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It is never stated openly. And certainly no one in the White House has gone on the record. But recent coverage of President Obama has implicitly asked the question in a sideways manner.

Was Rahm Emanuel to blame for the administration’s struggles?

The unspoken question has been posed in a spate of articles in the past several weeks about the successor to Mr. Emanuel, who served as Mr. Obama’s White House chief of staff for nearly two years until leaving to run for mayor of Chicago.

William Daley, the new chief of staff, has begun to put his stamp on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And his changes are inevitably reversing some of the decisions that Mr. Emanuel made.

A story by Anne E. Kornblut of The Washington Post this week described an effort by Mr. Daley’s White House to rebuild strained relationships with some members of Mr. Obama’s cabinet.

“You hear the same thing: ‘I don’t think we’re used well. I don’t think we’re consulted enough,’ ” Mr. Daley told Ms. Kornblut in an interview. “Whether it’s true or not, perception becomes reality, and I think there’s a desire to feel more part of a team.”

Mr. Daley steered well clear of pointing the finger at Mr. Emanuel. But the article makes clear that the new chief of staff is not wedded to running Mr. Obama’s White House the way Mr. Emanuel did. In fact, the story says Mr. Daley has been promising cabinet members that things will change.

A report by the Times’s Jackie Calmes offered a similar description of a White House that is ready to abandon some of Mr. Emanuel’s traditions.

The story noted that in the Emanuel era, last-minute changes to Mr. Obama’s Saturday radio addresses would keep speechwriters guessing until the last minute. That has changed under Mr. Daley, the article said.

So has the frenetic pace that Mr. Emanuel set — always by example. The story by Ms. Calmes described Mr. Emanuel as an “idea-a-minute dynamo who would dart from floor to floor trying to control matters mundane and major.”

“Rahm very much needed to do it all,” Mr. Daley told a group of reporters last month, according to the piece in The Times. “And I don’t have that need.”

It is the oldest trick in the political book: the incoming blames the outgoing. But it’s usually employed by one party against the other, as in Mr. Obama’s repeated efforts to blame his predecessor, George Bush, for the budget and foreign policy difficulties he faced in 2009.

In the case of Mr. Emanuel, there are few major policies being unwound. It is, after all, still Mr. Obama’s White House and Mr. Emanuel was charged with putting into effeect the president’s agenda — as Mr. Daley is now.

And let’s face it, a more disciplined approach to the Saturday radio address is not exactly a major change in an administration that is confronting questions about war, democracy abroad, record-setting debt and a still-fragile economy.

Rather, the new narrative about the White House has more to do with an atmosphere at the White House that appears to have changed. Pete Rouse, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers, took over briefly as chief of staff after Mr. Emanuel and before Mr. Daley’s arrival.

According to The Post story, Mr. Rouse told cabinet members, “We recognize that one thing we didn’t do well enough in the first two years was to use you.”

Interestingly, Mr. Emanuel is in a position to return the favor — just to a different Mr. Daley.

As the incoming mayor of Chicago, Mr. Emanuel will replace Richard M. Daley, the brother to the current White House chief of staff. Both men are Democrats, but part of Mr. Emanuel’s effort to establish himself as the leader of the Windy City will be to emphasize how things are going to change.

In a speech after winning the mayoral election, Mr. Emanuel walked the difficult line — praising the old, but calling for change.

“Rich Daley is the only mayor a whole generation of Chicagoans has known and an impossible act to follow,” Mr. Emanuel said, before pivoting. “Yet we have to move forward. And we know that we face serious new challenges — and overcoming them will not be easy.”

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Andy Wong/Associated Press Jon Huntsman, the ambassador to China, is surrounded by journalists after a speech at Tsinghua University in Beijing on March 18, 2010.

2:26 p.m. | Updated Of all the White House visitors in from China on Wednesday, one may be having a particularly awkward day: Jon Huntsman.

