The Other Piece Of The Puzzle

It makes sense that in Washington, if somebody wins in the Village press, somebody else has to lose.  Its a zero sum game they play up there.  In the case of the Village raising up Rahm Emmanuel we now know who the ordained loser is in the battle:  Obama's budget guru, David Axelrod.

Critics, pointing to the administration’s stalled legislative agenda, falling poll numbers and muddled messaging, suggest that kind of devotion is part of the problem at the White House. Recent news reports have cast the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, as the administration’s chief pragmatist, and Mr. Axelrod, by implication, as something of a swooning loyalist. “I’ve heard him be called a ‘Moonie,’ ” dismissed Mr. Axelrod’s close friend, former Commerce Secretary William Daley. Or as the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, joked, “the guy who walks in front of the president with rose petals.”

Still, it is a charge that infuriates Mr. Axelrod, the president’s closest aide, longest-serving adviser and political alter ego. “I guess I have been castigated for believing too deeply in the president,” he said, lapsing into the sarcasm he tends to deploy when playing defense.

No one has taken the perceived failings of the administration more personally or shown the strain as plainly as Mr. Axelrod, who as White House senior adviser oversees every aspect of how Mr. Obama is presented. As such, Mr. Axelrod, the president’s mustachioed message maven, has felt the brunt of criticism over what many view as the administration’s failure to clearly define and disseminate Mr. Obama’s agenda and accomplishments for the country.

“The Obama White House has lost the narrative in the way that the Obama campaign never did,” said James Morone, a political scientist at Brown University. “They essentially took the president’s great strength as a messenger and failed to use it smartly.”

Mr. Axelrod said he accepts some blame for what he called “communication failures,” though he acknowledges bafflement that the administration’s efforts to stimulate the economy in a crisis, overhaul health care and prosecute two wars have been so routinely framed by opponents as the handiwork of a big-government, soft-on-terrorism, politics-of-the-past ideologue.

“For me, the question is, why haven’t we broken through more than we have?” Mr. Axelrod said. “Why haven’t we broken through?” 

The entire point of this piece is to be the answer to "Well, if Rahmbo's head doesn't need to roll for Obama's perceived failures, whose head does need to roll?"   Read between the lines and you see that Mark Leibovich has already had Axelrod fall on his sword in this piece, taking the blame for the "bubble" that the President's in, being responsible for Obama's "out of touch arrogance" and "messaging failures" and that he doesn't have the answers.

The Axeman has just been offered up as a sacrifice.  Make no mistake about it, if this is Rahm vs Axe, Rahm is winning the Village game by three or four touchdowns.  It's even worse that Axelrod is Obama's "messaging maven" and should really have known better than this.  It so obviously throws him under the bus you have to wonder if he's naive or just incompetent...and that's deadly in Washington circles.

While the blogs have been going after Rahm, the Village is going after the Axeman.  Who will win this battle?

And isn't the far more important battle concerning what decisions Obama is making?  Isn't either outcome painting Obama as a puppet being led rather than a President who leads?

That's the far more important point here.  It seems neither side is getting the point of this Village hit job, that the real target is Obama himself.