President Obama, A CEO Would Change Up the Team
by Steve Clemons
Publisher of "The Washington Note"Posted: February 23, 2010 08:14 AM
President Obama's closest handlers -- Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Gibbs -- are under fire from a number of observers, including this one, for deploying the President's political capital badly, failing to animate and empower the considerable policy and political talent they have appointed to key positions on their team, poorly sequencing their policy gambits, and not having "plan B's" ready to go after they threw down the gauntlet on some challenge (Israeli settlements comes to mind), among other sins.
The team is failing on most, if not all, of the major policy challenges that the Obama administration accepted as the defining ones for his tenure. Health care reform is on life support, although one has to give credit to President Obama for commitment for trying to get something done -- though political analyst Charlie Cook has just called this a "Captain Ahab-like" obsession that could sink his presidency. Efforts to recreate America's global leverage have failed by following incrementalist policy paths rather than taking well-coordinated, well-planned strategic leaps on Israel-Palestine and Iran.
The President, while doing much to miss the bullet of a global economic depression, has presided over the resuscitation of Wall Street and many of the firms that recklessly gambled while main street remains precariously near an edge and where many fear the potential of a double dip recession when the stimulus comes out of the economy.
Like any corporation or organization that has a crisis that has undermined the confidence of its constituents, shake-ups are normal. Sometimes the CEO goes, which is not possible or desirable with a President, but a shake-up of the team beneath him -- no matter whether there is legitimate blame or not to be had -- would be a healthy course.
This is one of those few cases where the crisis of confidence with elites and those who engineer and craft serious political enterprises are the constituency -- not the grassroots. But the grassroots as well as the political grasstops see and feel Obama's failure to lock in success. In this context, the political stumbling, back-stabbing and brusqueness emanating from the Chief of Staff's office and others close to Obama is toxic and politically crippling.
Obama and his closest advisers have managed to divide their friends and unite their enemies -- and they must turn this around. There are ways to do so that are respectful to Emanuel, Jarrett, Axelrod, and Gibbs -- each of whom are talented in a great number of ways. They don't all need to go. But their monopoly of control and access -- and Obama's own solicitousness of them needs to be replaced by smarter empowerment of smart people in the executive branch and even inside the incumbent White House.
I think Obama needs to do one of his famous meet, greet, and chat dinners with some of his more serious critics -- those who want him to succeed but see serious problems. Obama should use this as a mirror to hold up to himself -- and he should not bring Rahm, Valerie, Gibbs, or Axe to that meeting.
-snip-
It is untrue that the GITMO closing was not possible within a year. It was only not possible because Rahm Emanuel convinced the President that spending political capital on GITMO would undermine them in other policy battles, particularly health care, and forfeit national security points to the Republicans in 2010.
Someone should assemble all the various informed accounts of current White House management into a Faulkneresque portal into that world. All of the accounts, even Dana Milbank's, points to serious dysfunction, missteps, and failure.
Dana Milbank's article, whether he intended it or not, has started a battle among these giants around Obama that is a total antithesis to the kind of culture around Obama in his campaign, at least as reported in David Plouffe's account.
More of an interesting read at.......
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/president-obama-a-ceo-wou_b_472808.html
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