Ed Driscoll:
The Fiscal Times quotes excerpts from MSNBC regular and former Newsweek contributor Richard Wolffe’s recap of Obama’s reelection bid:
Picture infighting, dysfunction and personality conflicts and you might think of the key players of a production team on a Hollywood blockbuster sparring over budgets, promotion strategy and how to keep the temperamental lead actor happy.
Oops, wrong coast. Try Washington, D.C., where author Richard Wolffe, in a new book, The Message: The Reselling of President Obama, brings the brutal 2012 Obama reelection campaign to new life:
* David Axelrod didn’t think former Obama Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina was “up to the job” of campaign manager and tried to short circuit him at almost every turn.
* David Plouffe had confidence in Messina, but “nobody could come up with a good candidate to replace him.”
* Messina couldn’t fire Axelrod – but Barack Obama could.
This is how Wolffe tells it: “He [Axelrod] was pushed out. Not officially, of course. He was just leaving a little earlier than intended…. Nothing unusual, really. Just a wrenching expression of disaffection from the president he had fallen for.”
The takeaway was this, Wolffe says: “For those who remained, the departure of Axelrod and [Robert] Gibbs sent a clear message: They were all dispensable. ‘He doesn’t need anyone,’ said [a] member of the [Obama] inner circle. ‘Axe and Gibbs were effectively fired. He owes everything to Axe. Everything. He’d never have gotten anywhere without him. I’d like to think he knows that and sees him differently. But I’m not sure.’”
I’m not either, based on the stratospheric level of Obama’s malignant narcissism. And while Axe was getting the axe from Obama, Wolffe notes that the Obama administration lacked the collective “balls” — his word — to tell deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter she was fired:
