Welcome Instapundit Readers! While you’re here, please check out my followup post, Obama’s Focus, not Rahm, is the Real Problem.
As one who first called for White House Chief of Rahm Emanuel’s resignation on this blog nearly a year ago (but have questioned his appointment since it was announced), I guess I should be pleased by the various left-wingers calling for his head and blaming the hyper-partisan Clinton veteran and Chicago politician for the president’s difficulties.
Memeorandum seems to have been linking stories about him (or accusations leveled against him) every day for the past week, with Rep. Eric Massa’s (D-NY) accusations the latest to lead the headlines. The New York Times magazine is running a lengthy story of the “Limits of Rahmism.”
Some of the coverage seems, well, a little bit sensationalistic, as if no men ever discussed business in the locker room before. I hate to make Rahm seem any less of an nasty partisan, but, guys do this all the time. And while we’re at it, I join Michelle in warning conservatives against trusting Massa. He seems more interested in the attention than anything else.
That said, you gotta wonder why, all of a sudden, a lot of criticism of Rahm has suddenly hit the fan. And, to be sure, there have been a number of news outlets defending him. Indeed, through Glenn Reynolds, I learn the Hill has devoted an online symposium to this very matter asking, “What does all of the chatter surrounding White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel say about the White House?” Reynolds himself offers the best explanation:
Unity is easy when things are going well. Backbiting and fingerpointing start when things go badly. The leak attacks on Rahm Emanuel indicate that things are going badly.
Rahm is only to blame in that he is a hard-charging partisan political operative and not a level-headed administrator. The president needs someone with a cooler head running the day-to-day operations in the executive branch.
All the said, Rahm isn’t the only person to blame for what’s going wrong in the Obama White House. It’s just that certain folks are determined to make him the fall guy. The real question is who are they? And what do they seek to gain by attacking Rahm?To deflect attention from the president himself, perhaps? Or to advance their own careers?
FROM THE COMMENTS: Judith L offers, “As long as the in-fighting continues, O’s agenda is harder to pass and implement. Therefore, I’m all for Rahm staying as long as O is in office”
In response, the real question is why you seek to defend Rahm. Might we ask what you seek to gain by defending Mr. Emmanuel? He’s proven time and time again why he ought not be the head staffer.
Brendan, believe me, I’m not defending Rahm–and believe he must step down immediately, but he’s not the only problem in the Obama White House–problems will persist with his departure.
I say a fish rots from the head down. The real problem with the Obama administration is Obama.
Related: From the UK Telegraph –
http://tinyurl.com/y9qeaep
So much for that long, long decade OhioScumSucker predicts.
I think conservatives need to be careful in calling for this or that Democrat’s head. (Granted, we’re talking about liberals calling for Rahm to go, but in as much as conservatives might want to join the chorus…) Some conservatives called for Harry Reid to resign as majority leader—what a mistake that would be! Until HR gets knocked out of his senate seat in November, I want him there. Who could be a bigger embarrassment to his own caucus? Maybe Barbara Boxer or Al Franken, but Harry Reid is perhaps the most hapless senate leader we’ve seen in my lifetime. Rahm and Harry may be different from each other in many ways, but Rahm is also very effective in embarrassing his team. As long as Pres. Obama is there, I don’t want him to leave (unless perhaps the president takes Michael Moore up on his offer to be WHCoS.)
Rahm was hired by The Won and he is there until The Won tells him to go or until he asks to go. Here are some names: Podesta, Cheney, Haldeman, Jordon, Erlichman, Rove, Regan, Atwater, Axlerod. All have been called the evil power behind the curtain and each one attracted calls for resignation.
I do not like Rahm, but he is doing the job Obama allows him to do. The Obama (good cop) vs Rahm (bad cop) routine is transparent, and I doubt anyone in Washington who gets a call from Rahm thinks it may be good news.
