jettisoned the most liberal elements and embraced solutions once championed by Republicans. The Wall Street reform bill was the most sweeping overhaul of financial regulations in generations, but as observers across the spectrum have noted, it wasn't fundamentally transformative. Obama is winding down the Iraq War, but he escalated in Afghanistan. And he has embraced some controversial Bush policies on civil liberties and terrorism. And so on.

Despite all this, Republicans and conservatives have uniformly condemned the Obama administration as in the grip of unrepentant leftism run amok. Yet what's actually happened is that in so doing, Republicans have moved to the right, and we've all agreed to move what we arbitrarily call the "center" to the right in order to accomodate this.

The pick of Daley, however, will reinforce the conventional narrative that Obama has recognized the error of his ultraliberal ways and has picked a "seasoned Beltway hand" to steer the adminstration back to the center. Obviously this is only one of many things to consider about the Daley pick, and there may be many other good reasons to pick him that outweigh this problem.

But in interpreting the Daley pick, many commentators will be pointing to Daley's interpretation of the first two years as if it's, well, true. They'll assert that Obama has internalized it. And maybe the President has internalized the Daley interpretation of his young presidency. But that doesn't mean it has anything to do with what actually happened.

Ezra Klein (same article as before, but still...):

Perhaps Daley is simply an obscenely good executive vice president type: He seems to have impressed everyone who could one day promote him, alienated virtually no one (or at least no one who has come forward publicly) and effectively advocated for the interests of whoever happened to be paying him at the time.

Or maybe the answer is that the Obama administration has simply decided to tack right, and they figure the way to do that is to hire someone who legitimately believes that tacking right is a good idea. I don't find Daley's theory of politics persuasive, but if you wanted to get credit in the media for moving to the right, it'd help to hire someone who had publicly and clearly attacked your moves to the left.

But the evidence here really doesn't add up. Dean wanted more a vastly more progressive administration, but he likes the guy who wanted a vastly less progressive administration. The administration likes its own record but appears interested in hiring someone who doesn't. There's a widespread perception that the White House is too close to Wall Street, but the leading candidate for chief of staff is a top executive at J.P. Morgan. Oh, and he was on the board of Fannie Mae, too.

The Daley pick seems like a bad idea to me. The particular theory of politics he espouses seems woefully detached from the realities of the modern partisan environment.

Ezra went on to quote Jonathan Chait, so I'll go ahead and save you the trouble:

And there is the problem. I don't know what easy method there is to respond to McConnell's tactics. But Daley's method, allowing extreme positions to redefine the parameters of the debate, is almost surely the wrong way.

I think liberal criticism of some potential Obama nominees is overblown -- the fact that Gene Sperling got paid a lot of Wall Street money to run a charitable program doesn't bother me. But putting a figure like Daley in a position of strategic importance seems like a major blunder.

Andrew Sullivan (however briefly):

Look: he's chief-of-staff. That's about management more than policy. Let's judge him on that when we have the data.

When it comes to Bill Daley, there is only one thing I'm am surer of (other than Boehner crying in the next 24 hours)

What was it I said about Bill Daley? Oh yeah:

I'm not wild about William Daley coming into the White House as Chief of Staff, but I'm not that opposed to it happening either. (It's not impossible, but...) He seems qualified enough for the job, which is more than I can say for Ed Rendell (cough-cough, Joe Klein) In any case, I have my doubts about it happening.

Euuuhhh, shoulda stopped one sentence earlier than that.

First off, I've got to learn about these wide release trial balloons the Administration floats up. Whenever they make a decision, there's a wide release about who the choice is. There is a flurry of complaints (i.e. a flurry of activity on Huffington Post and Firedoglake), the Administration denies any hire has happened (which is technically true), then the hire happens anyway.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this procedure is? Other than a classic trial balloon to get any opposition to show its cards in advance. I think the White House would be better served in skipping step two, the denial portion, and just going ahead, making their decision, and living with the consequences.

