Don’t cross the streams. It would be bad.
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Financial Times has an interesting article on growing frustration within D.C. with President Obama's persistent reliance on an inner circle of four people: David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs, Rahm Emanuel, and Valerie Jarrett. One equally interesting reaction.
Most quotes are from anonymous sources. This one sums it up in a nutshell:
Most quotes are from anonymous sources. This one sums it up in a nutshell:
"There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government. Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening."
Posted by Tehanu at 7:20 PM on February 9th 2010
That minor point out of the way, I've heard various people complaining about Rahm, just a general tone that he's clearly unfit for the job and is destroying Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, which many say helped Obama win.
I knew Obama was inexperienced when I voted for him, but I was ok with that, figuring he'd still do a better job than McCain/Palin and I'm still happy with that. However some of the bumbling about and lack of strong, cohesive defense and offense has been disheartening.
That said, I view the problems he's having not so much as him or the Democrats, but rather the Republicans and conservatives throwing screaming fits because they're not getting their way.
I do think the Democrats are a big part of a problem though. They're in control. In theory anyway. The Republicans are obstructing as much as humanly possible but the Democrats are the reason it's working. Obama is no question better than the alternative but that only gets you so far.