Top Obama aide in war of words

What got Rahm Emanuel to the top may be his undoing. Photo / AP

Rahm Emanuel, President Barack Obama's outspoken chief of staff, has become embroiled in a public row with his critics amid accusations he has damaged the standing of the presidency and undermined his boss.

Emanuel has become the subject of an intense war of words between those who blame him for the failings of Obama's tough first year in office and those who insist Obama should have listened to him more. If the controversy deepens, some feel he may be forced to resign.

The development has been remarkable for a man in Emanuel's job, which calls for him to adopt a behind-the-scenes role whispering advice in the ear of the President and then strong-arm political targets into obeying his master's will.

But critics say the row shows just how much strain Obama's first year of office has taken on his top White House team after a series of political setbacks, especially over healthcare.

"The Obama White House has lost the narrative in the way that the Obama campaign never did," James Morone, a political scientist at Brown University, told the New York Times. "They took the President's great strength as a messenger and failed to use it smartly."

Officials in Obama's Administration, who once appeared so united, now seem to be fighting among themselves.

"It was inevitable that this would happen on one level. You have a President with an ambitious agenda and they have not been getting as much done as they had hoped," said John Geer, editor of the Journal of Politics and a political scientist at Vanderbilt University.

The worsening atmosphere could become particularly difficult for Emanuel if November's mid-term elections turn into a Democratic rout.

By the standards of the Obama White House, the fight around Emanuel has been unusually public and appears to have employed many of the dirty tricks of media manipulation.

It began when some public figures on the left of the party, including prominent bloggers and members of think-tanks, began to call for his resignation, accusing him of being a closet conservative who had failed to get meaningful healthcare reform and other liberal policy through Congress.

That growing chorus appears to have forced Emanuel - or, more likely, his supporters - to launch a counter-attack. A column in the Washington Post by the highly respected sketch-writer Dana Milbank reported that Emanuel had set up his own press outreach operation, separate to that of other top White House aides such as press secretary Robert Gibbs and top adviser Valerie Jarrett. It also stuck the knife into those aides and other senior Obama advisers, blaming them for Obama's problems.

"Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters," Milbank wrote. The piece concluded bluntly: "Obama needs fewer acolytes and more action. Rahm should stay."

Other pieces followed in which sources attacked Obama's top aides and repeated the line that Emanuel was the spurned saviour of the Obama White House, not its downfall.

But there was a backlash too. There was much speculation that the pro-Emanuel pieces had undermined Obama's authority in the frank way they spelled out that Obama's first year had been a disappointment.

Emanuel's supporters hail him as a master of the political dark arts who gets things done. He is abrasive and renowned for his foul-mouthed tirades.

He is known for his ability to dominate and intimidate politicians. But he has also now broken one of the cardinal rules of his job: to control the story, not be the story.

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