As Obama's Poll Numbers Dive, Media Cheerleaders Attempt "Underwater" Rescue

The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC poll has sparked concern among the the leg-tingling media types for good reason.  Key findings in the poll show that Obama is a big disappointment:

Some 30% in the poll said they "do not really relate'' to Mr. Obama. Only 8% said that at the beginning of his presidency. Fewer than half give him positive marks when asked if he is "honest and straightforward.'' And 49% rate him positively when asked if he has "strong leadership qualities,'' down from 70% when Mr. Obama took office and a drop of 8 points since January.

Just 40% rate him positively on his "ability to handle a crisis," an 11-point drop since January. Half disapprove of Mr. Obama's handling of the oil spill, including one in four Democrats.

"As a Democrat and as a woman, I am disappointed in him," said poll respondent Melissa Riner, a 42-year-old law clerk from Mesa, Ariz. Referring to the oil spill, Ms. Riner added, "I don't think he's handling it. He doesn't seem to be doing anything. He just talks."

James Ciarmataro, a 23-year-old stay-at-home dad from Macomb, Mich., said it was difficult to relate to Mr. Obama, because the president is "eating steak dinners at the White House and playing golf" while the country is suffering.

Imagine the disappointed faces at NBC and MSNBC when they read these grim reviews of the One that sends a tingle through the liberal legs of Chris Matthews and crew.  Not to worry, borrowing bathtub boy's scuba gear Tingles Matthews attempts an "underwater" rescue operation that would make the notoriously liberal General Stanley McChrystal proud:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: It may have been done that way but the President may benefit here. There is a question that has been raised in this handling of the oil spill – about the chain of command and executive authority. And here's a chance for him and somewhat in a way or somewhat in a personnel manner to insist on his role as commander in chief. In a way that hasn't been so clear during this whole oil spill matter. BP has been the front institution, not the United States government, in this whole horror down in the gulf and I think its hurt the President's standing.

Enter the chorus of media elites crooning silly love songs to their brilliant leader:



I don't know about you but all my doubts about his leadership are erased. The thin-skinned POTUS fires the General he appointed  and now it's time to move over Abe Lincoln - Barack Obama is back and better than ever.

Politico prepares the way for Obama's space in the history books providing a readers with The tick-tock: How President Obama took command of the McChrystal situation.  You would think they were detailing the timeline of events leading up to a secret showdown with the Iranian leadership or something.  Obama doesn't confront those enemies though -  just the liberal Generals who think "Rolling Stone" a sufficiently war-friendly publication in which they can spill their doubts about the Progressive paragon Barack Obama.  


McChrystal is now an afterthought, a hapless victim of the "brilliant" and "diabolically clever" Barack according to Joe Klein.  Klein evidently got the "brilliant" memo and adds the "diabolically clever" bit all on his own.  Klein unleashes the nearest thesaurus and has a veritable adjective Mardi Gras as he paints a picture of an event set to answer all those timeless questions about Democratic leadership and the military:

It was the nature of McChrystal's blunder that made the reascension of Petraeus inevitable. It was the insular, locker-room puerility of McChrystal's team, spewing in a recent Rolling Stone article — the stone-cold belief that they had all the answers; that the civilians in charge, especially those who were members of the Democratic Party, were just a bunch of feckless chin pullers — that made the incident so dangerous; it cut far too close to the bone. It raised timeless questions about civilian authority over the military in wartime and a nagging one that has shadowed American politics since Vietnam: whether Democrats are too soft, too removed from the realities of military life, to pursue an effective national-security policy.

In one fell swoop Klein recreates the whole "Team of Rivals" narrative the media loved so much at the outset of the Obama presidency:

And that is why the Petraeus appointment is at once brilliant and clever — because his prickly relationship with the President has been the symbolic heart of this problem, and now it will take center stage, in Washington and on the battlefields of Afghanistan. How it is resolved, if it is resolved, will determine the fate of Obama's presidency.

