JIM JONES, Barack Obama’s national security adviser, became the latest high-profile White House official to announce his departure in a move that had been widely expected.
General Jones, a former head of the US marines, will be replaced by Tom Donilon, his deputy at the National Security Council and a highly regarded bureaucrat.
His departure yesterday is the latest in a series of recent exits by senior officials, including Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, who last week announced he would run for mayor of Chicago, and Lawrence Summers, Mr Obama’s senior economic adviser, who will return to teach at Harvard University in early 2011.
White House officials stress that each is going for individual reasons and none is related to the widely forecast Democratic defeat in mid-term elections next month.
But one official said the White House had brought forward the announcement of Gen Jones’s departure to ensure it was not misread as a response to next month’s poll. Gen Jones had mixed reviews in his job, having been considered to be “out of the loop” of Mr Obama’s inner circle.
In Bob Woodward’s recent book, Obama’s Wars, Gen Jones is quoted as venting frustration towards Mr Emanuel, who reportedly would bypass the national security adviser’s office and head straight to see Mr Donilon when he ventured downstairs into the National Security Council.
Mr Donilon was widely tipped as Gen Jones’s replacement. In Mr Woodward’s book, Bob Gates, the US defence secretary, is quoted as saying Mr Donilon’s elevation would be a “disaster”. But most Washington observers awarded him a high grade, for his knowledge, work ethic and access to Mr Obama – something Gen Jones often lacked.
Mr Donilon prepared then-senator Obama for the presidential debates in the 2008 election. “Tom is an excellent choice as national security adviser,” said Strobe Talbott, head of the Brookings Institution, who worked with Mr Donilon in the Clinton administration. “He has an acutely attuned ear for how things work, knows all the players and, crucially, understands the need for domestic political support to move foreign policy goals forward. He will need a lot of that in the months ahead.”
Like other appointments, including Pete Rouse, a senior adviser to the president who replaced Mr Emanuel, Mr Obama has continued the pattern of replacing departing officials with lower profile insiders. Some say it marks a steady move towards hyper-caution by Mr Obama, who had originally proclaimed his desire for a “team of rivals”.
Mr Obama recently announced that Jacob Lew, the deputy secretary of state, would replace Peter Orszag as budget director. Mr Orszag resigned in July. Mr Summers’s replacement has not yet been announced. “The fact that each of these senior appointments so far has been chosen from the inside raises the question of whether a politically besieged President Obama feels compelled to take the path of least resistance,” said David Rothkopf, a scholar of the National Security Council.
– (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)