Tag: rahm emanuel

Staffing news comes in threes.

So, in the last forty-eight hours or so, we’ve learned:

  1. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is either leaving his job, or being shoved out of it, in the very near future;
  2. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag is going to be likewise leaving his job… not that anybody can tell the difference, given that WE DON’T ACTUALLY HAVE A BUDGET THIS YEAR BECAUSE DEMOCRATIC POLITICIANS ARE A PACK OF COWARDS*;
  3. and Commander of US forces in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal has just decided to commit career suicide by badmouthing the Ambassador of Afghanistan – via the magazine Rolling Stone.

Anyway, it’s a trifecta: a Chief of Staff who can’t keep the White House running smoothly, a Budget Director who can’t  create a budget, and a top military guy who can’t keep his mouth shut about the civilian powers**.  That’s one heck of an executive branch staffing record that the White House is accumulating there – and it’s only Tuesday.  At this rate, we’ll wake up on Friday to the news that Steven Chu*** has just burned down the Department of Energy as part of a tragic toasted bagel accident.

Moe Lane Continue reading Staffing news comes in threes.

The name you’re trying to remember is ‘Tim Mahoney.’

He was the guy that the Democrats put into FL-16 to replace Mark Foley over an inappropriate email scandal… and then Tim Mahoney was the guy that tried to pay off his mistress with campaign money, got then-DCCC Chair and current WH CoS Rahm Emanuel to cover it up in 2007… and who then couldn’t quite make it to Election Day 2008 without anybody noticing.  So Madam Speaker threw Mahoney to the wolves, and the media let her. So… sex scandal, leadership finds out, internal cover-up, public revelations, quick abandonment of the now-radioactive Congressman.

Why, yes, that does sound familiar, doesn’t it?

Moe Lane

Too good to check: Rahm Emanuel to run for mayor of Chicago?

(H/T: RCP) The thought has John Kass so frightened that he’s ready to beg Richard Daley to stay on – this is roughly equivalent to me begging Paul Verhoeven to direct the movie adaptation of The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress – but there’s at least one thing going for it: win or lose, Rahm Emanuel would be replaced as WH Chief of Staff. This is another Republican vs. American moment for me: while the former appreciates the way that Emanuel’s reduced the executive branch’s internal infrastructure to a godawful, incoherent mess, the latter recognizes that we’re all better served with somebody who’s at least competent at running a staff.

And, well, I don’t live in Chicago, so farming him off to that city is no skin off of my nose.

Crossposted to RedState.

Rahm Emanuel is right not to worry.

I have to disagree with RS McCain on this one: Emanuel may not be telling the truth on the passage of health care rationing, but he’s correct in dismissing the netroots.

Turn off MSNBC. Tune out Howard Dean and Keith Olbermann. The White House has its liberal wing in hand on health care, says White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.

[snip]

The comments may not endear the powerful White House chief of staff to liberal activists, furious that Senate Democratic leaders, at Emanuel’s urging, cut a deal with Sen. Joe Lieberman to drop a federally run insurance policy option, then eliminate a Medicare buy-in proposal.

I’ve been involved with the political blogosphere since 2002 or so, and the next time I see the left side of its leadership stand up to entrenched Democratic party interests over something important will be the first. Compare their usual wish list with what they get; and consider that examples of the discrepancy go all the way back to 2004, and John Kerry’s nomination. Put another way: if they swallowed heavily and accepted being betrayed on FISA/rendition/same-sex marriage, they’ll accept whatever monstrosity that the current ruling party comes up with with regard to health care rationing.

Not that I’m suggesting either way that health care rationing will pass or fail, mind you; merely that its passage or failure to pass is going to be independent of the netroot’s collective opinion on the matter.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

White House CoS Rahm Emanuel [expletive deleted] up again.

[UPDATE]: Welcome, Instapundit readers.

(H/T: Hot Air Headlines) Today’s entry has as its theme How to succeed in insulting the press corps without really trying.

For reporters covering President Obama, there’s only one party in town that matters: The White House Holiday Party. It’s a rare opportunity to walk around parts of the White House and meet the president and first lady. In the past, the highlight of the event has been the chance to get your picture taken with the president in the receiving line.

