Man, things are getting downright strange in the ongoing Rahm Emanuel Media Charm Offensive. Now, the Washington Post's own David Broder is straight up blowing my mind by calling out his own paper for participating in this long con:
In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.
This remarkable fiction began unfolding on Feb. 21 in the Sunday column of my friend Dana Milbank, who wrote that "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter," i.e., a one-term failure.
Broder then goes on to cite some more examples before turning his attention to laying out explicitly what he thinks is going on. His take: Emanuel has been "venting" to "his old pals in Congress" and that these "pals" are subsequently "talking to the press."
I think he's underestimating Emanuel's ability to get his own pity party started. All the same, in the past, I've criticized Broder for shying away from available facts and mystifying the political process, so I'd prove myself to be mean-minded if I didn't say I respected this attempt to demystify things.
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Emanuel and his 'advisers' [Washington Post]
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