This is from Jonah Goldberg's column on National Review Online yesterday:
The president is surrounded by acolytes of the Cult of Obama. They consider him to be a “transformational figure” who need not sully himself with the usual rules of politics. The president agrees, rejecting suggestions that he recalibrate his Olympian ambitions.
That’s not me saying that, nor one of my knuckle-dragging, baby-eating right-wing brethren. It’s Dana Milbank, the liberal Washington Post writer widely seen by most conservatives as Maureen Dowd in drag.
Milbank wrote a column on February 21 arguing that all the president’s problems can be attributed to a single factor. “Obama’s first year fell apart in large part because he didn’t follow his chief of staff’s advice on crucial matters,” writes Milbank, referring to Rahm Emanuel, apparently the only senior staffer who hasn’t drunk the Obama Kool-Aid. “Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter.”
Remember, Emanuel worked for Bill Clinton when Clinton (the ultimate politician - not an ideologue) realized that to gain a second term he would have to join the rest of the country, which was located much farther to the Right than was he. The fact that Clinton made that move assured him a second term. Emanuel's present boss, though, is more ideologue than politician (even though he does lie like one) and it appears Emanuel is the only one in the White House trying to make him understand what Clinton came to understand during his first term. It's more than ironic that the man who seems to have no principles or standards that could interfere with winning political office might actually save the republic if his boss will only listen to him. Let's hope, though, that it will be too late to afford him a chance for a second term.
To read the entire Goldberg column, go here.
