Who’s in Charge Here? Saturday, Oct 23 2010 

Politics , victorgold 3:30 pm

A news report on why Thomas Donilon was appointed White House national security advisor informs us that Donilon is skeptical about the prospect of winning the war in Afghanistan and “Obama wants another ally in the coming bureaucratic knife fight”  over withdrawal.

Question:  Since when does a President of the United States need an “ally” to get his way in a policy dispute with the Pentagon?  Or is it too much to ask that the Commander-in-Chief show the same willingness to face up to opposition in the Situation Room as the Campaigner-in-Chief does at political rallies?

 

Who needs the Plumbers? Tuesday, Oct 5 2010 

Politics , victorgold 4:55 pm

About Bob  Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars”:  Washington Post columnist  Ruth Marcus is appalled that President Obama’s telling Woodward the country “can absorb a terrorist attack” has been taken out-of-context.

I’d be amazed if it hadn’t. You’d  think that after more than a year-and-a-half  in office a president with a reputed gift for nuance would weigh his words more carefully — especially when speaking on-the-record to the most widely read reporter  in  the business.

No, what appalls me — to the extent that I have any mileage left on my White House appall-o-meter — is a president so fixated on the idea of “transparency” that he gives a journalist full access to Situation Room deliberations as well as to classified memoranda sent to his generals and the National Security Council.

A former president hired a group known as the Plumbers to locate the source of White House leaks to the media. No need for Nixon’s Plumbers  this time around. The source — though it’s not so much a leak as a torrent — is the Oval Office itself.

 

Raging Bulls—-t Monday, Sep 20 2010 

Politics , victorgold 6:36 pm

National Review’s Dinesh D’Souza says that what he calls Barack Obama’s “rage” is the product of a Kenyan anti-colonialist worldview inherited from his father. Sounds like the transferred guilt of someone whose rage stems from an Indian anti-colonialist worldview inherited from his father.

 

Deck Chairs in the Oval Office Wednesday, Sep 15 2010 

History and Politics victorgold 11:01 am

With a White House staff shake-up looming, the metaphor of the month is that all it adds up to is re-arranging the deck chairs aboard the Titanic.  Will it make any difference if Rahm Emanuel leaves to run for Mayor of Chicago?  If Robert Gibbs quits the press podium after two years of trading barbs with Fox News?

None at all.  Did it make any difference when George W. switched from Andy Card to…  I forget who.  A president — any president — gets the advisors he deserves;  that is, the advice he wants to hear.  The only chief executive I’ve ever heard of who tolerated negative vibes was Thomas E. Dewey who, after presenting an idea to his staff, insisted they point out its flaws.  Probably the reason he never made it from the Governor’s mansion in Albany to the White House.

 

The Great Over-Communicator Monday, Jul 26 2010 

Politics victorgold 10:08 am

An odd thing happened in Washington last week: Two days passed without the President’s appearing on television.

My first reaction was to call my TV repairman, but on second thought I checked with friends at broadcast and cable news to see if I’d missed something.  Also ESPN, on the possibility that the Nation’s Sports Analyst-in-Chief hadn’t appeared at some off-hour to offer his opinion on whether the New Orleans Saints would repeat as Super Bowl champions. (I was told no, but they did have that penciled in for mid-August, an interview with Erin Andrews in the Oval Office.)  Finally, a call to a producer at the Family Network to ask whether, in the absence of all other possibilities, Barack and Michelle had taken a turn on America’s Funniest Home Videos. . . .

To the point, though stating the obvious makes dull table-talk (except around the CIA lunchroom), Barack Obama in eighteen short months has become the most-over-exposed president in American history.  A comparison? All right: Even Bill Clinton, in one of his most egocentric moments,  would never have called a full-dress Rose Garden news conference in 100-degree-heat to announce the firing of an insubordinate general (Harry Truman did it with a perfunctory statement.)

All of which leads to a personal observation as to why, for all his legislative victories, Barack Obama’s poll numbers keep falling. It’s an observation based on received wisdom from an embattled office-holder I worked for in the 1970s who, despite my urging that he go on a Sunday morning talk show, refused for the following reason:  “Politics,”  he said, “is a business of hills and holes. When you’re in a hole, the more your face shows on television the deeper it gets.”

Ancient history, but translated for the Twenty-first century political world of Barack Obama, still on target: Unemployment at 9.7 percent, the Louisiana wetlands soaked in BP oil, our troops fighting overseas, and what do Americans turn on their television sets to see? Their President on the Larry King show, advising LeBron James to stay with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Not to say that a President should disappear during hard times, but Rose Garden Specials five times a week? A suggestion: If by chance there’s a camera-addiction clinic somewhere near Martha’s Vineyard, it might be a good place for POTUS to check in for a weekend this August.

 

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