From Bloomberg:
Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell says he’d love to replace Rahm Emanuel as Barack Obama’s next chief of staff, while allowing that he may be the last person the president would pick for the job.
“If I were president, I am not sure that I would offer Ed Rendell the job of chief of staff,” Rendell said during an interview yesterday on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt,” airing this weekend.
“I am a free spirit. I tell the truth, and I like to mix it up. And that is not the Obama administration’s modus operandi, to say the least,” Rendell said hours after Obama announced his choice of senior adviser Pete Rouse to serve as interim chief of staff.
While Rendell, 66, said it’s “the only job” he’d be interested in, there are reasons the governor might not be the best fit for White House chief of staff. In the same interview, Rendell criticized Obama and his administration for being “out- spun” by Republicans on the stimulus and health care, and said congressional Democrats were “too scared” to seize the advantage in the fight over tax cuts by scheduling a vote before the midterm elections.