And after he’s done repairing the cabinet, he’s going to hang some nice drapes.

The cabinet’s a bit frayed:

News this week of the first departure of a Cabinet secretary from the Obama administration comes amid a wide-ranging effort under the new chief of staff, William M. Daley, to repair badly frayed relations between the White House and the Cabinet.

Okay, fine, it was the relations that were frayed, not the cabinet.

During the first two years of President Obama’s term, the administration fully embraced just a few of his superstar picks – people such as Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Education Secretary Arne Duncan. But many more agency chiefs conducted their business in relative anonymity, sometimes after running afoul of White House officials.

Both sides were deeply disgruntled. Agency heads privately complained that the White House was a “fortress” that was unwilling to accept input and that micromanaged their departments. Senior administration advisers rolled their eyes in staff meetings at the mention of certain Cabinet members, participants said.

You’d almost think that the people in charge up there had never actually run anything before, wouldn’t you?

Previously: A picture is worth a thousand words.