Anyway, here's Ezra's piece on the New Chief of Staff, he expresses for me my own mixed feelings better than I ever could. (Thank you, Mr. Klein!)

Imagine I told you that one of the candidates President Obama is considering for chief of staff opposed the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, opposed doing health-care reform and led the Chamber of Commerce's effort to loosen the post-Enron regulations on the accounting and auditing professions. His major qualification for the job is that he's extremely well liked by the business community, in part because he routinely advocates for their interests and in part because he's a top executive at J.P. Morgan. His theory of politics is that the Democratic Party has become too liberal and needs to tack right. Last year, he doubled down on that argument by joining the board of Third Way.

Now imagine I told you that one of the candidates President Obama is considering for chief of staff has been endorsed by Howard Dean as a "huge plus" for the Obama administration and previously chaired Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. Dean, of course, was the great liberal hope in 2004, and has been a key voice for progressives ever since. Gore's 2000 campaign was a notably populist effort, in tone if not in content.

Now imagine I told you they were the same guy.

This is the mystery of William Daley. Reports suggest that he'll be named Obama's chief of staff fairly soon, perhaps as early as tomorrow. But how is it that a centrist banker who opposed the Obama administration's signature initiatives has such a large constituency among liberal political types both inside and outside the White House?

Daley certainly has his backers. The Obama administration, home to many liberals, clearly likes him. So does Howard Dean, and so did Al Gore. He's apparently quite popular among business leaders, as well. His performance shepherding NAFTA through the Congress certainly sounds like it was an impressive political feat, whatever you think of the underlying legislation.

Perhaps Daley is simply an obscenely good executive vice president type: He seems to have impressed everyone who could one day promote him, alienated virtually no one (or at least no one who has come forward publicly) and effectively advocated for the interests of whoever happened to be paying him at the time.

One more point, I say this to remind the Professional Left fans out there who think that this is the President tacking right, or that Daley will "manipulate" the President like they think Rahmbo manipulated Obama.

Right, the guy the President hires has somehow put the President under his sway. Now that's a Jedi mind trick!

As the Attorney General is the guy or gal who runs the Justice Department, as the Treasury Secretary is the guy or gal who runs the Treasury Department (and so on), the White House Chief of Staff is the guy who runs the White House. That is not the same as the guy who runs the Country. William Daley is guy who makes sure the ship runs smoothly, but the Captain (that'd be Obama) ultimately charts the course.

If I am sure of any one thing, other than Boehner crying sometime in the next 24 hours, is that some of my ideological colleagues are going to make the asinine assumption that Daley is somehow tacking this country rightward. He won't. If White House policy tacks rightward, it'll be Obama. Granted, it may be the consequence of a deal with the GOP, but it won't be Daley.

A great post about the William Daley non-hire, and how to feel about it by Ezra Klein

I'm not wild about William Daley coming into the White House as Chief of Staff, but I'm not that opposed to it happening either.  (It's not impossible, but...) He seems qualified enough for the job, which is more than I can say for Ed Rendell (cough-cough, Joe Klein) In any case, I have my doubts about it happening. The Citibank stench, at the end of the day, will overwhelm. Added to that, its supposed purpose probably won't work for the reasons Erzabelow outlines :

It's frankly slightly insulting to business leaders to say that their relationship with the White House relies on how many close personal friends they have in the building. It's not that that stuff doesn't matter, but what really matters, as you'd expect, are actual policy decisions. And the reason Daley is well liked by business, at least right now, is that he has been siding with them on major disputes. If he gets to the White House and stops doing that, he won't be as well liked among them.

If the administration wants more support from the business community, that's going to mean giving the business community more things that it wants, or at least fewer things that it doesn't want. So far, that's not happened because the administration has thought that good policy meant pushing some high-profile changes -- such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- that the business community really didn't like. If the administration decided it was wrong about that, and has resolved to not do things business doesn't like going forward, it can build a better relationship with the business community even without Daley. Conversely, if the administration plans to keep pushing policy it likes even if business doesn't like it, then relations with corporate America will be icy even if Daley is working the phones morning, noon and night.

