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Today, Washington Post "reporter" Jason Horowitz has this scoop: Rahm Emanuel is the cool voice of reason in the White House. Just last week, his colleague at the Post, Dana Milbanks, had this point: Obama needs Rahm. Huh. Did the first story not get enough play so they decided to run it again? Let's take a look at Mr. Horowitz's story: Rahm Emanuel is officially a Washington caricature. He's the town's resident leviathan, a bullying, bruising White House chief of staff who is a prime target for the failings of the Obama administration.
Really? I don't think I've seen the "Rahm is wrong" angle get much play on the front page of, say, the Washington Post. What you mean to say, Mr. Horowitz, is that bloggers don't like Rahm, right?
But a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.
Translation: This contrary narrative is emerging because I'm writing it right now. Or, rather, my colleague Dana Milbank wrote a story last week based on mostly anonymous sources and I'm using those same nameless guys in my own story today. So now there are two stories by two different reporters which establishes a trend. People are talking! There's a pro-Rahm boomlet!
It is a view propounded by lawmakers and early supporters of President Obama who are frustrated because they think the administration has gone for the perfect at the expense of the plausible. They believe Emanuel, the town's leading purveyor of four-letter words, a former Israeli army volunteer and a product of a famously argumentative family, was not aggressive enough in trying to persuade a singularly self-assured president and a coterie of true-believer advisers that "change you can believe in" is best pursued through accomplishments you can pass.
See? People are talking! "Lawmakers" and "early supporters" and "they" and others too!
...The pairing [Obama and Rahm] made sense, but things haven't worked out as expected. And in the search for what has gone wrong, influential Democrats are -- in unusually frank terms -- blaming Obama and his closest campaign aides for not listening to Emanuel.
So who are these "influential Democrats?" The story quotes only one on-the-record Democrat with an explicitly pro-Rahm comment: Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz. Others offer rather neutral-sounding analysis and others are anonymous. Two on-the-record sources that emerge in Horowitz story as Rahm supporters: Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Olympia Snowe.
So there you have it. Horowitz's point: President Obama should have listened to Rahm (and Republicans) more and to "idealistic" voices less.
Nevermind that many so-called idealists have been a better source of "Realpolitik" on things like health care reform than inside-the-beltway experts. One example? Current efforts to pass health care reform through reconciliation were pushed by Chris Bowers and others a full year ago. Back then, getting simple majorities was a low bar and we'd have moved on to other battles long ago. In today's political climate it's a much closer call.
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