David Plouffe on a rescue mission? Hardly, White House says.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs downplayed the shakeup in the Obama White House following last week’s surprise victory by Republican Scott Brown in the battle for the Senate seat formerly held by Edward Kennedy.

Over the weekend, the Washington Post reported that President Obama had asked David Plouffe to take an expanded role in White House political operations. Mr. Plouffe ran Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign with what even opponents admit was considerable skill.

New level of coordination

Plouffe did not join the White House staff after the election, instead taking time to write a book about the campaign: "The Audacity to Win." In his new role, Plouffe will coordinate Democratic efforts on House, Senate, and governors races and work at least part time out of Democratic National Committee headquarters. Plouffe has been offering the president occasional political advice since his inauguration.

Critics said the move was needed to restore the image of the Obama administration’s political efforts. Since his election, Mr. Obama has campaigned for Democratic candidates who lost in three major races: governors seats in Virginia and New Jersey and the Massachusetts Senate seat.

No big deal?

At Monday's White House briefing, Mr. Gibbs said: "The president asking him to give some extra time I think might have been a tad overwritten in the sense of, this is not him taking over every campaign in 2010."

He added: "This is about him working internally on strategy with the folks that are already here"

In a column in Sunday's Post, Plouffe laid out a call to action for Democrats under the headline "November doesn't need to be a nightmare." The tendency of the president's party to lose seats in an off-year election, coupled with difficult economic conditions, provide "a recipe for a white-knuckled ride for many of our candidates," Plouffe wrote. But he added "not if Democrats do what the American people sent them to Washington to do."

Under the heading "no bed-wetting" Plouffe concluded that "if Democrats will show the country we can lead when it's hard, we may not have perfect election results, but November will be nothing like the nightmare that talking heads have forecast."

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