You know the old saying, "nothing personal, this is just business"? Well, the business community knows it, too.

White House White Board: The Rebirth of the American Auto Industry (VIDEO)

Josh Marshall (via TPM) thinks these the White Board videos are "simultaneously quaint, bizarre and also kind of cool". I just think they're cool.



Clear-eyed, easy to understand Economics reporting (or anything related to Econ) is hard to find. Let's enjoy these while we have them.

In case you wanted a list of what the Obama Administration has done to create jobs (VIDEO)

This site is pro-Goolsbee. We don't just do the quick hit White Board videos, we also do the dry questions from CNN Money Editors and Viewers.



First question was money. Direct. Straight on. Well asked. Well answered.

The President believe in Science so much that... (VIDEO)

...so much that he actually held a Science Fair in the White House.



Mathematics projects? Anyone? Anyone?

(Those'd be crickets you're hearing, Dad. The kids these days, all they're into is their cool robots.  I mean, if your profession held bring down the economy, would you want to be a part of it?)

The President announced his upcoming appearance on the December 8th episode:

"In the episode, 'Archimedes Solar Ray,' Obama challenges hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman to prove the ancient Greek myth that scientist and polymath Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun," Deadline writes.

The White House confirmed the report to the Associated Press. "Obama has already taped his appearance," the AP writes. "Discovery said that episode will consider whether Greek scientist Archimedes set fire to an invading Roman fleet using only mirrors and the reflected rays of the sun."

The New York Times notes that the Archimedes myth was previously "busted" in 2006, but will be revisited for the President's episode.

The 'Mythbusters' producers were tight-lipped to the Times as to how Obama will participate in the proving or disproving of the myth, although it was acknowledged that the President's appearance will be used to raise interest in math and science in tandem with a White House educational effort.

Goolsbee vs. Colbert tonight on Comedy Central!

Yeah, that's right Fort McHenry's favorite Economist (and really, should anyone have a favorite economist?) is going to be on The Colbert Report, tonight.

The video will be here tomorrow.

Ezra Klein interviews Austan Goolsbee

I admit it.  I'm an unabashed fan full time White House Economist, and part-time Daily Show guest, Austan Goolsbee. Ezra talked to him today, and here are a few highlights:

EK: But on the point of middle-class incomes, the Congressional Budget Office looked at the question and concluded that extending the tax cuts indefinitely would lower incomes by 2020. In other words, it would actually hurt the economy.

AG: As you know, behind any statement like that is some model. In their model, they’ve made an assumption of what deficits do to the interest rate, and my understanding is they’re assuming a relatively significant impact. We’ve had a major deepening of the world capital market in recent years, and so the impacts of tax cuts on the interest rate may not be as big as they’re assuming. If you take a step back, the underlying fiscal crisis facing the country is driven by health-care inflation and entitlement spending. And so we need some outcome from the fiscal commission. But the center of that effort can’t be balancing the budget on the back of the middle class.

EK: The CBO also said that extending all of the tax cuts, including those for income over $250,000, would do less damage to the economy than just extending the middle-class tax cuts. Obviously you disagree, but why?

AG: Having been a major player in, and studied the academic evidence on, how people respond to changes in tax rates, I don’t think the old-style argument that high-income people have big responses to small changes in tax rates is warranted by the evidence. Even a casual look at our experience in the '90s and the 2000s suggests that high-income marginal tax rates aren’t the primary drivers of growth. Bill Clinton raised rates on exactly this group that we’re talking about, and it did not have a significant negative impact on the growth of the country. Then, in the 2000s, we cut high-income tax rates by as much as they’ve ever been cut, and we certainly did not experience a massive renaissance in economic growth. There should be a higher burden of proof on people saying that rates going up by four points on income above $250,000 will have a huge negative effect.

