William Daley, an executive at JPMorgan Chase, the former Commerce Secretary under Bill Clinton and the brother of longtime Chicago mayor Richard M. Daley, is under consideration to be the next White House Chief of Staff. This would mean that the man who was a mentor to Rahm Emanuel would get the job vacated by Rahm Emanuel, because Emanuel left to seek the job vacated by Daley’s brother.

Such a move, which is still under discussion and which White House officials wouldn’t confirm, would bring a Washington veteran and someone with strong business ties into the administration as Obama enters the second half of his term. The president is faced with a Republican majority in the House of Representatives and is trying to accelerate the U.S. economic recovery while addressing the budget deficit.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Daley served as an Obama economic adviser. After the election, he was a co- chairman of Obama’s transition team.

Daley, the younger brother of Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, was commerce secretary from January 1997 to June 2000 under former President Bill Clinton. In 2000, he chaired Vice President Al Gore’s unsuccessful presidential campaign [...]

Daley was a political mentor to Emanuel. The two worked together to get the union-opposed North American Free Trade Agreement passed in 1993. Emanuel was then a senior aide to Clinton and Daley was a special counsel to the president.

This looks to be in the trial balloon stage, as Administration officials said that Pete Rouse could still be asked to stay on. But if Daley comes in, he’s basically someone with a similar perspective to Rahm. “They miscalculated on health care,” he told the New York Times last year. “The election of ’08 sent a message that after 30 years of center-right governing, we had moved to center left — not left.”

So the health care law was too far to the left, in his view.

Essentially, such a move would signal a basic contentment with the Chicago group that has been the senior leadership at the White House, from David Axelrod to Valerie Jarrett to Emanuel. So if you think they have been doing just fine and want that consistency to continue, Bill Daley’s your man.

Amazingly, Pete Rouse is seen as the rebellious choice at this point.