At a news conference Wednesday afternoon, President Obama joked about reports that Mr. Huntsman, his ambassador to China, is contemplating a run for president against Mr. Obama in 2012.

“I’m sure the fact that him having worked so well with me will be a great asset in any Republican primary,” Mr. Obama said, with a wry smile at the press conference with visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Mr. Huntsman is in Washington to help shepherd President Hu through his first official state visit with Mr. Obama.

A State Department spokesman confirmed in an e-mail that Mr. Huntsman “is here and will be a full participant during today’s activities.”

But the visit comes just weeks after Mr. Huntsman, the charismatic former Republican governor of Utah, appeared to indicate in an interview that he might be interested in challenging his boss — Mr. Obama — in the 2012 presidential election.

“You know, I’m really focused on what we’re doing in our current position,” he told Newsweek this month. “But we won’t do this forever, and I think we may have one final run left in our bones.” Asked by the Newsweek reporter whether he was ruling out a challenge to Mr. Obama in 2012, Mr. Huntsman declined to comment.

The prospect that Mr. Huntsman might run for president still seems somewhat remote. His remarks to Newsweek were vague enough that they could be interpreted any number of ways. And there are plenty of reasons why Mr. Huntsman might decide that 2012 is not the right year to seek higher office.

And yet there are no doubt that some people inside the White House — the president included — wouldn’t mind a bit of face time with the man they recruited to join the administration. (There’s not an official woodshed in the White House, but the Oval Office can surely feel like one at times.)

Mr. Obama praised Mr. Huntsman’s performance as ambassador, saying he has done an “outstanding” job in the past two years.

“He is a Mandarin speaker. He has brought enormous skill, dedication and talent to the job and you know the fact that he comes from a different party I think is a strength, not a weakness because it indicates the degree to which both he and I believe that partisanship ends at the waters edge and that we work together to advocate on behalf of our country,” Mr. Obama said.

When the White House sent Mr. Huntsman to China, it seemed like a master political stroke, a way of taking a potential rival out of contention by bringing him into the fold — and sending him halfway around the world. Chris Cillizza, who writes  The Fix politics blog at The Washington Post, wrote at the time that the move “almost certainly forecloses the possibility that he will be a candidate for national office in 2012.”

Now the president’s political advisers have to consider the possibility that Mr. Huntsman could try to use his employment as an ambassador for the president to his advantage, casting himself as a candidate with great appeal to independent voters looking for evidence that the two parties in Washington can work together to solve problems.

That would infuriate Mr. Obama’s team, which has long seen Mr. Huntsman as a potent danger to the president’s re-election. David Plouffe, one of Mr. Obama’s closest advisers, spoke admiringly of Mr. Huntsman’s political skills in May 2009, saying, “I think he’s really out there and speaking a lot of truth about the direction of the party.”

The visit of President Hu is filled with ceremony and substance that will no doubt distract Mr. Obama and his top aides from dwelling on Mr. Huntsman’s comments or his possible challenge in 2012.

But there are likely to be more than a few moments in the course of the day when Mr. Huntsman will find himself, awkwardly, standing at a reception or sitting at the state dinner across the table from Mr. Obama, Mr. Plouffe or one of the president’s other senior advisers.

An admirer of the former governor said Wednesday that Mr. Huntsman would not be measuring the drapes in the White House during his visit there Wednesday.

“But,” he joked morbidly, “maybe finding a food taster.”

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Michael Steele’s rivals offered even tougher criticism of the Republican National Committee chairman after Monday’s five-way debate ended than they did during the 90-minute exchange.

Ann Wagner, a former Bush administration official expressed frustration at not being able to question Mr. Steele directly about his handling of the party’s finances.

“I just wish there had been more time for some honest discussion about the money that was given or not given to the states,” Ms. Wagner told The Caucus after the National Press Club debate.

