The White House has already accelerated plans to begin preparing for Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign and coming confrontations with the new Republican majority in the House. David Axelrod, the senior adviser who has spent the last two years just down the hall from the Oval Office, will return home to Chicago soon after the president’s State of the Union speech in late January, a senior official said.

Mr. Axelrod’s departure from the West Wing is being accelerated at his request, according to a senior White House official familiar with his thinking, so he can take some time off before beginning preparations for the 2012 race.