It looks like our friends at the NYT are trying to get ahead of the White House Disaster Curve, because even if the Dems steal a win next week, it’s obvious to everybody that the final quarter of the Obama Administration is going to require some fresh faces:
At a time when the Obama administration is lurching from crisis to crisis — a new Cold War in Europe, a brutal Islamic caliphate in the Middle East and a deadly epidemic in West Africa, to name just the most obvious ones — it is not surprising that long-term strategy would take a back seat. But it raises inevitable questions about the ability of the president and his hard-pressed national security team to manage and somehow get ahead of the daily onslaught of events.
Early stumbles in the government’s handling of the Ebola crisis as well as its belated response to the Islamic State have fueled speculation that Mr. Obama may shake up his team, which is stocked with battle-tested but exhausted White House loyalists and cabinet members, like Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who are viewed as less cohesive than the “team of rivals” in Mr. Obama’s first cabinet. George W. Bush took that route after the bruising midterm elections in 2006, when he dismissed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld.
First, take notice of the de rigueur “But Booosh!” in the second graf. NYT readers may nod their heads sagely at the reminder that whatever terrible thing might befall Teh Won, it first happened to Bush but worse.
Second, I do love the use of the phrase “battle-tested” to describe Obama’s “loyalists” and cabinet members. “Battle-test and found wanting” would have been closer to the truth, but undoubtedly too wordy when the real point of that graf was to comfort readers with the “But Booosh!”
If the Dems don’t manage to steal a win next week, then things will get seriously ugly.
Seriously, deliciously, delightfully, schadenfreudelly ugly.
Ace calls it a “schadenboner,” and who am I to disagree?
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