President Barack Obama plans to name Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough as his next chief of staff, a Democratic source briefed on the plans tells POLITICO. McDonough would replace Jack Lew, whom Obama nominated to be his new Treasury secretary. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Jack Lew's career) 
 
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 reset Obama favors familiar in 2nd term picks 
 
 By selecting McDonough, Obama is opting for the familiar: a trusted aide who’s been at his side since the 2008 campaign and is credited with keeping the administration’s internal wheels turning smoothly on foreign policy issues. 
 
 But McDonough brings less experience than his predecessors with another typical part of the job: fielding sometimes angry salvos from members of Congress with home-district concerns about aspects of the administration’s policy or budget decisions. 
 
 McDonough has been involved in just about every major national security decision made by Obama since he took office, from the surge in U.S. troops in Afghanistan to the launching of the commando raid that killed Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden. 
 
 (PHOTOS: Obama's second-term Cabinet) 
 
 McDonough, who holds the title of deputy national security adviser, served since October 2009 as the chief of staff to the National Security Council, regularly overseeing the so-called deputies meetings where key decisions are hashed out or teed up for more senior officials. At the outset of the administration, he was in charge of “strategic communications” for the NSC. 
 
 “Unlike some of the other senior staffers, there was just no drama associated with Denis. He’s always poised, collected and unflapped. He was also a team player. To my knowledge, he never went behind people’s back,” recalled former White House Counsel Greg Craig. “He’s also courageous and has no qualms about calling people up and telling people his views.” 
 
 McDonough joined Obama’s presidential campaign in 2007 after serving as the chief foreign policy adviser to Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) in the Senate and during a stint Daschle spent at the Center for American Progress after losing his seat in 2004. 
 
 McDonough bonded with Obama as his traveling foreign policy aide during the 2008 campaign. He was part of a team of foreign policy advisers to Obama which included Greg Craig, Susan Rice and Anthony Lake. 
 
 Craig says Obama and McDonough immediately hit it off. 
 
 “He was a terrific fit with Obama even before Obama realized how great a fit he was. Temperamentally, intellectually he was on the same plane with Obama,” Craig said. “He was flawless on the substance when he talked about it and very sharp also on the politics of it. I’m not surprised Obama would consider him for the [chief of staff] job.” 
 
 “The president knows [McDonough] well and trusts him,” said Matt Miller, a former Justice Department spokesman who worked with McDonough on war-on-terror issues. “He’s demonstrated tremendous organizational ability. One of the key components of that job is that you have to make the trains run on time. That’s what he’s done.” 
 
 McDonough will become Obama’s fourth permanent chief of staff. Former Clinton White House aide and Illinois Congressman Rahm Emanuel served in the post until he quit in October 2010 to run for Chicago mayor. Obama adviser Pete Rouse picked up the chief of staff duties on an acting basis for a few months until former Clinton Commerce Secretary Bill Daley took over in January 2011. He served a year before he resigned and was replaced by Lew. ||||| In that regard, Mr. McDonough, an intense, ascetic 43-year-old, may have no peer in the administration. A fervent Obama loyalist, Mr. McDonough has been immersed in every major foreign policy crisis and debate of the president’s first term, enjoying a degree of access and a level of trust that go far beyond his age or job title. 
 
 Mr. McDonough, his colleagues at the White House say, has a reputation for taking on problems no one else wants. He coordinated, for example, the administration’s response to the deadly attack on the American Mission in Benghazi, Libya, and its messy aftermath. 
 
 He is also a relentless defender of Mr. Obama, as reporters on the receiving end of angry e-mails or phone calls from him can attest. His blasts have sometimes been delivered during his nightly bike ride home to Takoma Park, Md., where he lives with his wife and three children. (After scrapes with motorists, he now mostly drives.) 
 
 Mr. McDonough has mellowed toward the news media, but he expresses little regret about switching his focus to internal policy deliberations in 2010. 
 
 As the principal deputy to the national security adviser, Thomas E. Donilon, Mr. McDonough has played a central role in assembling Mr. Obama’s second-term national security team, building ties to candidates like Chuck Hagel, the nominee for defense secretary. 
 
 He is also close to John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, who was recently nominated to be the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. 
 
