Core Chicago Team Sinking Obama Presidency
(Obama’s Core Team at press conference on Obama administration’s 100th day)
Steve Clemons
Publisher of “The Washington Note”
Financial Times Washington Bureau Chief Edward Luce has written a granularly informed insider account about those who hold the keys to the inner most sanctum of Obama Land — Rahm Emanuel, Robert Gibbs, Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod.
It’s a vital article — a brave one — that includes “dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington.”
Most are unnamed because the consequences of retribution from this powerful foursome can be severe in an access-dependent town. John Podesta, president of the powerful, administration-tilting Center for American Progress, had the temerity and self-confidence to put his thoughts publicly on the record. But most others could not.
Mark Schmitt, executive editor of the liberal magazine the American Prospect, wrote that “Luce has written what seems to me the best and most succinct rundown of what’s gone wrong in the White House, with particular attention to the role of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.” But some of the big aggregators out there — Mike Allen at Politico and ABC’s The Note among others — didn’t give Luce’s juicy and lengthy essay any love.
Why not? Allen is a good friend of mine and tries to keep a good balance between tough-hitting political stuff, but also goes out of his way to give strokes to those in the White House he can — particularly “Axe” — who is a regular in Mike’s daily Playbook. I try to do the same, to be honest, and have a particular thing for Bill Burton’s wit and was pleased to see Rahm Emanuel giving David Geffen rather than Rick Warren lots of hugs during the Inauguration eve fests.
But 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.’
But in the too regularly vapid chatter about DC’s political scene, serious critiques of the internal game around Obama not only deserve review on their own merits but have to be read — because Obama is not winning. He is failing and people need to consider why.
Any serious survey of the Obama administration’s accomplishments and setbacks over the last year has to conclude that the administration is deeply in the red.








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By Eugene Robinson
enator Chris Dodd, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, scolded Wall Street representatives at a hearing Thursday for sending “an army of lobbyists whose only mission is to kill the common-sense financial reforms” needed by the public. “The fact is,” Dodd said, “I am frustrated, and so are the American people.” He charged that Wall Street’s intransigence was the reason for Congress’s failure to pass any bill to regulate the Street. “The refusal of large financial firms to work constructively with Congress on this effort borders on insulting to the American people who have lost so much in this crisis.”