Klein carefully avoids the fact the prickliness in the relationship was entirely on the President's part.  Of course it is resolved, Obama no longer needs to undermine Petraeus' success in Iraq to win the election.  He won as we are reminded endlessly.  If anything Obama's brilliant choice was a tacit admission his demagoguery of the Surge was - how shall I say it - bullshit.  Klein must know this because the rest of his piece goes to lengths to cast doubts on the counterinsurgency strategy as key to the success in Iraq while he builds to the "real question, whether this Democratic President and the military, symbolized by Petraeus, can make the adjustments necessary to live with each other."  Is there any doubt who would be portrayed by the media as unable to make the necessary adjustments?

Klein, Matthews and the rest of the fawning media will never let this President fail without a fight.  It should be interesting to watch what they do with Obama's polling numbers over the next few weeks.  No doubt any downturn will be rationalized while any minor uptick will be proof of Obama's brilliance.  Mission Accomplished.

Breaking: McChrystal Relieved of Command UPDATE: General Petraeus Will Take Command

NBC News is reporting citing Pentagon sources that General Stanley McChrystal has been relieved of his command in Afghanistan.  Obama is set to give a speech in just a few minutes addressing the subject of McChrystal's controversial statements in the soon to be released issue of Rolling Stone.

Stay tuned...  AP is confirming

UPDATE:  Petraeus taking command is good news though one has to wonder how many Democrats who pilloried Petraeus with derogatory names such as "General Betray Us" can look themselves in the mirror.

More:   Petraeus taking command is a huge step down for him but seems in-line with a man of his character to put the mission above all else.  Petraeus will have to overlook a lot from the Dem crew in DC.  A stroll down memory lane is revealing.  Remember Obama's questioning of Petraeus?  Here is the shortened version: "it was really the Sunni Awakening - the Surge didn't work."

Then there was the famous MoveOn ad:

Of course who can forget when Hillary all but called Petraeus a liar:

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.), frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008, opened her questioning of Petraeus and Crocker with the standard "I honor you for your service." And then she let the two of them have it.

"You have been made the de facto spokesmen for what many of us believe to be a failed policy" in Iraq, Clinton said. "Despite what I view is your rather extraordinary efforts in your testimony both yesterday and today, I think that the reports that you provide to us really require a willing suspension of disbelief."

Clinton added that "any fair reading of the advantages and disadvantages accruing post-surge, in my view, end up on the downside."

God bless General Petraeus who is indeed a better man than his civilian superiors.

No Terms of Endearment from General McChrystal

It's funny how lines from certain movies always come to mind when describing the Obama administration.  No, I am not thinking of memorable Wizard of Oz quotes in this instance, though I am sure there must be one that is fitting.  Lately I have been reminded of the line from the movie "Terms of Endearment" when Emma, describes the difficult task of raising children, "As hard as you think it is, you end up wishing it were that easy."  A variation of that line comes to mind, as I often think when it comes to this administration as bad as I thought they were going to be I end up wishing they were that good.

The latest "flap" comes from an obviously discontented General McChrystal who has obviously become so frustrated with the group he let his hair down and dishes in a forthcoming issue of Rolling Stone Magazine:

An article out this week in “Rolling Stone” magazine depicts Gen. Stanley McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to convince even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war…

McChrystal himself is described by an aide as “disappointed” in his first Oval Office meeting with an unprepared President Barack Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops…

If Eikenberry had the same doubts [about McChrystal's strategy], McChrystal said he never expressed them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the debate over whether to add more troops last November. In the document, Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to execute.

McChrystal said he felt “betrayed” and accused the ambassador of giving himself cover.

“Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books,” McChrystal told the magazine. “Now, if we fail, they can say ‘I told you so.”

That clatter you hear is the sound of all hell breaking loose at the White House. "Within hours after today's Rolling Stone story broke, McChrystal was called by the White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were not happy."  I'll bet they were not happy.    McChrystal issued an apology post haste.  Though he didn't apologize for his poor judgment in voting for Obama, the apology was intended to assuage the bruised egos of "the national security adviser, Jim Jones, a retired general, a "clown" who is "stuck in 1985," as well as Vice President "Bite Me" Biden. Ouch.

