Various Things & Stuff has learned (after reading our colleague Jon Ralston’s FLASH e-mail newsletter) that McCue will be giving up the CEO’s post at the ONE Campaign, where she’s been for the last year, and starting her own small consulting shop. Although ONE will be among her clients, her most important project will be Reid’s office.

Since McCue left, Reid has suffered some embarrassing miscues, by which we mean to say he certainly MISSES having MCCUE around to guide the office. His recent punking at the hands of radio ass clown, Rush Limbaugh, and his inconsistent stands on environmental issues (mining — good; coal fired power — bad) prove he needs some help. And longtime staffer McCue is just the person to do it.

While on Reid’s staff, recall, McCue was repeatedly voted to the Fabulous Fifty list of staffers by Roll Call newspaper. Plus, she has an almost preternatural savvy with bloggers, who can shift from praising Reid for standing up to the War Party to savaging him for knuckling under to the Bush administration’s agenda.

Any way you look at it, this is good news for Reid. And while McCue won’t be helming the ubiquitous ONE campaign any longer, she’ll still be involved, so fighting global poverty and disease won’t fall totally off the radar. But clearly, it’s a sign of how bad things have become that McCue could be coaxed back toward her old job as a Democratic policy guru and away from the officially non-partisan ONE campaign.

She’s got her work cut out for her, that’s for sure.