Bush's inner circle remains intact, but is change ahead?

[SillyGoose]

Key White House staff remains largely intact after 5 years

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Loyalty and continuity have marked the Bush White House since early on. After two wars, devastating strikes by terrorists and hurricanes, a bruising re-election and countless legislative battles, President Bush's team continues the trend -- defying history and shakeup rumors to remain almost entirely intact five years in.
...
Only a handful of the president's most senior aides have departed since Bush came to Washington in 2001. Though some have shifted roles, it's a familiar cast of characters at the president's side: Vice President Dick Cheney, chief of staff Andy Card, political guru Karl Rove, deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, counselor Dan Bartlett, budget chief Josh Bolten, White House counsel Harriet Miers and press secretary Scott McClellan among them.
...
There will no doubt be a few departures, as people give in to fatigue or the temptation of the high-paying private sector. A small group may head out closer to spring -- before campaigning for the November congressional elections begins in earnest. But most expect any larger exodus to wait until after those elections.
...
Card has held his post longer than anyone in half a century and recently said he was "ready, willing and able" to make a change, even as he tamped out the rumor he was assuming Treasury Secretary John Snow's job. It is telling that those considered contenders to succeed Card are other Bush inner circle-types: Hughes, Bolten, former commerce secretary and close Bush friend Don Evans, and Marc Racicot, chairman of Bush's 2004 re-election campaign.



more at link http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/12/30/bush.staff.ap/index.html

[onehandle]

1. They missed someone.

Mr. 9/11. Bush mentions this guy so often I feel like I know him.

His title is "Corporate Director".

[Wordie]

2. Doesn't he realize that it's been his willingness to consider only the

opinions of the Lockstep Loyalists with whom he surrounds himself that has gotten him in all the trouble in the first place? Of course, maybe it is they who have also told him not to bring anyone else in.

And what sane person would want to join that group anyway?

[MadisonProgressive]

3. I really think he doesn't. They guy is brain dead!

[TheBaldyMan]

4. Wisdom and foresight are absent from the WH

unless there is a secret facility in the Nevada desert that has been cloning sycophants I can't see any changes in the line up. Unless it's a promotion for a particularly loyal reptile.