‘This Town’ is more than just a good dish

Washington Post ^ | July 5, 2013 | Dana Milbank

[neverdem]

The nation’s capital is savoring a satisfying spasm of schadenfreude this holiday weekend...

--snip--

“This Town” is really about how Obama and his team came to Washington with solemn vows to change it but then wound up joining the revolving-door culture.

“With the rise of Obama,” the question became, “Could Washington really change?” Leibovich writes. “No more lobbyists in the White House, or ‘politics as usual,’ or tending to the needy oracles of Beltway groupthink.” He includes many self-right­eous quotes from Obama aides Dan Pfeiffer (“We did not do ‘cocktail party’ interviews”), David Plouffe (“If Politico and [Time magazine’s Mark] Halperin say we’re winning, we’re losing”) and Robert Gibbs (“We believe this isn’t about us. It’s about something bigger”).

“Obama himself vowed that his administration would steer clear of other corroding Beltway forces” of celebrity and self-dealing, he writes. Those working on Obama’s transition staff in 2008 were made to sign a “no ego, no glory” memo.

Then it became all ego and glory.

Plouffe quickly cashed out, earning $1.5 million in 2010 by serving as a consultant to Boeing and General Electric, giving speeches and writing a book — negotiated by Barnett. (Barnett scored a larger role on Obama’s debate-prep team in 2012 — his triumph duly recorded by Allen — even though Obama joked to him, “Bob, you are the conventional wisdom.”)

The revolving door spun like a gyroscope. Raytheon lobbyist Bill Lynn came to the Pentagon; Geoff Morrell left the Pentagon for BP. Michael Froman was a managing director of Citigroup while serving on Obama’s transition team; Peter Orszag, the budget director, went to Citigroup. “Scores of administration officials had by 2010 left the administration for K Street jobs without anyone so much as pointing out that they were defying a central tenet of the Obama political...,”...

[cripplecreek]

I didn’t think rebuilding America’s stature in the eyes of the world would look so much like chaos.

[edcoil]

Nature Abhors A Vacuum

[Iron Munro]

Obama really did bring change to Washington DC.

He has expanded government arrogance, lying, greed, scamming and disregard for the law and the Constitution to extremes that other democrats and republicans only dreamed of.

[cdcdawg]

“Then it became all ego and glory.”

This is actually a really informative piece. Many in the media actually believed all that stuff from the first few paragraphs here excerpted. That would seem to be the case with Dana Milbank. The intentions were noble, but Washington politics ruined it all. Conveniently, it also allows them to blame forces external to Obama for the chaos that has ensued. Limbaugh Theorem at work.

[BubbaBasher]

0bama didn’t come to change Washington. He came to fundamentally transform America. Big difference.

[1010RD]

And DC is an economic vacuum.