President Obama can't say he wasn't warned. But the advice was ignored. Now it has come to pass. Eighteen months ago, I warned then-presidential candidate Barack Obama that should he get elected, he should not allow his administration to fall into the clutches of Washington insiders.It has been said that Obama had to go to some lengths to get the well-wired Emanuel to leave the Hill and help the new administration navigate the ways of Washington. But now, as Obama's approval rating has dipped below 50 percent, Emanuel is taking some heat. He is accused of not having what it takes to run the White House or serve as Obama's gatekeeper.
It's hard to recall the last time differences between a White House chief of staff and his boss have been aired so publicly -- and to the president's distinct disadvantage.
The column made it clear that on those key decisions that ended up landing the administration in trouble, it was the president -- not Rahm Emanuel -- who got it wrong.
Items:
- Emanuel "bitterly" opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig's plan to close Guantanamo within a year but was overruled by Obama. "The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel's counsel";
- Emanuel fought against Attorney General Eric Holder's plan to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York and lost. "Another political fiasco";
- Emanuel argued for a smaller, more politically popular health-care bill, but Obama disregarded that strategy. "The result was . . . disastrous";
- Emanuel successfully got 11 substantive bills on Obama's desk in the first half of 2009, but in the second half, Obama let himself get bogged down with big-ticket items and the momentum stopped. "Congress has ground to a halt."
When Obama wasn't screwing up, the column suggested, his close confidants -- Valerie Jarrett, Robert Gibbs and David Axelrod (dubbed "the Cult of Obama") -- were. There's this jewel of an inside jab: "A good example was Obama's unproductive China trip in November. Jarrett, Gibbs and Axelrod went along as courtiers; Emanuel remained at his desk in Washington, struggling to keep alive the big health-care bill that he didn't want in the first place."
It was, perhaps, cheeky of me to say in the June 2008 column that personal aggrandizement is everything to Washington insiders. But I didn't rule them out of administration jobs. "They know stuff," I acknowledged. "Just don't put them in charge."