I like David Axelrod, but it’s ridiculous that he allowed this piece to land on the front-page of the New York Times. I mean, he actually sat for an interview for the article, and I don’t see how the article is helpful to the administration in any way. Axelrod is in charge of the administration’s communication strategy and this is the best he can do when the Times comes knocking?
The main things I took away from the article are that Axelrod is unhappy, unhealthy, burned out, and pissed off. He hates Washington and doesn’t “give a flying fuck” what anyone in town has to say. He loves the president and even his sister thinks he may be too much of a yes-man.
This isn’t how you want to be presented. I know the author, Mark Leibovich, made the choices of what to include and what to leave out, but getting played like this doesn’t speak well of Axelrod’s savvy. I actually am willing to cut him some slack on his performance to date. While communications haven’t been as strong as they were during the campaign, they haven’t been terrible. In looking for areas to blame for the polls and the stalled health care reforms, I have to put it more on the people in charge of working with Congress (Messina and Emanuel) than on Axelrod or Gibbs. And I have to give credit to the Republicans. They have been very effective in creating wedges, including on Gitmo, detainee policy, climate, and health care.
After reading the article in the Times, I’d like to see Axelrod take a break after this year so he can rest up for the 2012 election. If he’s unhappy, tired, and unhealthy, he’s going to continue to make mistakes. And I know he doesn’t want to do a disservice to the president he so admires. He can best serve him by getting his head right and preparing for the next campaign. It’s what he really excels at.
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Appears from the article he has more questions and misgivings of His administration than we have. The problem is as usual thinking the message is at fault. The failure of course is the failed policy, not distancing the Obama administration from Bush/Cheney policy, letting the former getting away with lies, torture and murder. The citizens can’t be blamed for wondering: the economy and jobs are lacking, but what else has changed or been accomplished?
See my recent diary – Slamming Doors in the White House
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."Interesting article. If there is a serious conflict between Axelrod and Rahm Emmanuel, the article looks like it was written by Rahm Emmanuel.
What is striking is that he is sitting with the New York Times not understanding that they will pull the football away when he kicks. And he doesn’t call out the Village as the reason why the message is not getting through. The amount of outright lying going on in the media is astounding. And he apparently thought he could let his hair down and go candid and on the record.
Uh, Mr. Axelrod. You are not getting through because the Village (including the New York Times) does not want you to get through. Stiff them and go get interviewed by the small town daily press; their reporters might actually report what you say.
The nice thing is that it’s the NY Times and not an TV interview that might have a larger audience for this obvious game of media keep-away.
you’re blaming staffers for this administrations woes. You tick off Axelrod and Emanuel and Messina and Gibbs as though they were some kind of politburo responsible for decision making.
Barack Obama is the President of the United States.
In the campaign Obama promised to change Washington. Either Washington has changed him or his campaign was a con job.
The same people who rightly laughed at John McCain for saying he would fix Iraq by calling a meeting of Shia and Sunni and telling them to “stop the bullshit” somehow think Obama could walk into the White House, call the Dems and repugs together and tell them to “stop the bullshit.” Obama may not be perfect, but he has worked against an astonishingly strong headwind to change the tone in DC, to get the Congress back to legislating again. It may have been naive to try, but he certainly has tried to honor one of his core promises in the campaign.
I’m rather sick of Dems saying nothing has been accomplished by the Obama administration. Because it’s bullshit. Here’s some 4 month old reality-based perspective from Nathan Newman: “I thought significant federal reforms would fail due to the filibuster. So the progress actually made is a pleasant surprise. And those successes are large and profound. This post will summarize those gains, and even in summary form will be quite long, reflecting the incredible victories involved.”
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/11/30/progressives_and_obama_are_doing_better_than_we_th/
to the Republicans is exactly not what he was elected to do. He was elected to lead and he has not done that for an instant. We didn’t even know what kind of health care he wanted until a whole fucking year after the legislative fight over it began. And even then all he did was sign on to the watered down piece of shit the Senate finally squeezed out. If he had had the balls to take the lead on the public option the American people would have demanded it of their legislators. Had he told the “just say no” Republicans to go fuck themselves a year ago we wouldn’t now be looking at losing seats in 2010. We’re gonna lose seats because people are thirsting for leadership and Obama has provided only indecision and compromise.