The Won has done plenty to hurt his presidency all by himself. I suspect that Axlerod has warped a bit and is fretting over how to package The Won going forward. From his perspective, Rahm is a lightening rod. We will know what the Politburo politics are when one of them shows up missing at the May Day Parade. Meanwhile, Rahm stays.
I don’t think Rahm looks like Lee Majors. Am I missing something?
This is how I connect the dots. There’s been alot of chatter for months that the policy guys in the administration are frustrated by the politicos influence on the president.
Axelrod, Jarrett, and Gibbs are not Washington savvy. Rahm is. So, if you believe the politicos have greater access and influence on policy than the policy guys themselves, then using the process of elimination Rahm becomes the most important person in the administration aside from the president.
So, whether its just or unjust, if Rahm has the most access and things aren’t going well, he’s going to take the fall.
Let’s see…do we believe Massa or Emmanuel? Eh, who cares? I’m just sitting back quietly and enjoying the show.
Hmm…this popcorn could use more butter.
Agreed. Now begin countdown to “This isn’t the Rahm Emanuel I thought I knew.”
As long as the in-fighting continues, O’s agenda is harder to pass and implement. Therefore, I’m all for Rahm staying as long as O is in office. I would enjoy Valerie J. receiving more coverage for her “wisdom”. Along with reminders that she is the closest friend of both Obamas and “speaks for them”.
Combine Chad’s response (#5), and John’s (#9), and I’m siting pretty much there. I am enjoying the theatre of it all. Then again, I also enjoyed the theatre when Republicans struggled a few years ago too. I just roll that way I guess.
Leave him there until at least November.
D’s eating their young is great theater.
CLDave, well said.
Judith, great point, truly great point!
Emanuel may be a scapegoat, in the sense that expunging him will not change much about how the administration operates. But he is a compelling representative of what is wrong with the admninistration. Emanuel is the real face of Barack Obama. Obama is a thug in philosophy and practice, but he needs someone else to look like the thug while he still tries to be the messianic hopenchange guy.
The shower room story has resonance because it typifies what we deplore about Emanuel. It is a story of inappropriate aggression, crossing boundaries of civilized behavior. It is bullying and unseemly. Like this entire administration.
I almost get the impression Rahm isn’t the only one getting set up to have the chair kicked out from under him. The piece on Axelrod from this weekend (“I don’t give a flying f*ck what the peanut gallery thinks” and the defeatist “maybe next year” lines being the take aways from that ‘puff’ piece) reminds me of a paraphrase: with ‘favorable’ coverage like this. . .
If the House fails to come up with the votes to pass Obamacare, both of those guys look like they’re fully marinated dead-meat, ready to be sacrificed by the Underbusser in Chief. My guess – before Memorial Day, if not quite a bit sooner.
Anything to give the spin machine an excuse for deflecting the blame from Skippy. “It was the fault of my nitwit underlings” is a tried and true political dodge, particularly followed by a segue of ‘let us reasonably begin again, without the riff-raff to muck up the works of achieving utopian bliss from my wisdom load of crap.
Just a week or two ago, there were lots of stories about how Emanuel was the real genius of the Administration and how much better off Obama would have been if he had followed Emanuel’s advice. At the time, it was suspected that Emanuel himself was behind these stories, and that he was trying to build himself up and cut down some of his rivals in the White House. Aren’t these latest stories likely to be a result of “counter-programming” by those rivals?
By all means, the libs should get rid of Rahm and replace him with Michael Moore. That would fix everything.
I have a friend of mine who is a retired journalist who tells me that since the loss last fall in both NJ and VA, along with MA in January, that Mr. Emmanuel will be hitting the door this year. What is going on now…is merely the underlings sniping away, because they know that he’s on the way out.
On the subject of locker room etiquette. Walking up to a guy in the showers cursing and poking him in the chest is a good way to receive what is known as street justice.
It is best to take potential witnesses and plausible denability into consideration.
