The Article That Has All Of Washington Buzzing!

The Article That Has All Of Washington Buzzing!
By David Mixner
Copyright by By David Mixner
Feb 9 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/02/the-article-that-has-all-of-washington-buzzing.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29

Read the original article: A fearsome foursome at:http://newsletter91507.blogspot.com/2010/02/fearsome-foursome.html

Obama-portfolio-0903-pp13 Journalist Edward Luce has written an article "A Fearsome Foursome" that is the talk of political circles. He openly discusses what has been bantered about in private dinner parties inside the Beltway. Luce's article is one of those rare ones that comes along and suddenly crystallizes everyone's private concerns about Obama's inner circle. After an arguably weak and indecisive year, people have been seeking answers and solutions so that the Democrats are not hammered in the coming elections. Few stars have emerged in the Obama team among the Cabinet as if they have been kept under wraps. Well, apparently they have been intentionally hidden from the public.

In the Financial Times (FT.com), Luce writes:

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons - from Mr Obama's decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president's inability to convince voters he can "feel their [economic] pain", to the apparent ungovernability of today's Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis - and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington - most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office - each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people - Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

Luce continues:

With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama's brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans - like the president. And barring Richard Nixon's White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

"It is a very tightly knit group," says a prominent Obama backer who has visited the White House more than 40 times in the past year. "This is a kind of 'we few' group . . . that achieved the improbable in the most unlikely election victory anyone can remember and, unsurprisingly, their bond is very deep."

The article then illuminates on Obama's failure to communicate about healthcare and to use his Cabinet:

"Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn't want," says Jim Morone, America's leading political scientist on healthcare reform. "Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master."

Whatever issue arises, whether it is a failed terrorist plot in Detroit, the healthcare bill, economic doldrums or the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan, the White House instinctively fields Mr Axelrod or Mr Gibbs on television to explain the administration's position. "Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president," says an exasperated outside adviser.

Perhaps the biggest losers are the Cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama's Health Secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. "I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his Cabinet," says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently. "If you want people to trust you, you must first place trust in them."