Office politics

Jonathan Alter wrote a book, "The Promise". It's about the first year of the Obama Presidency. I've given up trying to read it; I'm sure it's good, but its densely packed prose doesn't make it ideal bedtime reading material! There's a new paperback edition out, with a new epilogue.

It turns out I read the tea leaves about Larry Summers quite accurately. :-) I don't know Mr Summers, but I do know his sort; he has to be right, because he's, well, brilliant. And clever people can't be wrong, can they? They wouldn't be clever if they were wrong... Sometime over the fall, I mentioned to the Mrs that Larry Summers was Mr Obama's biggest hiring mistake. I'd been reading snippets here and there: his dislike of Elizabeth Warren became a small news item, his name cropped up in economic debates, his name didn't appear with others and it should have. Little stuff like that. Basically, the small town gossip Washington is famous for. Except it gets reported to the world.

Mr Alter makes the claim that there was a serious rift between Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod and Larry Summers that basically derailed (that's a correct usage of "derailed", by the way; this was a small digression) any of the Obama Administration's efforts to get the economy back on track and tackle unemployment.

The other revelation in the new ending is that Bill Clinton wasn't handled with kid gloves. Bill complaining isn't anything new; what was short-sighted of the White House was allowing Bill room to complain. Especially as his wife is probably the second most powerful person in the United States, and is rapidly becoming almost as powerful as Mr Obama. (Can he get rid of her? Not a chance. He'd be lucky to keep his shirt if he tried to fire Hillary.) Anyway, giving Bill the room to be petulant isn't the best political strategy you can choose.

(As another digression, George Bush's (in)famously opaque administration was more about preventing the reporting of petty office politics than it was about cracking down on leaks. Leaks are a fact of political life; petty office politics are a requirement in politics - but they make an administration look petty and childish. Mr Bush's and Mr Obama's efforts at keeping that stuff out of the news is more about that than it is about preventing (unapproved) leaks.)

Anyone who's worked with other people will recognize all of these things as basic "office politics". The difference is the number of people reporting on them, the number of people interested in them and the global and domestic implications of them. Office politics writ large, if you will.

Still, Larry Summers was Mr Obama's worst hire.

Carolyn Ann