The folks attending this week’s Washington Ideas Forum got to see firsthand the savvy of White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, who used a chuckle to non-answer questions from CBS journo Norah O’Donnell.
O’Donnell asked about Daley’s conversations with his West Wing predecessor, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “This is being recorded, isn’t it?” Daley laughed, saying that Emanuel calls him all the time.
Recommended Stories
She asked about how his outreach to Capitol Hill and the business community was going. “It’s going great … no problems,” he grinned.
“In 2012, which Republican are you most worried about running against?” O’Donnell pried. “Ahhh, Christie,” Daley replied, before discussing the actual realities of running as an incumbent in the current election cycle.
Daley also chronicled his best and worst days, thus far, on the job — the Sunday that he found out that Osama bin Laden was dead, and the summer day that the debt ceiling talks collapsed.
And then there was that one question he simply couldn’t answer. Who won that golf game that Daley played alongside Presidents Obama and Clinton? “You don’t keep score when you’re playing with Bill Clinton,” he said.
