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Jim Messina Is a Perfect Choice to Be Obama's Campaign Manager by Robert Creamer
Apologism at its best.
The Messina Wars Well, the battle to define Jim Messina has been engaged with a vigor that makes you think the White House is a bit more worried than it probably ought to be about how inspiring a figure, really, the campaign manager of the re-elect ought to be. The skirmish began with Ari Berman's shot across the bow, a piece suggesting Messina is a calculating enforcer who shares Rahm Emanuel's scorn for the liberal base. The pushback began in a Marc Ambinder piece arguing that Messina is just an operative doing his job, and quickly escalated to a Huffington Post essay by Robert Creamer -- a consultant and liberal stalwart who is also Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky's husband -- arguing that Messina is in fact the secret love child of George McGovern and Eleanor Roosevelt. This was enthusiastically distributed on Twitter by DNC spokespeople Hari Sevugan and Brad Woodhouse (who threw in a mention of Messina's work against privatizing Social Security). Comes now Jeff Zeleny's profile of Messina as -- as he describes himself -- the "science" to Obama's "art" -- Peter to Obama's Jesus, you might say. The profile has won a glowing endorsement -- or is that a kiss of death? -- from White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer. This is a moment for some of the media and Democratic infrastructure to pick sides, stake out positions: Do you want the authorized leaks or the unauthorized ones. (I'll take both, please!) Do you want an appointment in the second term or a regular spot on the Ed Show? In any event, the battle is engaged with a sort of obviousness that I find slightly surprising, and the wildly energetic effort to cast Messina as the Rock on which the True Church of Obama will be constructed opens a wide space for an equally energetic anti-Messina campaign, turning the heretofore little-known operative into a kind of one-man purity test, and some voices on the left will now eagerly choose the anti-Messina side.
Well, the battle to define Jim Messina has been engaged with a vigor that makes you think the White House is a bit more worried than it probably ought to be about how inspiring a figure, really, the campaign manager of the re-elect ought to be.
The skirmish began with Ari Berman's shot across the bow, a piece suggesting Messina is a calculating enforcer who shares Rahm Emanuel's scorn for the liberal base.
The pushback began in a Marc Ambinder piece arguing that Messina is just an operative doing his job, and quickly escalated to a Huffington Post essay by Robert Creamer -- a consultant and liberal stalwart who is also Illinois Rep. Jan Schakowsky's husband -- arguing that Messina is in fact the secret love child of George McGovern and Eleanor Roosevelt. This was enthusiastically distributed on Twitter by DNC spokespeople Hari Sevugan and Brad Woodhouse (who threw in a mention of Messina's work against privatizing Social Security).
Comes now Jeff Zeleny's profile of Messina as -- as he describes himself -- the "science" to Obama's "art" -- Peter to Obama's Jesus, you might say. The profile has won a glowing endorsement -- or is that a kiss of death? -- from White House communications director Dan Pfeiffer.
This is a moment for some of the media and Democratic infrastructure to pick sides, stake out positions: Do you want the authorized leaks or the unauthorized ones. (I'll take both, please!) Do you want an appointment in the second term or a regular spot on the Ed Show?
In any event, the battle is engaged with a sort of obviousness that I find slightly surprising, and the wildly energetic effort to cast Messina as the Rock on which the True Church of Obama will be constructed opens a wide space for an equally energetic anti-Messina campaign, turning the heretofore little-known operative into a kind of one-man purity test, and some voices on the left will now eagerly choose the anti-Messina side.
Emphasis added for, um... humor.
