White House Counsel Grag Craig, the Clintons' classmate at Yale Law School who jumped Team Clinton for Obama in 2008, is leaving his position at the White House. Why?
I am not sure I know the answer, but I wonder if he just felt out of place, or whether the Chicago Guys (my new name for the inner cirlce of Obama, created in response to a recent conversation with Amy Sullivan of Time Magazine) just did not like the intruder. However, this follows a familliar pattern of first-year adjustments to the White House Staff that we can discern across presidencies. The internal dynamic here seems to follow the familiar pattern: those closest to the president in their lead up to winning the office seem to crowd out capable people who drank the Kool-Aid relatively late in the game.
Who else might leave? Good question. I guess I need to go and look at the list of senior White House aids who (1) are not early Obama people, (2) are not Biden people, and (3) are too old to keep up with the (to borrow Sullivan's concept) frat house atmosphere...
Jim Messina (deputy chief of staff) joined Obama's campaign pretty early, but he originally came from Baucus's staff. If/when Emanuel leaves, I wonder if Messina would get the job or if it would go to Obama's old Senate chief of staff, and if the latter, if Messina would stick around (if he hadn't already left himself).
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