Can The New Sheriff Tame The West Wing?

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The new chief, who packed some of his own boxes for the move across West Executive Avenue from his old office, had been on the job just one full day when Rob Portman, the Trade ambassador and a strong communicator, was named to succeed him as director of the Office of Management and Budget. The next morning, press secretary Scott McClellan appeared on the South Lawn with Bush to announce to reporters in a choked voice that he would leave his job in two or three weeks, a few months short of three years at the podium. McClellan, considered "family" because he had worked for Bush in the Texas Governor's office, made no effort to hide from colleagues his sadness about going early. But top Republicans were being consulted about his replacement within days after Bolten's promotion was announced, and the loyal Texan got the message. Friends said McClellan wanted to get it over with, to short-circuit the absurdity of having to refuse to speculate about his future to reporters. Bush praised McClellan for his "integrity," a pointed absolution for the fact that McClellan was left in the dark about the involvement in the CIA-leak case of White House officials he had defended. Offers from speakers' bureaus and other businesses have rolled in, and most of the week's photographs showed McClellan smiling.

Two hours after the South Lawn appearance, the White House announced that Karl Rove, whose name is synonymous with unchecked authority in this Administration, would be yielding his day-to-day policy duties. "I've been asked by the President and my new boss to focus on big strategic questions and the bigger issues," Rove told TIME. The idea, according to an aide, is for Rove to focus on "immigration, not the definition of seaward lateral boundaries." But Rove relishes his role at the nexus of policy and politics, and had dived into the governing responsibilities Bush gave him at the start of the second term. He tackled both fundamentals and minutiae, from formalizing the elaborate steps aides must take when preparing for policy time with the President to revising the official calendars handed out at Friday meetings of policy deputies so that they could record progress on topics raised at previous meetings. He even spent hours editing memos written for the President by specialists on everything from levees to student test scores.

The Democratic National Committee called the change in Rove's role a "demotion," and some insiders viewed it as a slap. "This is Josh saying there's a new sheriff in town, and there will only be one chief of staff," said a former West Wing tenant. A Bolten friend said Rove had been reined in by Bush, who realized that even Rove can do only so many people's jobs. Aides said Rove, 55, who retains his titles of senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, will move across the hall from his high-ceilinged office in the West Wing and turn it over to the new deputy chief of staff in charge of day-to-day policy, Harvard-trained wunderkind Joel Kaplan, 36, one of the former Supreme Court clerks from the Austin policy shop. Kaplan, a former Marine artillery officer who shares Bolten's boyish sense of humor, has been his deputy for the past five years. The Massachusetts native married a Texan earlier this month, with Bolten reading in English seven blessings derived from a traditional Jewish marriage ceremony.