...

EK: There’s been some evidence coming out lately that when a country needs to balance its budget, spending cuts are better than tax hikes. We’ve seen this from Alesina at Harvard, from the IMF and from the CBO. Do you think that’s right?

AG: People are getting way out in front of the evidence on this. Those comparative studies are mainly on very small economies, nations that are 1/50th or 1/100th the size of the U.S. And what little countries did to deal with their imbalances are frequently not available for giant economies like the U.S. or Japan. More intense research shows that the primary way countries get out of fiscal holes is by increasing their growth rate. To posit that you have to either substantially cut spending or raise taxes belies the fact that what really matters is debt-to-GDP. In the U.S., we’ve often reduced that ratio without running surpluses by getting the growth rate up. The growth rate is a critical component of fiscal sustainability. The fiscal policy you can sustain depends on how big your GDP growth is.

EK: Looking at 2011, what are you optimistic about? What are you worried about?

AG: As Warren Buffett has said, in 1900, the Dow was at 50. In the intervening decades, we had World War I, a depression, World War II, flu pandemics, oil shocks, Vietnam. A lot of really major, negative things happened. And yet, by 2010, the Dow is at 10,000. The ultimate generative capacity of the U.S. economy is based on innovation, the quality of our workforce, the vibrancy of our markets, and how entrepreneurial our people are. And those things remain. We also have going for us the normal self-correcting mechanisms of recessions. People need to replace their cars, to get married, have children. Those underlying trends are in our favor. Second, the president has done a lot of things over the past few years to stop the freefall in the economy, which worked, and encourage the private sector to stand up, which we’ve done a lot on and have to keep pushing on.

Housing is a concern. Prices seem to have stabilized, but it remains a troubled area as there are a lot of vacant houses. State fiscal situations are very precarious. We’ve had eight months of private-sector job growth after 20 months of losses, but it’s getting balanced off by the trouble in state and local employment. In the first three months of this year, the data were coming in better than expected. Then there was the crisis in Europe, which shook confidence and the markets. The developed world remains in a tough spot. So international growth remains a concern for our exports.

The business cycle in the 2000s was driven by consumer spending faster than income growth and residential housing investment, and that was unsustainable. And so we’re trying to point to an older-style of recovery that’s business-investment driven, where consumption growth is proportional to income, and then a push on exports. Those three things can sustain a boom, but on each of those, there are reasons to be optimistic, but there are dangers. For the exports, if there’s no growth out of Europe, that’ll be a concern. On the investment side, there’s money on the sidelines, but there’s an uncertainty that demand isn’t there. And I’m optimistic on proportional consumption growth, as we had a pretty dramatic increase in the savings rate.

Joe Klein offers quite possibly the stupidest bit of advice I've seen put to print in a while.

To use Joe Klein own quote against Joe Klein: "I've always been a [Joe Klein] fan, even when I disagreed with him."

I've really been enjoying some of Mr. Klein's work recently, but his statement about a "debilitating" problem among Democratic Presidents struck me as monumentally stoopid:

I've always been a Rahm fan, even when I disagreed with him. Love the passion, the quickness, the candor. Ron Brownstein has a nice appreciation of what Emanuel actually believes here. But his departure--and Pete Rouse's imminent arrival--highlight a debilitating tendency that Democratic presidents have: they tend to go for chiefs of staff who have Congressional experience. Republicans tend to have chiefs with executive experience. This isn't ironclad: Bill Clinton started with an outside executive, Mack McLarty, who proved inadequate. Clinton then turned to the ultimate Congressional insider, Leon Panetta.

