let's bring in anne kornblut, reporter for "the washington post.". >> good morning. >> what do you think this will do to help or hurt political strategy as far as the white house is concerned? >> i think there may actually not be much change between now and at least the midterms which is only a month away. pete rouse, along with rahm emanuel, before he knew he was leaving, put together a strategic plan that would carry them through the midterm. every assumption is that this will be followed through just because rahm has left and pete has taken his place, that won't change. pete is working on an assessment of the west wing at this point figuring out if there's something they need to do to streamline it once they see what the midterm results are and if there's a great republican takeover, they may have to reshape things. but the big changes to come will probably come after november 2nd. >> talk about the relationship between rahm emanuel and the president, how far it goes back and how different it is from that which the president has with pete rouse.

we want to bring in anne kornblut, she contributed to today's article, also with us eleanor clift, contributingfor "newsweek." in today's "post" you talk about white house insiders debating options for the next two years. who is debating it? what is this debate about? >> well, as we mapped out in the story that i worked on, largely by my colleague scott wilson, what they're trying to figure out is, after having done a lot, whether you like what he did or not in the first two years president obama's trying to figure out what he's going to do in the second two years especially if there's a diminishes democratic hold or if the democrats lose the house and/or the senate. scaling back ambitions somewhat from the first two years, not looking at big things as achievable as they were in the first two years but trying to figure out how to achieve priorities, such as immigration reform, cap and trade energy legislation, maybe closing guantanamo, though that seems much more difficult, and how he can go about doing that, and they're trying to figure out are they going to have to use executive power more br