An American Lion

I’m going to put on my Water-Carrying Liberal pants for a bit and wear them around for a while:

The White House counsel was done in by a scurrilous leaks campaign. So much for the Obama team’s pledge to be transparent, forthright and accountable for their actions.

Gregory Craig, White House counsel to President Obama and national security advisor to Obama during the presidential campaign, resigned his post this past Friday. But when rumors broke Thursday of his imminent departure, Craig had not written his farewell note and may not have planned to leave–yet.

Since the summer, word had been leaking that Greg Craig’s days were numbered and that Obama campaign legal counsel Bob Bauer would be moving in to take Craig’s spot. But the situation seemed similar to the leaks about National Security Adviser Jim Jones’ supposedly tenuous hold on his job—which were either untrue, or turned around by Jones’ performance. The leaks about Craig also seemed unfounded—especially in light of direct statements from the White House that the statements were untrue and that he was not departing.

Hey, Bush did it! Bush did it! Obama can do it if Bush did it! FUCK!

I apologize for that. Those pants simply don’t fit.

It’s interesting to see how blatantly Cheney-like this White House has become. There are unseen forces driving the real debate—hello, Rahm Emmanuel—and there are hapless fools along for the ride—hello, Joe Biden—and then there are people like Greg Craig, who are simply used up and discarded. Who’s in charge? Well, it should be President Obama. More than likely, it’s rule by a dangerous committee.

Here’s Mr. Clemons with more:

I spoke to Gregory Craig in the summer when the first leaks began to break. While he suspected they were driven by someone in the White House who was frustrated with the slow progress on shuttering GITMO, Craig did not know who was out to get him. He had no idea.

But the sustained nature of the leaks and—and the fact that they ultimately proved to be true—indicates something quite disappointing for anyone who had hoped that the Obama White House would operate more transparently and honestly than the Bush team had.

In fact, leaks are becoming standard fare by key players in the Obama administration. Someone, most likely on the military/intel side of the president’s national security bureaucracy, leaked Afghanistan Commanding General Stanley McChrystal’s report to Bob Woodward. Recently, other political players infuriated U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry by leaking his eleventh-hour contrarian view on a U.S. force surge to the press.

But it’s quite hard to maintain the kind of Obama-esque upbeat tone of transparency and forthrightness and punish staff for leaking when the president himself is standing by and doing nothing as his closest advisors undermine one of their own.

NPR’s Nina Totenberg puts the finger on White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel. “There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that these leaks came at least indirectly from Rahm Emanuel,” she reported. “What is the cause of the friction? It’s very hard to say. Was it Rahm not wanting to have another power center? Was it their personalities? Was it Rahm seeing the GITMO stuff as a distraction from the president’s agenda?”

I think that’s too easy to go with. All power players have a power base, and a Rahm Emmanuel sitting atop the heap doesn’t lend itself to credibility. He is enabled by others. He is empowered to be the bad cop, the enforcer, and the creator of space between what the President wants to do and what his base expects him to do. What bloc is driving the bus, then? You would have to line up a number of key players, and then consider how they will be pitted against those like Craig who can be jettisoned. There are three key players on the fringes—Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates, and Admiral Dennis Blair. I don’t think there is anything this “bloc” is going to do that contradicts or contravenes what these players wish to happen.

Certainly, Defense Secretary Gates was “upset” at the leaks that happened recently. Or was he?

What is true, though, is that a lot of people have been jettisoned:

As Jacob Weisberg wrote recently in Slate, “Obama has a healthy disdain for the overrated virtue of political loyalty… If you’re useful, you can hang around with him. If you start to look like a liability, enjoy your time with the wolves…The president is catlike also in his lack of evident affection for the people who take care of him.” Certainly he’s no Bill Clinton—whose eyes were apt to well up while his lower lip trembled, occasionally punctuated by a consoling hug, as he did what had to be done.

Defenestrated White House Counsel Gregory Craig—a crucial early supporter of Obama’s long-shot candidacy, who became a lightning rod for critics of White House efforts to close the terrorist prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba—is only the latest loyalist to be sacrificed on the altar of political expediency. He surely won’t be the last.

Mr. Grove has a number of “discarded” personalities, some of whom discarded themselves, but that’s neither here nor there.

Anyone who thought we were going to get “good government” is eating their hat right now.