The Politics of Incompetence
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On December 26, two days after Nigerian Omar
Abdulmutallab allegedly attempted to use
underwear packed with plastic explosives to blow up the
Amsterdam-to-Detroit flight he was on, and as it became clear
internally that the Administration had suffered perhaps its most
embarrassing failure in the area of national security, senior
Obama White House aides, including chief of staff Rahm
Emanuel, David
Axelrod and new White House counsel
Robert Bauer, ordered staff to
begin researching similar breakdowns — if any — from the Bush
Administration.
“The idea was that we’d show that the Bush Administration
had had far worse missteps than we ever could,” says a staffer in
the counsel’s office. “We were told that classified material
involving anything related to al Qaeda operating in Yemen or
Nigeria was fair game and that we’d declassify it if
necessary.”
The White House, according to the source, is in full
defensive spin mode. Other administration sources also say a
flurry of memos were generated on December 26th, 27th, and 28th,
which developed talking points about how Obama’s decision to
effectively shut down the Homeland Security Council (it was
merged earlier this year into the National Security Council, run
by National Security Adviser James Jones) had nothing to do with
what Obama called a “catastrophic” failure on Christmas
Day.
“This White House doesn’t view the Northwest [Airlines]
failure as one of national security, it’s a political issue,”
says the White House source. “That’s why Axelrod and Emanuel are
driving the issue.”
Axelrod, who has no foreign policy or national security
experience beyond occasionally consulting with liberal or
progressive candidates running for political office in foreign
countries, has been actively participating in national security
briefings from the beginning of the administration. He has also
sat in on Obama’s “war council” meetings, providing Obama with
suggestions in both venues based on what he knows about polling
and public opinion data, say several White House sources.
“[Axelrod] isn’t sitting in the meetings telling the
President, ‘Do this because the polling shows that,’” says one
source. “But we know that in less public settings, or on paper,
David does provide guidance to the President that gives him added
context to the recommendations and information our foreign policy
and national security teams give him.”
Axelrod’s presence in the meetings has raised some
eyebrows, as previous political advisers in the White House have
typically not participated in such meetings. Bush Administration
sources, for example, say that political adviser Karl
Rove was not present at national security
meetings.