Why is this important? Because Democratic presidents too often find themselves in thrall to their Congressional leadership--which, in this largely Republican era has been the party's center of gravity. (Presidents come and go; Nancy Pelosi is eternal). They place too much emphasis on legislating, too little on leading; too much emphasis on deal-making, too little on managing and communicating. Thus, Obama has won a historic boatload of legislative victories, but he's had difficulty establishing his authority as the nation's Chief Executive. He certainly has befuddled the Americans I've spoken with during my September road trip and it seems clear that if Obama is going to win another term, he's going to have to find a chief of staff who understands that the President should stand above, and apart from, the Congress.

I don't know Rouse very well. I don't know what his priorities will be. Early reports emphasized his "calming" effect and his long career as a Congressional insider. But if this no-drama White House gets any calmer, it'll be comatose. There's a need for energetic, non-Congressional, non-insider voices in the inner circle. Some wise executives like Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell would be welcome.

Okay, let me get this straight.  Working with Congress, bad.  Getting Legislation passed, bad.  Respecting Congress as a co-equal branch, bad.  Pounding your chest, giving folks like you good copy, and dictating to Congress, good?

As much as I like Ed Rendell, as much as I sorta respect him, Rendell would be a train wreck as a White House Chief of Staff.  He has a mouth on him a mile wide, and he doesn't necessarily think before he speaks. (It's not to say that he doesn't, its just not an ironclad guarantee). He will have every bit the same problem McLarty and prove just as much of a disaster.

And tell me, with all the "executive experience" Bush 43 had at his disposal...how did that work out for ya?  How well did it work out for the country?  Mr. Klein might recall the massive hole the current President is digging out from because of the actions of the previous President.

Liberals, is this about getting @#$% done, or is it about enjoying the fight? I throw Joe Klein in the same category of Adam Green, in that Mr. Klein values the fight more than the outcome.  Then again, the fight always makes for better copy.   Ed Rendell would make for good copy.  Rahm made for good copy, and who in this article benefits most from there being good copy in the White House Chief of Staff's office??

MSNBC: "The least suspenseful announcement of all time..." (VIDEO)

The President's announcement of Rahmbo's departure, and Rahmbo's teary-eyed farewell address:

Our new Chief of Staff is the old (Senate) Chief of Staff...

...at least for now.

White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel will announce his resignation Friday, multiple administration officials said, continuing a series of key staffing changes ahead of the midterm elections.

Pete Rouse, a senior adviser who was President Obama's chief of staff in the Senate, is expected to fill the role at least on an interim basis, although several officials said he could wind up in the job permanently.

Obama will make two "personnel announcements" in the East Room at 11:05 a.m. Friday, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Thursday. Obama is expected to announce the Emanuel and Rouse moves at the same time, to maintain as much continuity as possible.

Emanuel has been setting the stage for his departure for weeks, since the moment outgoing Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (D) said he would not run for reelection. The question of whether and when Emanuel would leave has been a sizable distraction, people who work with the White House said, as other senior officials try to assess what the vacancy will mean and what other moves will be set in motion.

Rouse, a longtime former Senate staffer, is a popular choice among the White House staff. Already intimately involved in most major internal decisions, he is seen as a problem-solver, often wrestling with the president's most difficult dilemmas.

He is so well known in the Senate - where for many years he was a senior aide to then-Majority Leader Thomas Daschle - that he was often referred to as the 101st senator. Yet he has a much lower public profile than Emanuel's.

Beyond anything else, this is not a bad thing. The White House needs a change every once in a while.  With the exception of the President, these folks can't be expected to stay in their jobs for the full eight years (Hilly possibly excepted.  She seems to be lovin' that job.)  With Daley declaring he's not going to run again for Chicago Mayor, Rahm had to jump at this opportunity.

I've always been a Rahmbo fan. I like his style. I have found of the criticism he gets from the "professional left" a bit mystifying. It's like someone blaming the Offensive Coordinator for telling the Coach that we can't run the ball because the Defensive is too tough. Rahm's job was to read the tea leaves, and report what he thought could get done to his boss (you may know him as the President). The President calls the play.

