From: Wolf Blitzer/CNN Sr. White House Correspondent
In: Washington, D.C.
Posted: 6-17-97

Subject: White House Staff Reshuffling

Sources tell CNN that Paul Begala, a key political operative in Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, is planning to come to the White House to help sell the president's second-term message.

A feisty Clinton partisan, Begala will join another newcomer to the senior staff, journalist Sidney Blumenthal, as part of a restructured White House communications team.

Begala worked with political consultant James Carville after the president was elected in '92. Later, he moved his base to Austin, Texas.

Both Begala and Blumenthal, who's worked for The New Yorker, The New Republic, and The Washington Post, will work with Ann Lewis, the new White House communications director. Ideologically, she's well-known as a traditional liberal, having worked in Jesse Jackson's '88 presidential campaign.

That often pits her against the centrist "new Democrats" in the White House, including senior policy adviser Rahm Emanuel.

All this reshuffling comes as White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles is himself getting ready to leave Washington and return to his business and family in North Carolina.

Sources say they expect Bowles will want to finish up the negotiations with Congress over proposed tax cuts before resigning -- probably sometime in the fall.

Among those said to be on the president's still-emerging list to succeed Bowles: Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin; National Security Adviser Sandy Berger; Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman; and deputy chief of staff John Podesta.