This year, however, the White House seems to be doing things a little differently. The invites went out late – and didn’t include journalists who have been invited in the past. And those who have been invited seem likely to be denied the traditional receiving-line photo.

There’s a lot of good schadenfreude in the Politico article, if you’re the sort to mock the press corps for this – which I’m actually not inclined to do, in fact.  The reason why I’m not is because of this sentence:

“It’s always been a big deal,” said [Dee Dee] Myers, who served as press secretary to former President Bill Clinton. “It’s exhausting [for the president] but it’s the one time when reporters feel like they’re treated like human beings and not just some guy behind the rope line. It’s the one time they can actually say hello.”

Continue reading White House CoS Rahm Emanuel [expletive deleted] up again.

President Obama needs to fire Rahm Emanuel.

When I heard that the President’s first reaction to the Fort Hood terrorist attack was to go quickly through the prepared version of his speech and then talk about the attack, I shrugged. I knew that we weren’t getting somebody who could connect with the American people on a fundamental level (I suspect that it was a large part of his novelty appeal, after sixteen years of Presidents who could and did), and Glenn Reynolds was right: the President defaults to academic mode*.  I’m sure that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

When I skimmed over the revelation that the President had mixed up the Medal of Honor with the Medal of Freedom, I again shrugged, although less readily.  He’s a Democratic politician, I thought.  Outside specific geographic areas they simply can’t be expected to remember details like that.

But now I hear that he had gotten the medal wrong of somebody he had given the medal to himself not three months earlier, I cringed.  This is precisely the sort of error that a well-trained and well-organized Presidential staff is expected to routinely avert; the fact that it slipped through suggests that this administration has neither.  And that is the fault of the Chief of Staff.

I want to make this point clear: yes, the White House staff is supposed to be better at this.  They are supposed to be competent.  They are not.  And I am not directly blaming the President for their incompetence: he had a reasonable expectation that the person that he has delegated to ensure their competence would do his job.  That COS Emanuel turned out to be this sloppy at his administrative duties is honestly a surprise to everybody.  But the man needs to go, and be replaced with someone with the right skill set.

Moe Lane

*I know that his supporters are fond of thinking of the President as being an avatar of either Kennedy or FDR, but in reality he’s much closer to Woodrow Wilson.  And I’m not going to pretend that this is a compliment.

Ironic quote of yesterday, Rahm Emanuel edition.

“…you know we’ll make sure they get some good seats once Chicago does host the games.”

– Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s ego, busily writing checks that his boss can’t cash. Not that the President isn’t capable of doing that all on his own, as witnessed by this trip in the first place – but it’s nice to see that he has such a capable underling to handle any potential overload in that regard.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Well, nobody expects Rahm Emanuel to be historically literate.

But we should expect the Washington Post to be.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) In the process of reading this otherwise unsurprising WaPo article about how the President is still trying to figure out how to counter the quote-unquote “right wing noise machine*,” we’re treated to this bit from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel:

…the John Birch Society was created in reaction to Kennedy…

Um. No. No, it wasn’t. I got no love for the Birchers, but they were formed in 1958 – and at the time, John F Kennedy was still the guy who was friends with Joe McCarthy.  Or so Wikipedia assures me here, here, and here.

I don’t blame Emanuel for making this up – he’s an administration stooge, that’s what they do – but the WaPo should have sent out a reporter with the mother-wit and education to check that out, even if it was only on Wikipedia.  Not that I really approve of that source for important things, but I understand that a good number of mainstream journalists do.  At any rate, why doesn’t the Washington Post have reporters who know enough 20th Century American history to immediately spot an iffy statement like Emauel’s?

Or editors?

Moe Lane

*Hi! How are you doing? I don’t get paid for this, darn it. So hit the tip jar!

Crossposted to RedState.

Rahm Emanuel will never be Speaker of the House.

Even if Rahm Emanuel manages to leave this administration with his reputation intact.

Even if Rahm Emanuel manages to win back the seat that he gave up to become Chief of Staff.

Even if the Democrats keep control of the House of Representatives.

He’s made too many new enemies on his own side in his new job. And there’s no ideological / theological reason for those enemies to not take out their frustrations on him.

Just saying, that’s all.

Crossposted to RedState.