Who knew it would be so simple as you imagine it? Certainly not those of us who were in the habit of saying the Bush/Cheney administration had set the U.S. back for decades to come, and that was BEFORE the economic meltdown……
Yeah, all he had to do was call a meeting and tell them to stop the bullshit.
Simple, yes. The stupendous failures of the Bush regime required monumental leadership to bring us back.
Bargaining with the enablers of those very failures was exactly the wrong way to go.
“Monumental leadership.” Hell, why stop there? How about “superhuman”? How about “powers far beyond those of mortal men”?
While you are wondering “Where’s my pony?” I’m thinking, maybe “mere” monumental leadership is what we are getting. The fact that things are so fucked up could possibly be explained by a deeper understanding of what the Bush regime really did to this country, the culmination of 30 years of hard work by the GOP, which I see as a lot more than “stupendous failure” — It was a deliberate wrecking and looting operation. Somehow Obama’s leadership appears positively monumental to me when I contemplate where we would be right now if McCain and Palin had won the election.
I admit to being one of those who simply cannot comprehend how Obama can be accused of lacking calloons when you consider where he came from and how he ran a political campaign against the most powerful forces in America to become the first black president in the history of this country. But I know you don’t see it that way.
How weird. Somehow I knew what kind of health care reform he wanted more than a year ago. That they knew very early on that the votes weren’t there in the Senate for a public option is not his fault, nor is it his fault that he and the Senate leadership has precious little leverage over the Ben Nelson’s of the world. I don’t deny that his leadership frequently needed to be more open and more forceful, and he has kept trying to work with repuglicans long after it became clear they would not work with him but the Dem caucus has done what they did to Clinton as well, fracture and refuse to publicly support the administration on many important initiatives – like national security.
You didn’t hear it from Obama.
Yes, I did. Not in the minute detail that is the province of the legislative branch, but the speech he gave last week echoed all of the principles he laid out from the beginning.
Yup.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/health-care/plan
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/24/obama.health.care/
http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/03/obama-health-plan-lifestyle-health_obama_health_budget.html
That speech was given in September of ’09. Putting aside the fact that he called single-payer a left wing plan, don’t you think it was given a little late to be called “leadership”?
The CNN link was February 09. The third link was March 09. The Sept speech was 9/09, 5 months after the effort really started, during which time the WH was deeply involved behind the scenes. You may disagree with their strategy to have the legislative branch take the public lead on legislation, but the WH took a lesson from 94 when Clinton was too much in the lead and the congress bolted.
took that lesson. Just look at the great bill they haven’t gotten yet.
yes, I did also.
this is what l heard on 17 july 2009…
and what we’ve got now, in the senate bill…which is the only thing that can pass…is the polar opposite of it. so, what/who are you going to believe? your lying eyes and ears or some fanboy’s spin?
I read it but didn’t get that impression at all. Axelrod’s complaints are perfectly valid, and the Times actually printed them. It’s hardly surprising that he’s tired. It puts a human face on things. Rather refreshing to find somebody in Washington who genuinely likes his boss. Obama has some problems, but I honestly don’t think this interview is one of them.
I’m not being facetious in saying that it sounds to me like you may need a rest even more than Axelrod does. After all, he (as he makes it clear) just tunes out the lefty naysayers — you, unfortunately, do not have that luxury. But in the end, I don’t think they have much influence outside their own concentric circles.
In saying this I do not mean to imply that the blogosphere, as a medium, has little influence. I am talking about the message itself, which obviously varies along a spectrum. I am saying that the “Overton window” idea is too simple. Both sides push the window in opposite directions, so the middle remains where it was, and the fringes sre seen as fringes and lose credibility. The extremes are louder, but I don’t think they are any more influential — in fact they turn most people off.
There is a lot of noise coming from both ends of the spectrum, but no matter how loud it may seem, it has always been there with Obama. It’s upsetting, but I don’t think he would have ever been elected if it were all that effective. The people swayed by that sort of garbage are already inclined that way, but it has the exact opposite effect on everybody else. Extremists on all sides are cherry-picking facts or just making them up to fit pre-set, group-think narratives, none of them new and some of them very old indeed. Meanwhile, reality continues along its rocky and winding path.
good comments BooMan.
yes, indeed. hoping wh is paying close attention
Can you get him to take Rahm with him?