The Price of Loyalty

On so many levels, President Obama and the former President Bush are worlds apart in differences. Yet it is amusing to see things that George W. Bush was roundly criticized and condemned for, creep into the presidency of Barack Obama. Ezra Klein asks, “How can a president stuck around 45 percent in the polls and who has suffered such a bad year done so little to shake up his staff?”

As cited by Klein,

Ed Luce writes:

“Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, America’s two most successful recent presidents, acquired the habit of ejecting close friends when something better was on offer. Even George W. Bush forced himself to break the Cosa Nostra when he finally sidelined Karl Rove, his electoral “boy wonder”, six years into his presidency. In his reluctance to change his kitchen cabinet, Mr Obama is an exception – indeed, his campaign inner circle is actually strengthening its grip on the White House. The group, which most prominently includes Valerie Jarrett, the longstanding Chicago friend and mentor to the Obamas; David Plouffe, the 2008 campaign manager; and David Axelrod, who is now shepherding Mr Obama’s re-election campaign from Chicago, last week clipped the wings of Bill Daley, the president’s hapless chief of staff.

Jackie Calmes:

“For Mr. Obama, however, Mr. Geithner has emerged as the indispensable economic adviser who has outlasted every other member of the original inner circle and whose successes easily outweigh his missteps. That Mr. Obama went to such lengths to keep Mr. Geithner, after not having done the same with others on his economic team who had left at midterm, underscored how much he had come to rely on Mr. Geithner. The question for outsiders as varied as Tea Party Republicans and liberal Democrats is why Mr. Obama would be so insistent that Mr. Geithner stay. As Treasury secretary, he was the highest-ranking member of a team that underestimated the depth of the downturn, and he has managed both to anger Wall Street firms and to be a target of criticism at Occupy Wall Street rallies.”

Klein writes:

And it’s not just that Obama has sought to keep Geithner as head of the economics team. The National Economics Council is now headed by Gene Sperling, who entered the Obama administration as one of Geithner’s advisers, and the Council of Economic Advisers is now headed by Alan Krueger, who entered the Obama administration as part of Geithner’s Assistant Treasury Secretaries. The economic-policy team has been Geithnerized.

Nor is it just that Daley has seen his wings clipped. It would make sense, on some level, to keep Daley as chief of staff or appoint Pete Rouse to the position. But to enter a limbo where they are both doing part of the job has created confusion inside the White House and raised eyebrows outside of it. The White House neither seems open to integrating outsiders nor able to make decisive personnel changes. And the president himself seems both adverse to firing people and to bringing new people in to replace them.

If the economy turns and Obama’s campaign team guides him to reelection, the president’s loyalty to his staff will, of course, be seen as another example of the his admirable ability to ignore the nearsighted demands of DC conventional wisdom and play the long game. If the next year does not go so well, however, the judgments on his staffing decisions will be considerably more harsh.

So how is the economy doing lately?

Rightly AND wrongly, President Bush was accused of cronyism and adverse loyalty through such things as the Harriet Miers controversy and Donald Rumsfeld’s tenure as Defense Secretary.

Remember when Alberto Gonzalez was pressured to resign as Attorney General? Why is Eric Holder still aboard Team Obama?

Reading the Wonkbook piece in WaPo, I’m reminded of the following warning:

Fortunately, personal loyalty and fitness for the position are not mutually exclusive. And certainly, no one can fault a president for choosing qualified, experienced officials and advisers whose loyalty and judgment he absolutely trusts. But surrounding oneself with a coterie of trusted allies and loyalists has its risks.

For one thing, it can breed insularity, a prime catalyst for defective decision making.