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Veronique de Rugy says it is time to stop blaming Bush.
… In his latest budget request, President Obama added roughly $1.6 trillion in spending over the next ten years on top of what he requested last year. Can President Obama blame that extra $1.6 trillion on former President Bush? …
Pickings is unusually mono-focused today as it looks at some of the firestorm of criticism of members of the administration. Calls for resignations of Holder and Brennan have now led to detailed portraits of the “Chicago Four”; Axelrod, Jarrett, Emanuel, and Gibbs. The catalyst for this was an article by Edward Luce in Financial Times about the people surrounding the president who, while good at winning the job, apparently have no clue how to govern. This piece, which is below, and related items are being followed in the blogospere with intense interest. We start with a Daniel Foster Corner Post on the subject.
There is a great deal of back-and-forth in the blogosphere today on the subject of a Financial Times piece (subscription required) that lays the blame for Obama’s floundering first year in office on an advisory staff geared for campaigning, not governing.
Based on extensive anonymous interviews with people around the Obama White House, the Financial Times’ Edward Luce paints a picture of an administration run almost entirely from within the president’s political machine — with campaign-managers-turned-advisers David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Gibbs, along with Chicagoan legislative tactician Rahm Emanuel, in the room for every major decision. …
Jonah Goldberg is next. We’ll keep pull quotes short so we don’t get too long.
… it seems to me Obama is to blame for his current woes and in a way that is unique to him. The upshot of the Luce article is that Obama is still in campaign mode. That’s a point conservatives have been making for a year, so it’s a bit funny to hear liberals suddenly credit this analysis. …
Steve Clemons of the Washington Note introduces the article.
… this Luce piece is unavoidably, accurately hard-hitting, and while many of the nation’s top news anchors and editors are sending emails back and forth (I have been sent three such emails in confidence) on what a spot-on piece Luce wrought on the administration, they fear that the “four horsepersons of the Obama White House” will shut down and cut off access to those who give the essay ‘legs.’ …
Here is the Edward Luce piece in Financial Times.
At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”
Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong? …
Andrew Malcolm of LA Times also weighs in on the subject.
… In the last few days at least three major outlets have published well-informed evaluations of Obama’s first year in office. All are well worth reading. The dominant themes: disappointment and disillusionment with the Chicago way.
In one respect it’s not surprising that a capitol city with its own style of take-no-prisoners politics should find a professed outsider’s style of smoother-spoken take-no-prisoners discomforting.
But now, no less than the Huffington Post headlined its Obama evaluation by Steve Clemons: “Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama presidency.”
The devastating Financial Times report by Edward Luce: “A fearsome foursome”
And the Washington Post story by Ann Gerhart: “A year later, where did the hopes for Obama go?” …
Streetwise Professor rhetorically asks why he can never remember Gibbs’ first name.
I know that his name is “Robert,” but I always find myself calling him “Dick.” I wonder why that is?
Actually, I don’t. He is the most insufferable, appalling, obnoxious, dishonest, and thuggish press secretary in memory. And stupid, too. What is his mission in life? To make Scott McClellan look good? One would have thought that Mission Impossible, but Gibbs has succeeded beyond anything Tom Cruise could ever aspire to. …
… the coalescing conventional wisdom is that these jokers are responsible for Obama’s cliff dive. (A competing explanation is that you idiotic people are to blame for not recognizing the wonderfulness that is the modern Washington political class.)
Surely, they have contributed. But this explanation wreaks of the old story of the Czar being betrayed by his boyars and officials. The Czar, of course, is faultless: it is his underlings that have failed him.
It’s an old explanation/rationalization/excuse, and almost always wrong. It’s wrong in this case. As usual, responsibility ultimately rests at the top–with Obama. …
Jennifer Rubin picks up on the Czar/Boyar analogy with a piece titled with the age old cry of Russian reformers, “If the Czar Only Knew.”
Democrats are loathe to say outright what a political disaster Obama has been for their party. So they have seized upon his right-hand man:
“Democrats in Congress are holding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel accountable for his part in the collapse of healthcare reform.The emerging consensus among critics in both chambers is that Emanuel’s lack of Senate experience slowed President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority. …”
In a follow-up, Rubin introduces Doug Wilder’s essay in Politico.
Former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder vividly writes:
“Indeed, even before Bob McDonnell’s resounding victory, the canary had been dead on the floor for months. In Virginia’s most Democratic-friendly regions, the Democrats had been narrowly winning — or outright losing — special elections that should have been taken easily. …”
Summing up this look at Obama’s administration we have the Doug Wilder piece mentioned by J. Rubin above. More on Wilder with this from November 5, 2008 Pickings upon the election of the kid president;
“Americans have much to be proud of today. The election of an African-American to the highest office in the land is an outstanding achievement. A testament to the open-minded tolerance of this country’s citizens; at least, the majority of them.
Do you think the press and the rest of the world will stop telling us how racist we are? Maybe now they’ll notice that the American people have already moved on.
Nineteen years ago Virginia elected the first black governor in the country Then, Pickerhead was proud to vote for the Democrat Doug Wilder over the hapless Marshall Coleman. This time however, it is discouraging to see a doctrinaire leftist selected by the voters. Nothing but trouble, follows in the wake of officials who use the state’s power to compel and direct behavior.”
Here’s Wilder today;
… It would be a grave mistake for the president and those around him to misread the current polls and analyses. They suggest that 1) the American people do not like the direction in which the country is heading; 2) they do not believe that either Democrats or Republicans are showing that they get the message and are doing the business of the people; 3) they hold Congress in very low regard; but 4) they really like the president. Yet, they keep going to the polls to rebuke him resoundingly every chance it is presented.
Unless changes are made at the top, by the top, when the time comes for voters to show how they really feel about Obama, his policies and the messages he sends directly or through the people around him, the president will discover that Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts were not just temporary aberrations but, rather, timely expressions of voters who always show that they are ahead of the politicians.
The president should keep uppermost in his mind the biblical admonition as to what happens to those trees that do not bear “good fruit”: The ax is already at the tree.
Dilbert makes peace with his shop vac.
Now that I have a manly garage, with a manly workbench, I was delighted to receive for Christmas a Shop Vac. It’s a magical device that sucks up all sorts of debris, even liquid. It has attachments for everything. I think one attachment is for haircuts, but I haven’t tried it yet. The Shop Vac is gray and black and reminds me of R2D2 so much that I expect it to jack into my breaker panels and reprogram my DVR. …
Very good cartoons tonight.