McFeatters: New chief of staff a firm hand

The job of White House chief of staff is not one that needs an excuse for leaving: It is a killer. For all the tough decisions that wind up on the president's desk, even more of them wind up on the chief of staff's desk.

When William Daley took the job last January, he promised to stay on until January 2013; in other words, through the election. Instead, the White House announced Monday that Daley, 63, had submitted his resignation and would be returning to his native Chicago after President Barack Obama's State of the Union address Jan. 24.

Daley, a former commerce secretary and scion of a legendary Chicago political family -- his brother and father were mayors -- had the political sense to know that if he was going to leave it had to be now rather than later in the year when his departure could become a partisan political issue.

As it is, his departure is a big deal in Washington, because the chief of staff's job is one of the capital's most powerful, but one suspects not so much in the country at large. For the moment, what goes on inside the Beltway stays inside the Beltway.

After the abrasive and intense Rahm Emanuel left the job to run for mayor of Chicago, Daley, then a banker with J.P. Morgan Chase, was brought in to build ties to business and in hopes that he could work with congressional Republicans.

Business, especially Wall Street, had already made up its mind about Obama, pro and con, and a powerful bloc of congressional Republicans was determined to thwart the White House no matter who was chief of staff. That became all too apparent last summer when the White House and House Speaker John Boehner failed to pull off a "grand bargain" on the deficit.

Had he stayed, Daley would have faced another year of trench warfare with the Republicans to accomplish even the smallest task. That chore now falls to Jack Lew, 56, who seems like the ideal choice. Certainly he has the resume for the job.

Currently White House budget director, Lew held the same job in the Clinton administration. He was a top deputy at the State Department to Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, has been a member of the National Security Council and built up substantial congressional expertise as a top aide to then-House Speaker Tip O'Neill.

Lew is low key and unflappable, qualities that should serve him well in a high-decibel year. More importantly, Lew is the kind of experienced Washington veteran to whom Obama can entrust the White House while he's out campaigning for re-election.

Dale McFeatters is a senior writer for the Scripps Howard News Service.