Rahm out?

Rahm Emanuel leading exodus of Obama aides from White House

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington

Saturday, 25 September 2010

The likely departure of the White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, to run for Mayor of Chicago is part of a half-term reshuffle of top aides that will signal a new chapter in the history of Barack Obama's increasingly embattled presidency.

It also raises a vital question: will Mr Obama continue to rely on the small and trusted group of intimates who have followed him from Chicago to Washington – or will he seize the chance to bring in new blood from the outside to invigorate an administration high command that critics say has become insular and out of touch?

The official word at the White House remains that Mr Emanuel is still "in the process of thinking about what he's going to do next". Unofficially, it is virtually taken for granted he will leave. The filing deadline for the race to succeed the outgoing mayor, Richard Daley, is 22 November, and the Chicago Sun-Times reported yesterday that Terry Peterson, head of the city's transit authority, had signed up as Mr Emanuel's campaign manager.

Among the possible replacements as Chief of Staff (whose role is to take charge of the day-to-day running of the White House and advise the President) are Pete Rouse, a senior Obama adviser; Tim Kaine, the former governor of Virginia; and Tom Donilon, the deputy national security adviser to General James Jones. But Gen Jones, too, is said to want to leave by the end of the year.

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/