Maddow does such a perfect job of explaining the utter political incompetence of the Obama Administration in dealing with Jim DeMint's blocking of the Erroll Southers nomination to head the TSA, that she elevates Howard Feinman's game to perhaps his best perfomance of a lifetime. Rather than his usual cliche-repeating machine shtick, he does a reasonable impression of an historically informed wise man, following Rachel's scathing setup:
Sayeth Rachel:
MADDOW: Here's a quick lesson in how to fail in politics without really trying. This is Erroll Southers. He's a Homeland Security official in Los Angeles, a former FBI agent, a counterterrorism expert, and until today, he was President Obama's nominee to be the new head of the Transportation Security Administration.
Republican senators led by South Carolina's Jim DeMint blocked a vote to confirm Mr. Southers for weeks, alternately citing concerns that he might be in favor of unions at the TSA and calling him out over an FBI censure he received two decades ago for running a background check on his estranged wife's boyfriend.
Today, of course, we learned how the Obama administration ultimately responded to these Republican challenges. Not by taking a front, doubling down, pushing this nominee through, not by firing back, making the opposition to Mr. Southers more a political liability for those attacking him than an asset, not by using that handy recess appointment trick to put the nominee through, despite Jim DeMint and friends trying to stop it. But rather, the administration responded by-giving in, and at the same time, whining about how difficult the political opposition had made the climate in Washington.
A statement from Mr. Southers released by the White House said in part, quote, "It is clear that my nomination has become a lightning rod for those who have chosen to push a political agenda at the risk of the safety and the security of the American people. This partisan climate is unacceptable and I refuse to allow myself to remain part of their dialogue."
So, in other words, to punish them for their bad dialogue, I'm going to let them win.
Think about the overall context here. Jim DeMint, Senator DeMint, personally blocked a plainly qualified nominee for TSA administrator. And while that block was underway, someone tried to blow up a Detroit-bound airplane.
And not only did the Obama administration not capitalize on Jim DeMint's horrible political misstep, now they are rewarding Senator DeMint for making it.
Witness Senator DeMint's victory lap today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JIM DEMINT ®, SOUTH CAROLINA: What I did has turned out to be the right thing, and the White House has a vetting problem, not just with this nominee, but others. And so I think slowing it down and looking into it a little more was the right thing to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MADDOW: So, why was he passed unanimously out of committee?
It is possible that Mr. Southers was just dead-set on withdrawing himself from consideration and the Obama administration somehow couldn't figure out how to stop him. But regardless of the precise circumstances surrounding this withdrawal, it is the very embodiment of political weakness.
Sure, one can blame Coakley for running a terrible campaign, and point to how popular Obama remains. But Obama's teflon ability to avoid paying too much of a personal price for his spectacular political ineptitude does not mean that others aren't paying a heavy price for it. If you don't believe me, just ask Southers.
Heck, he wasn't even a progressive like Van Jones. He was fricken lifetime cop. (And if cops, firefighters and paramedics can be unionized, tell me again, what's the argument against unionizing the TSA?) But he was Obama's nominee, and that was all the reason that DeMint needed to try to take him down. And Obama, it seems, never managed to figure that one out. Not even now. Obama: the first president since the 19th Century who skipped Politics 101. Cause he was so smart, don'tcha know!