 Along with Mr. Brennan, Mr. McDonough was one of a small circle of aides brought into the planning of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s hide-out in Pakistan. In a widely published photograph of Mr. Obama and his staff watching the raid unfold in the Situation Room, Mr. McDonough had a seat at the table, next to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. 
 
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 He also convened a series of meetings to redefine the American mission in Afghanistan, known informally as “Afghan Good Enough.” That helped shape Mr. Obama’s narrower ambitions for American involvement, which were on display last week when he announced an accelerated plan to hand over responsibility for security to Afghan forces. 
 
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 Last year, he proposed Mr. Obama’s surprise trip to Afghanistan, which included his unusual prime-time address to the nation about the end of the war, delivered from Bagram Air Base. 
 
 Much of Mr. McDonough’s power derives from his access to Mr. Obama. Colleagues say he has a keen sense for the president’s instincts and preferences and no separate agenda. 
 
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 “People throughout the foreign policy apparatus found out very quickly that when the national security adviser called, he might be calling for himself or for the president,” said James Mann, the author of “The Obamians,” a book about Mr. Obama’s foreign policy team. “But if Denis McDonough called, he was really calling for the president.” 
 
 While Mr. McDonough has mostly exerted influence behind the scenes, he took a high-profile role in coordinating the American response to the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti in early 2010, after Mr. Obama voiced frustration about the slow start of the effort. 
 
 Striding around a makeshift headquarters at the airport in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Mr. McDonough organized aid agencies and briefed visiting officials like Mrs. Clinton. When state officials in Florida tried to halt medical evacuation flights from Haiti, Mr. McDonough got on his BlackBerry to Washington, and the airspace was kept open. 
 
 Mr. McDonough’s interest in Haiti was an outgrowth of his work on Latin American policy on Capitol Hill, where, in addition to Mr. Daschle, he worked for former Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado and Lee H. Hamilton, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 
 
 A native of Stillwater, Minn., Mr. McDonough grew up in a Catholic family of 11 children, one of whom became a priest. He played football at St. John’s University in Minnesota, where he was known by the childhood nickname “Dude.” A devout Catholic, he once told a reporter that he had given up coffee and candy for Lent. 
 
 Mr. McDonough drew on his religious faith when he was dispatched to speak to the faithful at a mosque in Northern Virginia in 2011, bringing a message of reconciliation to Muslim Americans at a time of tension over homegrown Islamic terrorist attacks. 
 
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 “The bottom line is this,” Mr. McDonough said in his typically matter-of-fact tone. “When it comes to preventing violent extremism and terrorism in the United States, Muslim Americans are not part of the problem, you’re part of the solution.” 
 
 In a rare foray into domestic policy, Mr. McDonough reached out to Catholic Church officials after a flap over the administration’s insistence that health insurance plans, including those offered by Catholic institutions, offer birth control to women free of charge. 
 
 As a chief of staff, Mr. McDonough may lack the political pizazz of Rahm Emanuel, the backslapping bonhomie of William Daley or the budget-crunching acumen of Mr. Lew. But his friends say that he excels at precisely the kind of trains-run-on-time competence that Mr. Obama needs in a second term. 
 
 “The first-term chief of staff ends up being a kind of surrogate on major legislative initiatives,” said John D. Podesta, who served as chief of staff in President Bill Clinton’s second term. “The critical thing in the second term is to get the whole of government operating on the strategy the president has set.”
– President Obama's next chief of staff isn't exactly a household name, but he's long been a trusted adviser to the president: Politico and the New York Times say Obama will name Deputy National Security Adviser Denis McDonough to replace Jack Lew. The Times describes him as an "intense, ascetic 43-year-old," adding: "A fervent Obama loyalist, Mr. McDonough has been immersed in every major foreign policy crisis and debate of the president’s first term, enjoying a degree of access and level of trust that goes far beyond his age or job title." Politico has a similar take: "McDonough has been involved in just about every major national security decision made by Obama since he took office, from the surge in US troops in Afghanistan to the launching of the commando raid that killed al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden." The National Journal says the pick will reinforce criticism "that Obama's governing style is too insular," given that it's yet another longtime insider moving into a key position.