I like Steve Clemons even though he occupies a place in Washington that I distrust pretty deeply. Clemons is a progressive-minded fellow who successfully maintains relationships on both sides of the aisle and gets along well with some people like Grover Norquist who I have no respect for whatsoever. But, these are the kinds of things you have to do to have a place at the table on foreign policy issues. To have your voice mean something to our permanent establishment, you have to become part of it in some ways. Clemons’s reward is not only influence, but access. I think there are some serious compromises that have to be made to play that game, but I understand those compromises and respect them. In any case, I wouldn’t say that I read Clemons with a jaundiced eye, just with a certain detachment. I don’t want to shake hands with people like Brent Scowcroft, James Baker, and Zbigniew Brzezinski because I see all three of them as causing America to make some pretty disastrous foreign policy blunders that we’re still paying for. I think they all share a fatally flawed view of American power and its proper role in the post-Cold War world. It’s true that they aren’t neo-conservatives, but they’re not terribly different in the larger picture. Yet, they do represent a kind of center-right position when you compare them to loonies like John McCain, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsey Graham. And if you want any kind of bipartisan agreement on foreign policy…if you want any kind of cover from the right for tough decisions…these are folks you need to respect and cultivate. I get that.
On the other hand, Clemons’s decision to sign-on with Richard Luce’s Financial Times (subscription required) criticism of Obama’s inner sanctum on Chicago advisers strikes me just a tad too Sally Quninish for my tastes. It wouldn’t be so hard to take the criticism if the solution wasn’t to listen more to Katrina vanden Heuvel, Arianna Huffington, and Fareed Zakaria. Not to be a rube, but Obama isn’t going to benefit from listening to those creatures of Washington so much as he’d benefit from listening to his Secret Service detail, or the White House pastry chefs and florists. He should spend a little time (not too much) reading political commentary from people who live outside the beltway and have no pretensions to power. That’s the beauty of the internet. The opinion gatekeepers are long gone.
It may be that Obama’s closest advisers (Axelrod, Jarrett, Emanuel, and Gibbs) are mucking things up. Maybe they are better at campaigning than governing. Maybe they have too much influence. That’s a conversation I’m willing to have. But the solution ain’t to listen to more Washingtonian old-hands. Old hands are invaluable for some things and can be of some assistance in helping you figure out how to strategize getting stuff through Congress. You can’t come to Washington without massaging some of the egos around town because you’ll pay a price that hurts your agenda and the people who are depending on your help. But you can take it too far. I’m happier having some new blood in the president’s inner circle. If there’s a problem with Emanuel it wouldn’t surprise me. He’s not new blood. He’s there because he is supposed to know how to get things done. And he didn’t do it on health care. I just don’t know how much he is to blame for that. I do know that almost no one seems to like the guy and the long knives have been out for him since the day he took the job.