From what I'm hearing, don't be surprised if Tom Daschle comes back to the White House as the permanent Chief of Staff, but that's just idle speculation at this point.  Moving over Biden's Chief of Staff (played by Kevin Spacey in the HBO Movie "Recount") also makes a lot of sense.

David Axelrod is going home...

The Washington Post speculated about this earlier today, but the (brrrr) Huffington Post has it official.  Axe is heading back to Chicago in 2011...to work on the President's re-election.

Fine with me.  He gets to go home, and the right guy is back helping on re-elect.

At least we're not bringing in a Dick Morris to do this.

Larry Summers: Professional Lightning Rod

From Ezra:

It's official. Larry Summers, the director of the National Economic Council, is leaving the White House. He'll be returning to Harvard before the end of the year.

Summers's announcement comes on the heels of Peter Orszag's and Christina Romer's departures, but it's unquestionably the biggest of the three. As head of the NEC, Summers ran the White House's economic-policy process. He was also, by most accounts, Obama's lead economic adviser. His West Wing office put him physically closer to the president than any other member of the team. His long experience in government -- including a stint as Treasury secretary during the Clinton administration -- gave him a level of political seasoning that the other council members didn't have, and that Obama relied on heavily at the outset of his presidency. His reputation for brilliance gave him an edge in an administration that prizes academic accomplishment.

But Summers was also the most controversial member of the team. He'd worked part time for a hedge fund before joining the Obama administration. His tenure at Harvard was marred by an unfortunate comment about whether women were less likely to excel at math and science than men. He participated in the deregulation of the financial sector under Bill Clinton. And Summers's strong personality made him a lightning-rod for criticism and dissatisfaction within the White House: Many felt that his role as economic adviser to the president had overwhelmed his role as manager of the president's economic process.

Summers wasn't much liked by liberals. Stephanie Taylor, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, said his departure is "a big victory for anyone who voted for change in 2008 only to see Summers work from the inside to water down Wall Street reform, block President Obama's promise to protect Net Neutrality, and urge other pro-corporate positions." But his role in internal debates was often unpredictable: Summers was one of the administration's strongest advocates for rescuing Chrysler. On the other hand, he was also fingered for vetoing Christina Romer's argument for a $1.2 trillion stimulus before it even got to the president's desk.

His departure leaves a tremendous power vacuum in the Obama administration's economic policy team -- and at the exact moment that the recovery seems to be slowing. With Orszag, Summers and Romer gone, the administration is without three of its strongest voices. That makes the choice on NEC director -- the person who will have to build and manage the economic policy process as the new team gets its footing -- a lot more important. With Summers, the administration got a very strong economic adviser, but not someone known for his managerial talents. Now, as a host of less senior voices vie for influence, the administration might approach the choice of his replacement differently.

The early reports are that the White House wants to replace Summers with a female CEO, if possible. One candidate might be Ann Fudge, the former CEO of Young and Rubicam Brands, and current director for GE, Unilever and Novartis. In February, the White House named Fudge as one of two CEOs serving on the president's bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, so she's certainly on their radar.

Two other obvious choices would be Summers's deputies: Jason Furman and Diana Farrell. Farell wasn't a CEO, but she did come straight from the decidedly private-sector McKinsey Global Institute, where she served as director. Previously to that, she worked at Goldman Sachs, which may not be a plus in this particular political moment.

Confirmed: Lawrence Summers is outta there!

Never mind. No more speculation. He's goin' back to Harvard.

Hey, Elizabeth Warren leaves Harvard. Larry Summers goes back. Good trade.

All but confirmed: Lawrence Summers is outta there!

I'm actually happy about this. Not so much the Huffington Post position that Larry Summers supposedly re-ruined the economy (he didn't, but I'm not sure how much he helped either)

At the end of the day, he was such an impediment to getting stuff done (too much of political knife fighter or drama creator in an anti-drama White House) that it was time for him to go.