White House chief of staff Andy Card has resigned and will be replaced by budget director Josh Bolten, an administration official said Tuesday, in a White House shake up that comes amid declining poll standings for President Bush.
Bush was expected to announce the change himself later Tuesday during a meeting with reporters in the Oval Office.
The move comes as Bush has been buffeted by increasing criticism of the drawn-out war in Iraq and as fellow Republicans have suggested pointedly that the president bring in new aides with fresh ideas and new energy.
Card came to Bush recently and suggested that he should step down from the job that he has held from the first day of Bush's presidency, said the administration official.
Bush decided during a weekend stay at Camp David, Md., to accept Card's resignation and to name Bolten as his replacement, said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to pre-empt the president.
Bolten is widely experienced in Washington, both on Capitol Hill as well as at the White House, where he was deputy chief of staff before becoming director of the Office of Management and Budget.
At a White House news conference last week, Bush was asked about rumors that a shake up in the White House staff was in the works. Bush said he was "satisfied with the people I've surrounded myself with."
"I've got a staff of people that have, first of all, placed their country above their self-interests," he said at the time. "These are good, hard- working, decent people. And we've dealt with a lot. We've dealt with a lot. We've dealt with war. We've dealt with recession. We've dealt with scandal. We've dealt with Katrina.
"I mean, they've had a lot on their plate. And I appreciate their performance and their hard work and they've got my confidence," he said.
Bush said, "We've been a remarkably stable administration, and I think that's good for the country."
A veteran of the administrations of both President Ronald Reagan and the first President Bush, Card was widely respected by his colleagues in the Bush White House. They fondly called him "chief."
He usually arrived at work in the West Wing by around 5:30 a.m. and frequently did not leave until 9 or 10 p.m.
Card plans to stay on the job until April 14, when the switch with Bolten takes place.
Associates said that Card, who was Secretary of Transportation and deputy chief of staff, had wanted to establish himself as the longest serving White House chief of staff. James Steelman, who was President Harry S. Truman's chief of staff, had served for six years and Card's tenure will have gone not much longer than five years.
A recent AP-Ipsos Poll found that Bush's job approval has dipped to 37 percent, his lowest rating in that poll. Nearly 70 percent of people say the U.S. is on the wrong track, a six-point jump since February. Bush's job approval among Republicans plummeted from 82 percent in February to 74 percent, a troubling sign for the White House in an election year.
Source: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060328/D8GKJLCO0.html
Bush decided during a weekend stay at Camp David, Md., to accept Card's resignation and to name Bolten as his replacement, said the source who spoke on condition of anonymity because he did not want to pre-empt the president. Keeping ones mouth shut would have been not pre-empting. Typical AyPee and leakers coitus.
Five years is a lengthy tenure for a Chief of Staff.
A recent AP-Ipsos Poll found that Bush's job approval has dipped to 37 percent, his lowest rating in that poll. {Yawn...}
Every president since 1963 has had approval ratings at one time or another that were lower than Bush's current rating. Those ratings include Lyndon Johnson's 35%, Richard Nixon's 24%, Gerald Ford's 37%, Jimmy Carter's 28%, Ronald Reagan's 35%, the elder George Bush's 29% and Bill Clinton's 37%.
USA Today
A little background on Josh Bolton, from the Center for Responsive Politics via
OpenSecrets.COM
The Bush Administration
Josh Bolten
DIRECTOR, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET
(2003 -present)
As President Bush’s deputy chief of staff, Josh Bolten was originally slotted to handle much of the president’s domestic policy agenda. However, the administration soured on Larry Lindsay’s performance as head of the National Economic Council, Bolten gradually took over. He began dealing with all economic matters, and Bush came to depend on him for honing ideas for the president’s consideration. Once Mitch Daniels, former head of the Office of Management and Budget, resigned in late 2002, Bolten was quickly targeted to filled the slot. Credited as the architect of the Bush tax cuts as well as the hiring of Steve Friedman as NEC chairman, Bolten has become one of Bush’s closest advisors next to Karl Rove. Like Friedman and Robert Rubin, the former Treasury Secretary under President Clinton, Bolten worked at Goldman Sachs, one of the all-time biggest campaign contributors.
Feel free to distribute or cite this material, but please credit the Center for Responsive Politics.
139 posted on
03/28/2006 6:00:01 AM PST by
Phsstpok
(There are lies, damned lies, statistics and presentation graphics, in descending order of truth)
In that this position does not require Senate confirmation, do you think he might ask Miss Miers to take the chief of staff position? After all, if she was qualified for the Supreme Court, she is qualified for chief of staff.