ANOTHER article on Emanuel (NYT) - says he didn't write WP articles, only doing what he's told

[d.gibbs]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/magazine/14emanuel-t.html?pagewanted=print

March 14, 2010
Magazine Preview
The Limits of Rahmism
By PETER BAKER

.....The paradox of the current situation for Obama and Emanuel has not been lost on Washington. A visionary outsider who is relatively inexperienced and perhaps even a tad naïve about the ways of Washington captures the White House and, eager to get things done, hires the ultimate get-it-done insider to run his operation. Obama was enough of a student of history to avoid repeating the mistakes of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, who came to reform the capital and installed friends from home who did not truly understand it as their top White House aides. But if picking the leading practitioner of the dark arts of the capital was a Faustian bargain for Obama in the name of getting things done, why haven’t things got done? ....

In this season of discontent for Obama, Emanuel has emerged as the leading foil, the easy and most popular target for missiles flung at the White House from all sides. He is the bête noire of conservatives who see him as the chief architect of Obama’s big-government program and of liberals who consider him an accommodationist who undermines the very same agenda. The criticism has been searing and conflicting. He didn’t work enough across party lines. He tried too hard to work across party lines. He pushed for too much. He didn’t push for enough. The crossfire underscores his contradictions — how can Emanuel be so intensely partisan without being all that liberal and so relentlessly pragmatic without being bipartisan? And just as salient these days, how can he be so independent-minded and still remain loyal to a team operation?

After a series of attacks last month came articles in The Washington Post and elsewhere defending Emanuel, which in a way was worse for him, because it fed suspicions that he was secretly disparaging the president and colleagues. None of his closest friends believe he would deliberately do that, but all the attention on him lately has stirred widespread grumbling inside the White House about the violation of the “no-drama Obama” ethos cultivated during the campaign. Even some of Emanuel’s friends are aggravated at the perception that White House officials are taking shots at one another. As for Obama, “he’s irritated by the stories,” a top aide told me, and Emanuel has “expressed regret” to the president.

Emanuel, who declined to talk to me on the record for this article, generally shrugs off most of the commentary, scorning armchair critics who haven’t spent time in the White House or Congress actually trying to accomplish something. But at least some of this is bravado. “He is obviously going through a tough patch,” William Daley, a former commerce secretary and a close friend, says. “Everybody wants to dump on him because they don’t want to dump on the president.” Daley told me it is eating away at Emanuel: “Contrary to what he says, this stuff does bother him. He cannot fail. And if he thinks people think he failed, it depresses him. He can’t stand the thought that he’s failed, and he’s hearing that from too many people now.”...

[truedelphi]

1. Perhaps Obama should have spent less time consumed over the failures of Carter and Clinton

And more time studying how LBJ used his bully pulpit and his momentum, and his ability to stand on the enemies' carotid arteries rather than focusing on Carter and Clinton. It is because of LBJ's abilities to be a political animal, that this nation arrived at a very decent Civil Rights Act that LBJ signed into law the first week of his first summer in office under his own terms.

And I don't buy the idea that Obama studied Clinton Administration that much. Bill Clinton told the MIC where to go when they asked him for their dirty little war in Iraq.

Whereas Obama has been plenty friendly with the MIC when it comes to Afghanistan.

[Hestia]

5. LBJ really can't be compared to any current president. His mentor Sam Rayburn

buried the bodies that LBJ knew were there and in who's backyard. Obama doesn't have anyone there really telling him the truth. I don't blame him for smoking or having a drink or two too much. Anybody would with this administration. I don't think it's Obama playing footsie with the MIC - I do think it's it Chief of Staff who is, with all the AIPAC type activities he's been associated with in the past. Interesting all these Emmanuel bombs have been coming out lately, isn't it? Who's really planting them that they actually get printed? It aint' the Republican's.

[truedelphi]

6. If he wasn't up to the job, why did he run? A far more valiant thing to do would have been

To step aside and let Kucinich handle it.

Anyway, Obama himself said he was ready for the job. In October 2008, while campaigning, he said he was ready, and he said he understood the Upper One Percent, and that he would be there in the Oval Office to protect our interests, and that if that Elite did not do right by us on Main Street, then he would see to it that we had regulations and stipulations in place.

It is very hard for me to believe that he took on the toughest group of Dem candidates ever assembled, learned all the prertinent rules for his campaign and defeated those other Dems and then went on to beat McCaim, but now that he is in office, the poor man just doesn't know what to do. Oh Boo Hoo Hoo.

Except that he seems rather good at avoiding getting any meaningful restrictions in legislation to hamper the Bankster/Fraudsters that he is so fond of. Or to keep the Big Insurers in place. And he seems rather good at avoiding any meetings with anyone of the Progressive camp. Are you aware that he met with some of the more Conservative R Senators over forty times apiece, but rarely had time for Weiner or Kooch?

[tularetom]

2. I wouldn't want Rahm to be depressed because people think he has failed

so my suggestion to him is hold a big press conference and declare you have succeeded.

Then quit.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Rahm is "an easy and popular target"?

No, he's THE target. And some of us have recognized that fact since he was appointed.

[Confusious]

4. His problem in a nutshell

“Contrary to what he says, this stuff does bother him. He cannot fail. And if he thinks people think he failed, it depresses him. He can’t stand the thought that he’s failed, and he’s hearing that from too many people now.”...

That's why he'd sell his own mother to get a deal. So he won't fail.