Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) is almost always a good little soldier for the White House, but yesterday, he admitted he’d like to see some changes at the White House.
“I have some concerns about the team that’s around the president,” said Coleman, a Minnesota Republican with close ties to Bush. “I think you need to take a look at it.” […]
“All of a sudden we’re hearing the phrase ‘tin ear,'” Coleman said in a telephone interview. “That’s a phrase you shouldn’t hear. The fact that you’re hearing it says that the kind of political sensitivity, the ear-to-the-ground that you need in the White House, isn’t there at the level that it needs to be.”
Coleman declined to specify which staff members should be replaced, or what new people should be brought in. He said he hadn’t talked to Bush or anyone at the White House about his concerns. “Ultimately the president has to make a decision about his team,” Coleman said. “And the president knows what he needs. I think it’s obvious to those on the Hill – and it’s got to be obvious to those at the White House – that we’re skipping too many beats nowadays. We’re not operating at the highest level of political sensitivity that you need.”
It seems to be something of a trend this week. The WaPo quoted GOP insiders this week saying the White House staff is exhausted and needs to be replaced with fresh blood. Josh noted a CNN report today that said “a move is afoot among some friends and confidantes of President Bush to persuade him to bring in at least one seasoned Republican veteran to help his struggling staff.”
ABC News reported just an hour ago that two Republican sources close to the president have confirmed that the White House has had discussions in recent days about a significant staff shake-up. One of ABC’s sources said “the president’s advisers are in a self-examination mode after a spate of bad news.”
It’s certainly possible that the Bush gang will bring in some new people, but I’m skeptical about the whole thing.
First, the Bush White House is in “self-examination mode”? I don’t think so. Let’s not forget which presidential team we’re dealing with.
The aide said that guys like me were “in what we call the reality-based community,” which he defined as people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.” I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he continued. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”
Second, Scott McClellan dismissed the talk today as “inside-Washington pontificating.” He added, “The president has a smart, capable and experienced team that is fully committed to helping him advance his agenda and get things done for the American people.” A McClellan denial is hardly rock-solid, but there were no hints about possible staff changes.
Third, the New York Times had a good article over the weekend noting that comments such as Coleman’s are frequently ignored.
[S]enior staff members insist that Mr. Bush is in good spirits, that calls from his party to inject new blood into the White House make him ever more stubborn to keep the old.
And fourth, it doesn’t matter. The problem isn’t that Bush’s aides and managers are tired and in need of replacements; it’s that Bush has personally created an atmosphere of ignorance and fear, preferring his “bubble” to political reality. He can fire his entire West Wing staff but it wouldn’t change his worldview.