Posted on 11/24/2014 10:24:01 AM PST by SeekAndFind
The White House’s defenders will attempt to knock down claims that Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel’s resignation is loaded with implications for the future of this administration.
Cabinet officials come and go, they’ll note, but this White House has made a point of standing by its embattled figures. Former Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius resigned in Aril of this year, well after the controversy surrounding the botched debut of Healthcare.gov. Some speculated that the delay was an intentional effort to disassociate her resignation from the controversy that likely hastened it. Similarly, the political press was shocked when Obama went ahead and accepted former Veterans Affairs Sec. Eric Shinseki’s resignation in late May. Observers called it a departure from “a familiar strategy of protecting embattled Cabinet members,” one which signaled the potentially broad political impact of the VA scandal.
The circumstances of Hagel’s resignation are distinct from those above. Hagel had served in the Obama White House for just two years while the above figures were with Obama from 2009 and were considered figures of great importance to the president’s liberal base. Hagel was not a political asset to the White House in the way that his colleagues and predecessors were, and he had the added weakness of being a Republican at the head of the Pentagon. The last figure friendly toward the GOP whom Obama placed at the head of the DoD went about writing a scathing memoir that was highly critical of both the president and vice president almost immediately after leaving that post. This experience, The New York Times report which revealed Hagel’s impending departure indicated, stung the president and stuck with his aides.
The Times also noted that there were many reasons for Hagel’s departure, and some of them are legitimate. The former Republican senator who had been famously critical of America’s expanded global military footprint was to have largely overseen retrenchment of American forces abroad. When that mission changed, and America became embroiled in another war in Iraq and a new war in Syria, Hagel’s role evolved into something for which he was not prepared.
But the announcement that Hagel was to be jettisoned was also accompanied by the requisite spiteful bad-mouthing from anonymous administration sources which has become so commonplace in the Obama era.
On Monday, NBC News reporter Andrea Mitchell revealed that the cast of advisors around Obama was always suspicious of Hagel and his influence on the president’s approach to foreign affairs. “That tight circle never really had a lot of confidence, particularly in Chuck Hagel,” she reported. “Hagel never really proved himself.”
Mitchell also made note of a phenomenon that The Times also observed: The White House was perturbed when Hagel called ISIS an “imminent threat to every interest we have.” Whether this assessment was true or not, that was not what the White House wanted to hear.
“Mr. Hagel has often had problems articulating his thoughts — or administration policy — in an effective manner, and has sometimes left reporters struggling to describe what he has said in news conferences,” The Times reported.
This is all quite unfair. Hagel and other members of the Defense establishment had a bear of a time cleaning up after their president’s routinely impolitic statements about the nature of the ISIS threat.
When, in extemporaneous remarks, Obama told reporters that it was America’s policy to “shrink” ISIS down into a “manageable problem,” it was Hagel who was tapped to clean up those comments. Speaking with CNN reporter Jim Sciutto before an audience of students at the U.S. Naval War College, Hagel insisted that America should dismiss Obama’s off-the-cuff statements and focus only on what he said in his prepared remarks. “No, it’s not contain,” Hagel said of America’s policy toward ISIS. “It’s exactly what the president said: ‘Degrade and destroy.’”
Hagel, the thankless janitor who spent his tenure either cleaning up after Obama’s controversial asides or trying to make sense of the White House’s conflictual approach to foreign affairs, got his reward this week. For Hagel’s part, however, he does not seem prepared to allow the administration to frame him as the problematic element in his relationship with the president. A “senior defense official” told CBS reporter David Martin that Hagel “was fed up with micromanagement from the White House.”
Expect this back and forth in the press to continue, and likely to get worse in the coming weeks.
In the wake of a historic midterm defeat – the second for this administration – the White House has done everything it could to project unfazed strength. It was always ever a front, and the buttresses keeping the edifice of this administration horizontal are starting to buckle. The backbiting that has characterized today’s announcement of the resignation of Hagel is symptomatic of a condition that afflicts every lame duck administration. Despite Obama’s assurances to the contrary, his White House is running out of steam.
Is Hagel’s resignation a first sign of the administration’s implosion?
One can hope…..
They have been imploding since 2009..................
Looks to me like its a continuation of replacing anyone with questionable loyalty to Zerohissef.
The military purge continues.
” this White House has made a point of standing by its embattled figures.”
Not if your a white guy.
No. The implosion began in January of ‘09.
Obama has been imploding everything since 2009
> The military purge continues
Must not have agreed with the plan to kill “whitey”
No. This isn’t an implosion. This is business as usual. The POPOF is trying to make the Republican (RINO) the fall guy for his foreign policy failures.
Obama is to stupid to realize the gig is up. Everyone already knows he is either an American Hating Oblivious Liberal Elitist (AHOLE). Or he is an Ignorant, Sanctimonious, Ideological $hithead (ISIS). Either way, he ain’t foolin nobody no more.
Hagel: Simply a scapegoat.
I’ve never liked Hagel, but it will be interesting to hear what he has to say about the Obama Administration. I’m sure he can dish a lot of dirt.
Wut?
Delusional GOPe.
This is digging in and retrenching after one victory.
You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Now he can get the Eric Holder of SoD’s in there.
With UpChuck it is not a matter of loyalty, Hagel is a loyal supporter of the kenyan, make no mistake about it. Hagel either too forcefully opposed sending troops back “on the ground” to combat ISIS or he was the latest scapegoat for the admin. Either way, Hagel is no victim and is no conservative.
yes.
The media now receive their “stories” from the administration.
The talking heads repeat the ad copy delivered via secure servers and the “writers” post their pictures and credit themselves to stories next to the stories they didn’t write.
Pulitzer’s are awarded to the most obedient.
I challenge ANYONE to prove me wrong.
A presidential spokesman released this statement:
“The president hopes this will divert attention and anger from his recent amnesty Executive Order.
At least until the Ferguson, MI grand jury releases its findings in the Michael Brown killing.”
You are assuming that the entire populace has rational minds. Certain groups will always ALWAYS make excuses for the inexcusable, especially this steaming pile of excrement that embarrasses and destroys our country like some people breathe. Therefore, they DO continue to be fooled, either because they are truly abysmally stupid or they are in denial.
I peg the beginning of the end to the botched oath.
Not really. Obama keeps them in position as long as they are effectively shielding him from the consequences of his crimes. When that shielding fails, he throws them under the bus.
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