Washington Wins

David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist -- a key member of both his campaign and White House Staff -- leaves office. His attempt to help change the culture of Washington didn't work out to well. It was naive to think he could.
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Update: Here's interesting commentary. Who says Washington needs to change anyway? Why do we automatically assume its "broken?"

The same charge is routinely voiced by liberals, conservatives, and nearly everyone in between: If we could transform “how Washington works,” then our country would once again accomplish great things. But, like all tales about a bygone political golden age, this notion ignores historical reality. Since the Gilded Age, when both a large and permanent federal bureaucracy and massive national corporations emerged, there has been a Washington “system.” Corporate lobbyists, lavish donations, arcane and undemocratic Senate rules, dishonest campaigns bankrolled by millionaires—all were familiar to perceptive commentators from Henry Adams and Lincoln Steffens to Walter Lippmann and I.F. Stone. As long as the United States is a capitalist nation with a government ruled more by self-interest than great ideals, the system will endure.



Successful presidents like William McKinley and Lyndon Johnson soberly analyzed how “Washington” operated and made it work in their favor. Transformative presidents like FDR and Reagan eloquently bashed entrenched interests in the name of “the people,” while they and their advisers played those interests against one another for maximum legislative and electoral gain. Despite Roosevelt’s assault on “economic royalists” and Reagan’s fondness for Tom Paine’s phrase about “beginning the world anew,” neither man was naïve enough to think he could uproot the system. FDR needed some of the most noxious Southern Democrats who ran key committees to push through the signature bills of his New Deal, while Reagan cut a deal with Tip O’Neill to drop his proposal to freeze a cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients if the speaker would back an increase in the military budget in the House.
Is Washington really broken or are we the people simply ignorant -- naive? childish? -- about how the world really works? In 2301 we are analyzing Madison's comments regarding human nature and the constitutional order. Men are not angels. Why do we continue to expect angelic behavior?

David Axelrod

The New York Times has a brief overview of Obama's senior aide:

He arrives at the White House shortly after 7 a.m., a torturously early hour for a man known during the campaign for sending messages until the small hours of the morning. A cup of Earl Grey tea is waiting for him — he hates the taste of coffee and recalls having only two cups in his life — as he walks into his first appointment of the day, a meeting in the office of Rahm Emanuel, the chief of staff, who has been a friend for 25 years.

He attends the economic briefing in the Oval Office, where the latest news and grim statistics are relayed to the president by a battery of advisers. When the classified intelligence briefing begins, Mr. Axelrod leaves the room. Later, he and a speechwriter sit down with Mr. Obama to review the three-ring binder containing each speech or statement the president will make that day.
Often in the late afternoons, he walks to the Situation Room to attend some meetings of the National Security Council, stopping to grab a handful or two of the M&Ms that are in a large bowl outside the room.

He also helps decide which fights to pick and which ones to avoid, making him a leading voice in setting the political tone in Washington. The recent back-and-forth with Rush Limbaugh, for example, was explicitly authorized by Mr. Axelrod, who told aides that it was not a moment to sit quietly after Mr. Limbaugh said he hoped that Mr. Obama would “fail.”

- Here's his bio from Wikipedia.