With White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs set to leave his post soon, we asked a former high-profile aide from another White House what issues can surround these kinds of transitions: Former Bill Clinton staffer and current CNN pundit Paul Begala.
“I don’t know him very well personally, but I can tell you professionally I’m a huge admirer of Gibbs,” Begala told TPM in a phone interview Wednesday. “Anything he turns to, he’d be good at it.”
“Maybe he can spend 2011 doing other things that would only make him a more valuable assistant to President Obama. That team seems to have had a strategy in place for some time. It was an open secret that Axelrod is gonna leave after two years and Plouffe is gonna come in. I can’t reveal my sources, but I was hearing that in the transition before President Obama was inaugurated. It just always seemed that would happen.”
“It’s good to bring people in who both already have a relationship with the president,” Begala added, “but also aren’t exhausted.”
As I asked Begala, what sort of benefits can come from leaving government for the private sector? “Well, perspective is really difficult to maintain. It’s impossible to maintain when you’re in the White House 24/7,” said Begala. “And as an outsider, it certainly appears to me there are very few people closer to the white-hot center there than Gibbs. And in that role he’s been invaluable. There’s also nothing wrong with stepping back, cooling off a little.”
[TPM SLIDESHOW: Goodbye, Gibbs]
And as Begala also explained, there often isn’t truly such a thing as leaving a president. As President Obama suggested, Gibbs will still be very involved — just from a different place.
“I first worked for Bill Clinton in 1991, 19 years ago. I don’t ever feel like an ex-Clinton staffer,” Begala said. “I will always support and advise President Clinton. And I’m sure that’s how Gibbs will feel, as well.
“There’s really no — unless you’re on bad terms, you somehow disgrace yourself or renounce your boss — there’s no getting out of these things. So I don’t look at it like Gibbs is quitting. I think it’s very smart.”
And besides being an outside-the-beltway rep for the president, what are the possibilities for Gibbs?
“I would say limitless,” Begala answered. “I would guess some of the limits would be self-imposed. Carville and I have never taken a lobbying client. We’ve never lobbied in our lives. Also, President Clinton didn’t want us to. So we did campaigns, and occasionally little bit of corporate work, not much. Whatever he chooses.”
Begala said that Gibbs could do campaign work — though I noted that Gibbs seems to have ruled that out. As Begala explained, there are two major reasons that a presidential aide would avoid campaigns for others. First, the political commitments to a president can be all-consuming, such as when Begala had to quit working for Sen. John Glenn (D-OH), a man he deeply admired. And furthermore, working for a separate campaign can create conflicts of interests.
“The good of it is, he would be an incredible asset to any campaign,” said Begala. “The bad part of it is, it’s hard to represent anyone else when you worked for the president.”
There are, of course, a wide variety of opportunities. Begala noted how he ended up becoming a media commentator, along with such other Clinton aides as George Stephanopoulos and Dee Dee Myers. Mike McCurry has done corporate work, and former George W. Bush aide Dan Bartlett is a public relations executive.
But, of course, there are limits. “He knows this, anything he does will reflect on the president,” said Begala. “I don’t think he needs the advice, he knows this. The one thing you can’t do is open up shop as a lobbyist. You could — but it would be awkward to the president.”