Now that would be something worth popping corn over.
Am I the only one who sees a proxy knife fight of negative leaks between Emanuel and Axelrod? If I had to bet on one, I’d pick Rahm. It would not disappoint me to see both of them under the bus.
There’s no mystery here: it’s all about protecting the President from more embarrassment.
Every WH staffer serves at the pleasure of the President, and any or all may be called upon to “fall on their swords” at a moment’s notice if it benefits POTUS. Of course, exercise this option too many times and you’ll have a vacant West Wing for the remainder of Obama’s term.
We can only hope…
/wwc/
Rahm Emmanuel is Lee Majors???
Woah!
Well,I don’t know about you,Mr Blatt,but I am personally unaccustomed to discussing ‘business’ with someone who is poking me in the chest with his finger while his johnson is hanging out….presumably that is SOP in your neck of the woods since you seem to be ok with that…Runt Emanuel is a nasty piece of work,and you do yourself no credit by trying to alibi him for what was clearly a fit of pique in an inappropriate setting.
Robbins, believe me, I’m not defending Mr. Emanuel, but just wonder if Mr. Massa is stretching the truth here just a tad.
Let me get this straight…..
the administration led by the communtiy organizer who was a guest lecturer is floundering.
Hmm wonder why?
He’s incompetent and has no clue what he’s doing.
The health care summit…..what a great example of a clueless leader trying to come to a concensus, looking like a boob herding cats instead.
I’ve been in many a business meeting with an individual like Obama. After hours of tedious talk, the day ends with the participants looking at one another, “damn another wasted day.”
Well,that is possible,of course…but given all that we have heard about Runt Emanuel before with his dead fish and sticking knives into tables etc, what Massa said seems entirely in character for him…granted,Massa is something of a liberal doofus,but with Barokeydoke pulling out all the stops to get DeathCare passed,and their penchant for employing Chicago tactics,I’m thinking that Massa’s account of that incident was probably fairly accurate
Hey, what do you know? Everything that’s been said so far is totally wrong.
Obama is failing because he didn’t do what he was elected to do, which was end the wars, reform health care, and reform the financial industry. On the contrary, he’s done things that very much maintain the status quo and add to establishment coffers.
The idea that he’s having a hard time right now because he was too bold in implementing a radical liberal agenda is totally preposterous. He hasn’t even tried – he’s spent almost all of his time playing games with conservatives and trying to court their voters, a fool’s errand if there ever was one.
If Obama hasn’t done anything liberal in the past 14 months how the hell has he added 9 trillion to the national debt?
Can I ask what the media would be doing if a Republican staff of chief (for limbaugh listeners) was seen trolling congressional showers naked for any purpose?
Rove, Haig, Sununu…
What a coincidence. Levi pops up here to spout his propoganda when he’s been smacked down.
Of course, considering that he’s a fan of child rapists, believes that children in mass graves are a good thing, and has yet to back up his statement about successful communist countries. Why should we be surprised?
I’ll link to my last list of Levi’s facist tirades here and here.
Rahm is a nut, anyone following him from the Clinton days knows that, but the media defenestration is absolutely miss-aimed and we all know why. It is of a piece with the seeming Lefty and other objections to the actions of Eric Holder. I am astonished that even apolitical folks would buy the notion that Holder does so much as fill his lungs without Barry signing off on it, and I suspect only media types could do so. Rahm may actually have his own agenda personally but everything he is trying to accomplish and every tactic he has employed (at least publicly) is an institutional artifact that should be signed, as even shop produced Rembrandts are, by the head of the shop. Rahm is Obama’s creature. Rahm’s actions are Obama’s, just as with Eric Holder or Hillary, until he at least makes some public repudiation of same. Has there been such? Not a peep. Rahm may be a loose cannon but he is still aimed at the targets chosen by Obama. Really, it is Obama who needs firing but his one unmistakeably genius move, choosing Biden, innoculates him well from that.