Is The Damage Rahm Emanuel Has Done To Obama's Presidency Irreparable?

Yesterday's most talked about political punditry was Ed Luce's Financial Times analysis of what went so wrong so fast in the Obama Administration. Rahm Emanuel is used to dictating his own press; he must have flown into one of his legendary bloodcurdling tirades. But this crack in the facade could be the best thing that's happened for Obama, the Democratic Party-- and America. As any Rahm watcher knows-- and as Luce makes clear-- his ultimate goal is "becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House of Representatives."

What many people miss when trying to understand Emanuel-- but which is essential in trying to figure out his motivations-- is that for two years between forcing through George H.W. Bush's job-killing NAFTA bill for Clinton and his ascension to a rotten borough constituency in Chicago slated to be absorbed into other CDs, Wall Street waved a magic wand over Emanuel, sprinkled some fairy dust on his head and-- poof-- he was a high-power banker. He ran the Chicago office of Wasserstein Perella (Dresdner Kleinwort) and managed to tuck away $16.2 million before the revolving door brought him back inside the Beltway, rich enough to say "Fuck you" to anyone, especially liberals and reformers, and very much beholden to his Wall Street patrons.

Right from the gitgo Luce makes the mistake of referring to Emanuel as "a senior Democrat in the House." Powerful? Sure. Senior? In a body where seniority normally is measured in decades, Emanuel was elected in 2002 and took his seat in 2003. The would-be first Jewish Speaker of the House-- the only real rise I ever got out of Steny Hoyer on a long and contentious phone call when he was running for Majority Leader against Murtha was when I called him Rahm's sidekick-- was elected to 4 two-year terms. Emanuel was born in November, 1959, a few days after Robert Byrd was elected to the Senate after having already served more years in the House than Emanuel did! When Dave Obey (D-WI) was elected in 1969, Emanuel was still getting ready for ballet school.

Digby found something else that seems to have evaded Luce:

Ok, before we go any further, I have to interrupt and point out that there is a missing explanation here: perhaps the problem is that everyone, apparently including the Obama team and this reporter, insisted on actually believing that the election signaled a fundamental shift in the political landscape so huge that the earth was knocked off its axis and everything was different. In other words, far too many people believed the hype, which I understand was very, very seductive, but it was foolish, nonetheless. 

The problems were always huge, the system was always broken, the Republicans were always nuts. For some reason it was convenient to ignore all that [and] pretend that we had had a rebirth all shiny and new and that if the worst happened, Obama could always just make a speech and everything would fall into place. Nobody's as good a politician as he was assumed to be-- and that assumption came from a presidential campaign that could have probably been won by anyone with a D after his name, which makes it even more facile. It was hubris, and we all know where that leads.

...And Rahm, by the way, is way more trouble than he's worth. Even Nixon's advisors were more subtle-- and far more lethal. You don't keep a nasty henchman who makes enemies of everyone and inspires loathing by his very presence if he can't even get the job done.

When discussing the failed healthcare reform bill, and the Waterloo it is for Obama's administration, Luce implies that it's the tight little team around Obama, Emanuel front and center, that's to blame.

“Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn’t want,” says Jim Morone, America’s leading political scientist on healthcare reform. “Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master.”

Whatever issue arises, whether it is a failed terrorist plot in Detroit, the healthcare bill, economic doldrums or the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan, the White House instinctively fields Mr Axelrod or Mr Gibbs on television to explain the administration’s position. “Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser.

Perhaps the biggest losers are the cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama’s health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. “I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,” says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently. “If you want people to trust you, you must first place trust in them.”

In addition to hurling frequent profanities at people within the administration, Mr Emanuel has alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters. At a meeting of Democratic groups last August, Mr Emanuel described liberals as “f***ing retards” after one suggested they mobilise resources on healthcare reform.

“We are treated as though we are children,” says the head of a large organisation that raised millions of dollars for Mr Obama’s campaign. “Our advice is never sought. We are only told: ‘This is the message, please get it out.’ I am not sure whether the president fully realises that when the chief of staff speaks, people assume he is speaking for the president.”

...Then there are the president’s big strategic decisions. Of these, devoting the first year to healthcare is well known and remains a source of heated contention. Less understood is the collateral damage it caused to unrelated initiatives. “The whole Rahm Emanuel approach is that victory begets victory-- the success of healthcare would create the momentum for cap-and-trade [on carbon emissions] and then financial sector reform,” says one close ally of Mr Obama. “But what happens if the first in the sequence is defeat?”

Insiders attribute Mr Obama’s waning enthusiasm for the Arab-Israeli peace initiative to a desire to avoid antagonising sceptical lawmakers whose support was needed on healthcare. The steam went out of his Arab-Israeli push in mid-summer, just when the healthcare bill was running into serious difficulties.

The same applies to reforming the legal apparatus in the “war on terror”-- not least his pledge to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year of taking office. That promise has been abandoned.

“Rahm said: ‘We’ve got these two Boeing 747s circling that we are trying to bring down to the tarmac [healthcare and the decision on the Afghanistan troop surge] and we can’t risk a flock of f***ing Canadian geese causing them to crash,’ ” says an official who attended an Oval Office strategy meeting. The geese stood for the closure of Guantánamo.

An outside adviser adds: “I don’t understand how the president could launch healthcare reform and an Arab-Israeli peace process-- two goals that have eluded US presidents for generations-- without having done better scenario planning. Either would be historic. But to launch them at the same time?”

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “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,” says one. “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.”

The White House declined to answer questions on whether Mr Obama needed to broaden his circle of advisers. But some supporters say he should find a new chief of staff. Mr Emanuel has hinted that he might not stay in the job very long and is thought to have an eye on running for mayor of Chicago.

Others say Mr Obama should bring in fresh blood. They point to Mr Clinton’s decision to recruit David Gergen, a veteran of previous White Houses, when the last Democratic president ran into trouble in 1993. That is credited with helping to steady the Clinton ship, after he too began with an inner circle largely carried over from his campaign.

Two days after he was elected, Obama announced he was giving Emanuel the most powerful position in his Administration. As I wrote at the time, it probably marked doom for Obama's historic presidency. I stand by that, although it isn't too late to get rid of that viper and bring in some competent and less compromised advisors.