Jay Carney, who will replace Robert Gibbs, only started working in politics two years ago. He’s spent most of his career on the other side, analyzing politics in his role as a Time magazine reporter and editor.
The president nicked Carney from his own vice president where he served the past two years as Joe Biden’s communications director.
In choosing Carney, 45, Obama chose someone who is inside his circle yet also seen to understand the needs of the White House press corps as a former member of its ranks.
As a reporter, Carney covered the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush and rose to the position of Time magazine's Washington bureau chief. He is certainly more of a Washington insider than Gibbs.
Carney was chosen from a candidate pool of roughly five, including several current members of the White House's communications team, but it was widely expected that Carney would end up at the post.
Those who know him say he is pushier than Gibbs. He is, after all, formed by years of being a reporter and is a creature of D.C. Still, his choice is said to have caused some eye rolls.
“Most of us thought that hiring someone from the outside was likely ‘too much’ change,” said one top Democratic strategist.
The decision was part of a package of new personnel changes at the White House. Obama's new chief of staff, Bill Daley, announced the changes in an e-mail to staff on Thursday.
“Carney has proven that he can excel at that same cautious game, but he can play it at a deeper, more confident level, given his long history in the mainstream media,” noted Howard Fineman in the Huffington Post. “He has handled Vice President Joe Biden's account well, prevented the gaffe-prone vice president from gaffs. He also managed to help Biden get some good publicity, including a laudatory New York Times Magazine story that portrayed the vice president as a powerful, behind-the-scenes player.”
Carney is not expected to hold the type of counselor role to the president that Gibbs has formed over years by serving as a top aide to Obama from the time the president was a state senator in Illinois and all through his run for the White House.
But Carney will be given every access he needs to the president and other decision-makers within the White House so he is in position to speak with full authority, a White House official said.
Before working for VP Biden, Carney worked for Time magazine for 20 years, after earning a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale University in 1987.
His first job in journalism was at the Miami Herald, where he worked from 1987-1988 before being hired by Time.
He speaks Russian and was based in Moscow for Time from 1990-1993, covering the collapse of the Soviet Union; he then served as Time’s Washington bureau chief from 2005-2008.
He also was on board Air Force One with President George W. Bush during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Carney was born in Washington, D.C., and raised in northern Virginia. He's married to ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman. He and his wife, ABC News correspondent Claire Shipman, used to appear jointly on ABC's “This Week.”
As for the departing spokesman Gibbs, he will be giving paid speeches and consulting for the Obama re-election campaign.
Gibbs is the latest in a series of high-profile departures. He follows senior Obama advisor David Axelrod and former chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.
David Plouffe, Obama's former campaign manager, has taken over for Axelrod. Like Gibbs, Axelrod will play a role in the campaign operation Obama is setting up in Chicago.
