Posted on 11/20/2009 9:17:16 AM PST by indianrightwinger
Why the Greg Craig debacle matters By: Elizabeth Drew November 19, 2009 11:58 AM EST
President Barack Obama is returning from his trek to Asia Thursday to a capital that is a considerably more dangerous place for him than when he departed.
While he was abroad, there was a palpable sense at home of something gone wrong. A critical mass of influential people who once held big hopes for his presidency began to wonder whether they had misjudged the man. Most significant, these doubters now find themselves with a new reluctance to defend Obama at a phase of his presidency when he needs defenders more urgently than ever.
This is the price Obama has paid with his complicity and most likely his active participation, in the shabbiest episode of his presidency: The firing by leaks of White House counsel Gregory Craig, a well-respected Washington veteran and influential early supporter of Obama.
The people who are most aghast by the handling of the Craig departure can’t be dismissed by the White House as Republican partisans, or still-embittered Hillary Clinton supporters. They are not naïve activists who don’t understand that the exercise of power can be a rough business and that trade-offs and personal disappointments are inevitable. Instead, they are people, either in politics or close observers, who once held an unromantically high opinion of Obama. They were important to his rise, and are likely more important to the success or failure of his presidency than Obama or his distressingly insular and small-minded West Wing team appreciate.
The Craig embarrassment gives these people a new reason – not the first or only reason – to conclude that he wasn’t the person of integrity and even classiness they had thought,
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Sure has taken some folks a long time to figure out what many of us recognized early last year!
Bill Ayers will be the author of Obama's third book, "The Audacity to Quit."
“it’s not impossible that he’ll add real progress on climate change and regulatory reform to his list of achievements”
from the article. he has achievements?
Good article, up to a point. As usual, the Obama supporters can’t seem to find him to blame for any of the mess we are in. It’s still “Bush’s fault.”
BTTT
First, Elizabeth Drew has always been a liberal lapdog, blind to the transgressions of most liberal politicians.
Second, throwing Greg Craig by the wayside is the Chicago way and Obama is keeping the Chicago crowd close to him because he cannot function without them.
Lastly, this administration tried to blackball Fox News reporters serving in the White House Press Corps. If that doesn’t bother Elizabeth Drew more than anything else, she is truly blind.
I voted McCain-Palin I'm proud to say.
I assumed Craig was leaving so he could join in defending the terrorists in NYC, especially since he defended the Elian Gonzales father and Castro to send him back to Cuba, by using money from the United Methodist Church to pay for his defense.
Certain things are not his fault: the unprecedented truculence of the Republican Party, scared silly by right-wing ranters on cable television; the unholy economic and foreign-policy mess that he inherited; the fact that he never had, as so many liberal commentators asserted, the 60 (or 58 or 59) Senate votes that would enable him to get what he wanted from the Congress. It’s not his fault that unemployment rates remain stubbornly high following a traumatic recession.
Unprecedented truculence? Where was this twit when the Dem minority was trying to obstruct Bush's agenda at every turn? And the Dem caucus does have 60 votes. And it IS his fault (and that of the Dems) that unemployment REMAINS high, because their massive legislative agenda scares the crap out of small business owners and corporations alike.
And about all this lame essay does is confirm that those 'right-wing ranters' that she decries were right all along about Obama - he's just a Chicago hack politician, just a bit smoother than the others.
The story of Obama, his rise to power, and his fatal flaws (mainly hubris) get more Shakespearian every day.
Of course we know this is a tragedy, the only question is, if this is a personal tragedy or a national tragedy?
The Democrats made the mistake of assuming because we were so afraid of Obama was because we only wanted a Republican in office. Heck, most of us would have taken Hillary over Obama because we knew. We felt in our gut what a narcissistic creep this man is. They will pay for their blind ignorance though. Looks like Craig already has.
How did he get a pass on so many things? He sat in a Black Liberation church for twenty years listening to the most hateful, anti-Semitic, anti-American and anti-White sermons heard anywhere and maintained a close personal relationship with the minister. How did this become a forbidden topic? Thank you John McCain. There are years in his personal history that are unknown and without any evidence he existed.
His choices of friends and professional associations are appalling. How did this happen?
Obama’s incompetence is Bush’s fault.
Elizabeth Drew and Greg Craig (Elian Gonzalez) are almost as toxic as Zerobama himself. To paraphrase Claudius in the Derek Jacoby version, “Let all the poisons in the mud bubble out”.
Campaign slogan for 2012?
Nice little shot at Rahm Emanuel, no doubt.
Easy. Bald-faced LYING from the MSM.
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