In an interview on the PBS News Hour, the President’s Chief of Staff demonstrates the difference between being brainy and empathetic–a problem that is becoming crucial to the White House.
On a mission to shore up Barack Obama’s image as a decisive leader, Rahm Emanuel patronizes Jim Lehrer, a journalistic icon, as he tries to pin down the President’s direct involvement in such issues as the Russian spy swap and the decision to sue Arizona over its punitive new immigration law.
Verbally juggling an imperceptible difference between the Chief Executive’s “approval of” and “being briefed” on Justice Department decisions (to avoid saying the President ordered or signed off on the actions), Emanuel ends up, under Lehrer’s persistent questioning, telling him, “I feel like I’m dealing with my children on their homework.”
It’s tempting to see such bad behavior as a matter of temperament or as a generational difference between Emanuel, a brash 59-year-old Boomer, and Lehrer, 76, a former Marine who, as a Dallas reporter, spent a week in 1963 covering the death of a President.
But the encounter suggests something more–the inability of the Obama White House to surmount an emotional tide of disapproval in the wake of a struggling economy, two ongoing wars and an environmental disaster that is being seen 24/7 on TV screens.