Even though much of Washington wants President Obama to shake up his White House team, it likely won’t change the path of his final two years in office.
Given the late timing of the announcement, the already extensive turnover in his Cabinet and hardened perceptions of his presidency, Obama would see little political uptick from overhauling his team of advisers, analysts said.
As recent presidential history has proved, successful shake-ups usually come in the wake of a specific scandal or involve so much star power that they’re impossible to ignore.
Obama’s issues, presidential historians contend, cut far deeper and cannot be alleviated simply by tinkering with policies that have defined his six years in office.
“The problems are Obama’s, not his chief of staff’s,” said Stephen Hess, a former adviser to Presidents Ford and Carter. “When you bring in somebody of a lesser stature, you’re just moving chairs around on the deck of the Titanic.”
Obama has seen plenty of fresh faces already at the White House. The lone remaining members from his original Cabinet are Education Secretary Arne Duncan and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
The president will unveil his pick for attorney general following the November midterm elections, but most potential changes involve his close-knit group of advisers.
While important in altering the daily operations of a White House, such moves rarely make a splash beyond the Beltway.
Just last December, Obama brought in John Podesta, former chief of staff under President Clinton, as a senior counselor tasked with jump-starting his stalled agenda.
The move went largely unnoticed, though, and analysts expect more of the same if Obama attempts another rebranding.
“It’s like Obama brought Podesta in through the back door,” said Hess, now a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution. “Podesta could have been the shake-up guy. Obama’s record to date [on personnel moves] is not impressive. People have hardly noticed.”
Podesta insists he’s leaving at the end of the year, limiting the chances he’ll replace White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough in late 2014.
Arguably the most successful White House shake-up involved Ronald Reagan bringing in Howard Baker as chief of staff after the Iran-Contra scandal. But Obama is unlikely to convince a political figure of the magnitude of the former Senate majority leader to run his White House during a lame-duck period.
Some Washington insiders pointed to Leon Panetta — hardly an Obama favorite these days amid his scathing indictment of the president’s foreign policies — as a potential model for a new chief of staff. They say Obama needs a disciplined leader with extensive managerial experience and a deep roster of contacts on Capitol Hill.
“I think Panetta made a difference because he had real relationships on the Hill,” said former Rep. Bob Walker, R-Pa., a key figure in the “Republican Revolution” of 1994, the year Clinton brought on Panetta as his chief of staff.
“Both Republican and Democratic lawmakers believe Obama has contempt for them,” Walker added. “The question is whether Obama would listen to a new team or simply keep listening to [senior adviser] Valerie Jarrett.”
Known for his insular White House shop, Obama has shown little willingness to fundamentally alter how business is done at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And some allies suggested it would look disingenuous to try some kind of restart now, perhaps lessening Obama’s need for a headline-grabbing hire.
“People know what the president stands for and how he operates,” said a former senior administration official. “For better or worse, this is who he is. I think the president is comfortable enough to live with that reality.”
