Daley: What he’ll do for Obama

“So much for the notion of Barack Obama as a closet radical,” said the Chicago Sun-Times in an editorial. The president last week announced as his new chief of staff William Daley, 62, a JPMorgan Chase executive with a lifetime���s worth of ties to the corporate world. Daley may be a Democrat, said Larry Kudlow in National Review Online, but he’s as pro-business as Democrats come. A former Commerce secretary under President Clinton, Daley helped negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, and last year he spoke out against the misguided Dodd-Frank “reforms” of the banking sector. Putting someone like Daley in such a key role will do a lot to dispel the “business-bashing image” Obama has acquired over the past two years. This is the clearest sign yet that the president heard the message angry voters sent him in November and has embarked upon a “post-election move to the center.”

“As if bankers didn’t have enough influence already,” said Paul Blumenthal in HuffingtonPost.com. With the economy still recovering from the Wall Street meltdown, does the White House really need “someone so close to the very industry that brought us all to the brink?” Actually, Obama has always relied on establishment figures for both economic and political advice, said Greg Sargent in WashingtonPost.com. Contrary to what you hear on the Right, he’s governed as a “center-left” president since the very beginning—bailing out Wall Street, scaling down his stimulus and health-care bills to appease Republicans, and escalating the war in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, by appointing Daley, who publicly criticized health-care reform for being too liberal, the president will reinforce the conservative narrative that he “has recognized the error of his ultraliberal ways” and is moving to the sensible center.

Daley’s appointment isn’t really about ideology, said Matt Bai in The New York Times. Obama hired Daley primarily to bring “a campaign mind-set” to the White House as it gears up for 2012. Like his father, Richard Daley, the legendary Chicago mayor, William Daley has a gut feel for what the average voter thinks. He’s widely regarded as a smart, organized political manager, and is credited with reviving Al Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign after it fell 20 points behind Bill Bradley’s. Daley’s corporate credentials may reassure the business world, said Jonathan Alter in TheDailyBeast.com. But that’s just one aspect of “a more baldly political goal: to get Obama re-elected.”

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