McChrystal saved the bulk of his ire for Eikenberry as the two have a long history of trouble between them as Ambinder explains at length:

Eikenberry's beef with McChrystal goes back to the time when McChrystal was the Pope. The Pope is the head of the Joint Special Operations Command. The nickname goes back to an off-hand remark that Janet Reno made after failing to obtain information from JSOC after the raid at Waco. (JSOC operators were on the ground but did not assist in the raid itself.) She called JSOC the Vatican. And the head of the Vatican is ... the Pope.

At some point, I think in 2005, one of McChrystal's task-forces-that-didn't-really-exist did something in Afghanistan that angered Eikenberriy, who was in command of the region at the time. The two men exchanged words and built mutual mistrust. They have not worked well together ever since. McChrystal blames Eikenberry for trying to influence policy by leaking information and by impeding McChrystal's efforts to build better relationships with Afghanistan's fragile government.

During the strategy review, Eikenberry didn't think McChrystal's surge could work. He told the White House that contractors would have to pick up the slack for years to come. McChrystal insisted that he could execute his COIN strategy with a heavy presence of special operations forces ... and be out in 18 months (i.e, troops would begin to be drawn down). The White House ultimately sided with McChrystal.

But there were tensions. Even though McChrystal voted for Obama and told him so during their first meeting, he sensed that a number of senior White House aides didn't really believe that the former commander of the military's special missions unit during the Bush-Cheney years was suddenly on their side. National Security Adviser James Jones, who is a bit of cipher to McChrystal's team, may or may not have been one of these aides. No one in the West Wing bought all that liberal internet chatter about JSOC's alleged crimes -- but no one really didn't buy it, either.

What a mess.  Though McChrystal will surely take the heat for insubordination, one has to wonder what thought, if any, Obama and his cronies gave to carrying out this mission in Afghanistan.  The tensions between McChrystal and Eikenberry were deep and there was an obvious sense of mistrust towards McChrystal on the part of the new administration.  If Obama's aides doubted McChrystal's allegiance why was he given charge of what Obama called the "real war" in Afghanistan?  Bizarre.

This is bound to make the headlines over the next few days as the Rolling Stone article hasn't even hit the newstands yet.  Fasten your seat belts, this one doesn't appear to have a happy ending coming any time soon.

H/T: Hot Air

Finally a Decision on Afghanistan, sort of

McClatchy  reports Obama met with his national security team on Monday night and has decided to commit 34,000 troops to Afghanistan.  Of course, Obama is not one to be rushed on such matters so he will wait a week to make the announcement:

Obama is expected to announce his long-awaited decision on Dec. 1, followed by meetings on Capitol Hill aimed at winning congressional support amid opposition by some Democrats who are worried about the strain on the U.S. Treasury and whether Afghanistan has become a quagmire, the officials said.

The U.S. officials all spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the issue publicly and because, one official said, the White House is incensed by leaks on its Afghanistan policy that didn't originate in the White House.

Is it me, or is that last portion quoted the strangest comment on leaks, well this week anyway.  How many articles on important issues and policy from this administration have not a single named source, there seems to be a leak epidemic.

The leaker continues to report that General McChrystal could arrive in  Washington as early as Sunday to help roll out the plan as well as appear before congressional committees toward the end of the week.   After months of dithering on McChrystal's request, Obama has agreed to the additional troops but has given a 6 month timeframe to demonstrate improvement:

 The administration's plan contains "off-ramps," points starting next June at which Obama could decide to continue the flow of troops, halt the deployments and adopt a more limited strategy or "begin looking very quickly at exiting" the country, depending on political and military progress, one defense official said.

"We have to start showing progress within six months on the political side or military side or that's it," the U.S. defense official said.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if presidential elections came with "off-ramps"?   I would have begun looking at an exit strategy before the inauguration but I suspect Independent voters crossed that point just this past summer.  Obama was wise to follow McChrystal's request but looking after 6 months for a very quick exit seems to suggest the full commitment of the administration is lacking a bit.  Still, Obama seems to have had something of a wake up call upon his return from Asia.  No doubt falling poll numbers and increased criticism were the stick that whipped the administration into motion.  Unfortunately the same stick doesn't appear to matter much on health care.  His priorities are astounding as usual.

H/T: Memeorandum