Obama Takes Control In The Second Term
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has begun his second term by consolidating his personal control of the White House, Democrats in and outside the Administration say, reflecting a shift from his less centralized first term.
The shift has become clear in the new style of management under Obama's new Chief of Staff, Denis McDonough, who — unlike his predecessors — acts more as Obama's enforcer than as a principal in his own right.
Once, McDonough's predecessors, notably Rahm Emanuel, made strategic choices and served as the key liaisons to Congress. Now, Obama sets the strategy and priorities and makes the calls to Capitol Hill himself; and the chief of staff's role has been handed to a trusted ally who shares the president's vision. Obama "is in complete control of the White House," said Jonathan Prince, a Democratic political consultant who was a foreign policy aide in Obama's first term. And the coming years will reveal whether the president's command of the details, and sense of himself as the smartest man in the room, will produce a newly effective presidency, or a worrisome centralization.
"Denis is the most powerful chief of staff he's had, because he is completely aligned with the president," Prince said. "Obama doesn't have to worry what Denis' own agenda is, because Denis' agenda is Obama's agenda."
more
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/obama-takes-control-in-the-second-term
= new reply since forum marked as read
