“Good. Because a man who doesn’t spend time with his family can never be a real man.”

– Vito Corleone

White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley (Charles Dharapak - AP)

After Barack Obama announced that Bill Daley was leaving his job as White House chief of staff to spend more time with his family, my colleague Karen Tumulty wrote that in all her years in Washington, she could think of only one person, George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes, who’d said that and been believed.

But there have to have been others who forfeited position and power to spend more time playing “Ants in the Pants,” right? Here are a few who said they did:

1) Sen. Ben Nelson, the moderate Nebraskan who so often maddened his fellow Democrats, recently announced he won’t seek reelection for family reasons. But Nelson, who’s 70, was considered one of the most endangered members of the Senate — and also said just recently, “I have no plans to retire. No plans to retire. Zero.”

2) Michele Flournoy, 50, who’s soon leaving her job as the under secretary of defense for policy, is one of the most senior women civilians ever to serve at the Pentagon, with a portfolio that includes shaping our counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan and assembling the team that’s planning our role there after combat troops leave at the end of 2014. She’s said she’s leaving in February to “rebalance” her life and spend more time with her three children: “Right now I need to recalibrate a little bit and invest a little bit more in the family account for a while. We’ve been going flat out for more than three years.” (Karen Hughes, you are no longer alone.)

Fort Mill, S.C. – While his competitors for the GOP presidential nomination campaigned in New Hampshire on the day of that state’s primary Tuesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry was already looking south. Despite polls that show his support in South Carolina dwindling to single digits, far lower than front-runner Mitt Romney, Perry hopes his message will catch on between now and the Jan. 21 primary in this conservative state.

To do it, he’ll have to move past not only Romney, but a surging Rick Santorum, who’s spent more time on the ground here than any other candidate, as well as Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul. He might need some help from the Almighty, whom Perry wasn’t shy about invoking, whether it was mentioning the vacation Bible schools of his youth, the “faith, family and friends” at the core of his upbringing or the time he “gave [his] life to Jesus Christ” at 14 years of age.

LONDON -- These days, product recalls are nothing out of the ordinary. From children’s toys to Tylenol, you locate the offending item, send in your receipt, and with any luck, get a refund. But when the recall in question concerns a breast implant – as it does right now in a scandal here in the U.K. – then the process is a quite bit more complicated.

In case you haven’t heard, silicone breast implants made with P.I.P. – an industrial grade silicone – by a French company have now been declared faulty, exposing women to ruptures, leaks and possible risks of cancer. Over the past 12 years, some 300,000 of these implants were sold to women around the globe in more than 65 countries, predominantly in Europe and South America. (The United States banned this product and declared it unsafe.)

The French government has recently recalled all P.I.P. implants and agreed to pay for their removal, but only for women who’d had the original surgery done in France. The British government maintains that the link between P.I.P. implants and cancer is far lower than suggested by French data. It has agreed to pay for any removal on implants performed by the National Health Service (NHS) over the past decade (primarily those linked to breast cancer reconstructive surgery). But this accounts for only about 5% of the 40,000
Plastic surgeon Denis Boucq holds a defective silicone gel breast implant manufactured by French company Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) after he removed it from a patient in a clinic in Nice December 21, 2011. French medical device regulatory authority (AFSSAPS) recalled PIP breast implants in March 2010 after it concluded that their performance and safety were not in accordance with current standards. France will offer surgery to remove the breast implants of up to 30,000 women if a study due out this week finds that the silicone they are made from could cause cancer, the health minister said on Tuesday. REUTERS/Eric Gaillard (FRANCE - Tags: HEALTH SOCIETY) (ERIC GAILLARD - REUTERS) women who’ve had implants in this country during that time.

As for the remaining 38,000 or so cases, the government is urging private clinics to perform the recalls for free on moralgrounds. (As a last resort, the government will step in to pay for removal of implants put in in a private clinic that has closed or is unwilling to provide the service.

And this is where things get interesting. Several of the private British health clinics are balking at this moral directive from the government to undertake these removals for free. The clinics’ argument is that given that a government regulatory body approved the use of P.I.P. in the first place, they should not be financially liable for any ex poste safety concerns, at a cost to them of approximately 2,800 pounds ($4,300) per person.

Which means that the British government – read: taxpayer – may end up shelling out as much as 11 million pounds ($17 million) to solve the problem, unless the private health providers review this decision and change their minds by week’s end.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton greets in the traditional Thai way as she visits the collective centre for people evacuated from flooded areas in Bangkok November 17, 2011. (DAMIR SAGOLJ - REUTERS) LITTLE ROCK, Ark. -- Is Vice President Hillary Clinton a Clintonite fantasy or a valid possibility?

Even Monday’s announcement of White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley’s resignation boosted the hopes of Hillary supporters who chose to see it as a harbinger: Could more shake-ups occur in the Obama administration before November? Say, a switch of Joe Biden for Hillary Clinton?

With everyone from Bill Keller of the New York Times to novelist Anne Rice jumping on the bandwagon, at least one of the Clintons couldn’t be happier. (“Hillary Clinton for vice president now!’’ Rice wrote on her Facebook page. “Strengthen the ticket and prepare for the future! What a spokesperson she would be for the administration in the coming campaign months! Let’s hear it for Hillary!”)

Some of Bill Clinton’s closest friends and allies here say the entire scenario is the former president’s wishful thinking, and that his not-so-secret fantasy is that his wife could make history as the country’s first female vice president; apparently, he pushes the idea to anyone who will listen.

Other Clinton friends, however, say both Bill and Hillary Clinton think the Democratic Party needs a jolt only she can deliver.

At this point, even I don’t know which wing of the family is right; the Clintons and their allies have been spinning yarns and leaking rumors for decades, daring reporters to decipher them.

And I’ve been covering Bill Clinton literally since childhood.

Cue the knowing smirks.

With the resignation of Bill Daley, who reportedly wasn’t working out all that well as White House chief of staff, we have once again been handed the cliched spend-more-time-with-his-family rationale.
U.S. President Barack Obama announces that Chief of Staff Bill Daley (R) is stepping down. (KEVIN LAMARQUE - REUTERS) .

Not three weeks ago, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson — who was facing a difficult re-election battle — said the same thing.

When did this start? As best I can tell, it goes at least as far back as Watergate, when John Mitchell used it as his reason for resigning from the Committee to Re-elect the President. And we all know how that one ended up…

In all the years I’ve been in Washington, the only person I can remember sounding even remotely credible saying that was George W. Bush adviser Karen Hughes. . But you tell me; who am I forgetting?

Karen Tumulty is a Post political reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @KTumulty.