The Obama administration moves boldly into the 2012 election cycle with all members of the team rowing powerfully in unison. No dissension here!
Eric Holder, who heads Mr Obama’s justice department, is said to have become “incensed” after being accused by David Axelrod of complaining publicly about political interference in his office.
“That’s bull****,” Mr Holder said in a confrontation after a cabinet meeting, according to author Daniel Klaidman. He writes: “The two men stood chest to chest. It was like a school yard fight”.
The relatively mild-mannered Mr Axelrod is said to have told the attorney general: “Don’t ever, ever accuse me of trying to interfere with the operations of the Justice Department”, a taboo in US politics.
In ‘Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency’, Klaidman discloses the struggles within Mr Obama’s White House at it mounted its controversial campaign against al-Qaeda.
He writes that Mr Holder and Mr Axelrod were separated by Valerie Jarrett, a White House adviser and confidante to Mr Obama. Ms Jarrett “pushed her way between the two men, her sense of decorum disturbed, ordering them to ‘take it out of the hallway’,” says Klaidman.
The argument is said to have erupted over attempts to add a political official to the staff of Mr Holder, who has presided over a handful of political and public relations blunders since taking office in 2009.
Denying impropriety, Mr Axelrod, a hangdog 57-year-old veteran of Chicago politics, is said to have told Mr Holder: “I’m not Karl Rove”.
Actually, these days, far from channeling Rove, Axelrod is reduced to regurgitating movie cliches spouted by Jack Nicholson’s character in A Few Good Men, whom far left screenwriter Aaron Sorkin crafted as the Snidely Whiplash villain for his liberal audience to reflexively hate.
As Jim Treacher wrote last week to comfort the beleaguered Axelrod, “Just five more months of this, Dave. Five more months.”
Join the conversation as a VIP Member