“He purports raising 170-something million dollars,” she said of Mr. Steele. “But the fact of the matter is the cost of the fund-raising was astronomical. And only $13 million went out to the states in terms of their victory programs and that is a pittance.”

Ms. Wagner and three other challengers largely refrained from direct attacks on Mr. Steele during the debate. Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan Republican party, said the reason was a “question and answer type of a format that really limits you.”

Mr. Anuzis said after the debate, “the record speaks for itself. We know what happened. We know what the successes and the failures were.”

Ms. Wagner was more blunt: “While we had historic victories last cycle, I would submit to you that the Republican National Committee had very little to do with it,” she said. “Everything lays at the feet of the chairman. The buck stops there, and it is his jobs to raise the money, to go out and raise the donor money and fully fund the R.N.C.”

In a scrum with reporters after the debate, Mr. Steele brushed aside the criticisms of his leadership, saying they were expected.

“We laid out a very good record and we have a very good record to run on,” he told reporters. “And 168 members of the committee will be the ultimate arbiters of whether that is enough.”

The debate, which was hosted by Americans for Tax Reform and The Daily Caller, a political news Web site, offered viewers a mostly friendly affair, as the five candidates on the stage broadly agreed on the need to adhere to conservative principles and do better at raising money.

The largest applause went to Maria Cino, a veteran of the Bush administration, when she declared that one of the biggest mistakes by Republicans was passage of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law.

There were some humorous moments, such as when Ms. Wagner thought the candidates were asked to name their favorite bar. She stumbled and eventually said, “my kitchen table, probably.” (The question was: “What is your favorite book.”)

Asked how many guns they own, Mr. Steele and Ms. Cino said “none.” Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Wisconsin Republican party, said proudly, “five.” And then Ms. Wagner announced that her family had just purchased a new gun safe for her 16 guns, including a pistol, a glock, shotguns, rifles and an assault rifle for her son at West Point.

“I feel very inadequate at four,” deadpanned Mr. Anuzis.

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Democrats in the Senate hoping to pass nonbudget-related legislation in the lame-duck session were put on notice by their Republican colleagues Wednesday morning: No tax-cut extension? No laws for you!

In a letter signed by the 42 members of the Republican caucus, delivered to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, and mentioned Wednesday on the Senate floor by the minority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republicans informed their Democratic counterparts that they would not go forward with “any legislative item until the Senate has acted to fund the government and we have prevented the tax increase that is currently awaiting all American taxpayers.”

The letter goes on: “With little time left in this Congressional session, legislative scheduling should be focused on these critical priorities. While there are other items that might ultimately be worthy of the Senate’s attention, we cannot agree to prioritize any matters above the critical issues of funding the government and preventing a job-killing tax hike.” 

Washington is locked in a battle over what to do about the Bush-era tax cuts, which expire at the end of the year. President Obama and Democratic lawmakers want to extend the cuts to all Americans except those with income above $250,000, while Republicans want tax cuts extended to Americans at all income levels. Another idea that has been kicking around over the last few weeks — proposed by some Democrats — is raising the expiration income ceiling to households with at least $1 million in income.

At the same time, Congress needs to make a legislative move to keep the government funded before the 112th Congress takes over in January.

Democrats were hoping to force a more ambitious agenda into the final weeks, including the ratification of the New Start treaty, a military authorization bill that would repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” provision, the extension of unemployment funds and the Dream Act, an immigration bill.

“If they really cared about creating jobs, they should stop blocking a preservation of unemployment insurance, which would create or save hundred of thousands of jobs,” Jim Manley, a spokesman for Mr. Reid, said in an e-mail. “Unfortunately this letter is nothing new. Republicans have simply put in writing their political strategy which they have pursued over the last two years: obstruct and delay action on critical matters, and then blame the Democrats for not addressing the needs of the American people. This strategy is very cynical but very obvious and transparent.”

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 1, 2010

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this post said that Senator Harry Reid was from Arizona. He is from Nevada.

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