It Takes A Village To Raise A Rahmbo

The WaPo's campaign to save Rahm Emanuel from the Dirty F'ckin Hippies continues apace.  This time it's staffer Jason Horowitz going to bat for Rahm as "the only voice of reason" in the White House.

But a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.

It is a view propounded by lawmakers and early supporters of President Obama who are frustrated because they think the administration has gone for the perfect at the expense of the plausible. They believe Emanuel, the town's leading purveyor of four-letter words, a former Israeli army volunteer and a product of a famously argumentative family, was not aggressive enough in trying to persuade a singularly self-assured president and a coterie of true-believer advisers that "change you can believe in" is best pursued through accomplishments you can pass.

By all accounts, Obama selected Emanuel for his experience in the Clinton White House, his long relationships with the media and Democratic donors, and his well-established -- and well-earned -- reputation as a political enforcer, all of which neatly counterbalanced Obama's detached, professorial manner. A president who would need the deft navigation of Congress to pass his ambitious legislation turned to the Illinois congressman and former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee because he possessed a unique understanding of the legislative mind.

The pairing made sense, but things haven't worked out as expected. And in the search for what has gone wrong, influential Democrats are -- in unusually frank terms -- blaming Obama and his closest campaign aides for not listening to Emanuel. And this puts the 50-year-old chief of staff in a very uncomfortable position. 

Listening to Emanuel would serve "all our overall goals," said Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.). "I think that Rahm's considerable legislative experience translates into advice that the president should heed."

I called this last week.  Rahm's pulling an Alexander Haig here and making it clear to those who oppose him inside...and outside...the White House that he's the guy calling the shots and that's not going to change.  Even better, the Village is now clearly backing Rahm's overly pragmatic worldview even when that worldview differs from that of a certain "singularly self-assured president".

This is straight Hippie Punching, here.  And the Village has always considered Obama to be a hippie.  The hope here is that Rahm is the surrogate for Clintonian triangulation, and that the president and the rest of his advisors will listen to the only man worth listening to in the West Wing.

The Village has found their man in the Oval Office, and it's not Obama.  That's a problem, and a potentially big one.  They love covering an infighting story, and it's even better if they're the ones creating the infighting story between Rahm and Obama.

Of course, Obama can make all this go away if he just jettisons his entire agenda and goes with Rahm's Sensible Centrist approach...