In the Post there's an overview article, mostly from anonymous sources, on Geithner's management of Treasury:
Government officials, inside the Treasury and out, say the unresolved issues are piling up in part because of vacancies in the department's top ranks. But some of the officials also cite the Treasury's ad-hoc management, which is dominated by a small band of Geithner's counselors who coordinate rescue initiatives but lack formal authority to make decisions. Heavy involvement by the White House in Treasury affairs has further muddied the picture of who is responsible for key issues, the officials add.That last sentence, which no doubt originated with Treasury bureaucrats, shows some of the problems of having lots of White House staffers, particularly with the clout of Larry Summers.
Meanwhile, the retrospective on Rumsfeld in GQ draws some comment--I've particularly read the Political Animal posts. There's enough quotes from the GQ piece so I haven't spent my time there. See here on slow walking nonproliferation, where an anonymous source said Rumsfeld tried, by "slow-walking" its implementation, to undermine a nonproliferation agreement Bush and Putin had made. Also here on his lack of action on Katrina. That shows one of the reasons to have White House staffers--the bureaucracy doesn't like to implement stuff that's not invented here or is risky. You need staff to ride herd on the bureaucrats (who will fight back by leaking to the media if the staff doesn't do it well).
Meanwhile Sally Quinn, in the Post (she gets my back up, but she's made a career of developin sources) writes the knives are out for another White House staffer, national security adviser Jim Jones. She wants Obama to support him or fire him.
So the question now is, how well is Obama doing with the bureaucracy?
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