Dan Schnur Jesse M. Unruh Institute, USC :
The absence of Austan Goolsbee and Christina Romer from the White House will have much less impact on president’s economic agenda than the absence of Howard Dean or Russ Feingold from the campaign trail.
Since the dawn of the primary era, every incumbent president who has avoided a significant primary challenge has achieved re-election (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, Bush 43). Conversely, every president who has faced a plausible opponent from his own party has gone home (Johnson, Ford, Carter, Bush 41) . A president’s re-election chances improve when he can move toward the political center as early in the process as possible: a challenge from his party’s own base delays that shift until much later in the campaign.
Because there is no other Democrat publicly considering the race, Obama has been free to extend the Bush tax cuts, make considerable concessions to congressional Republicans over this spring’s budget agreement, and allow his surrogates to speculate publicly about a trillion dollars or more in additional budget cuts. And as long as no other Democrat gets in the race, the president can continue to plant himself as close to midfield as possible.