Paul Krugman has an interesting insight into Robert Gibbs' angry slap at the administration's progressive tormentors:
But I think people are missing an important point: what’s good for Obama is not necessarily good for his aides.
Think about it: Complaints that the administration should have pursued a bigger stimulus, or fought harder for the public option, or taken a different position on Afghanistan aren’t going to matter in the midterms. But they might hurt White House aides who argued against a bigger stimulus (to the point of not even passing the option on to the president), or argued against a harder push on health reform (perhaps even calling for retreat after Scott Brown), or have argued that continuation of Bush foreign policy is a political winner. The point is that the president might actually take those criticisms to heart, and rethink who he listens to.
If these are the people who are doing the advising, they don't seem as adapted to the current environment as they need to be:
"There’s a relentlessness to this that’s unlike anything else, especially when you come into office in a time of crisis," says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. "We did not exactly ease into the tub. The world is so much smaller, and events reverberate much more quickly, and one person can create an event so quickly from one computer terminal."
Larry Summers, who served as Clinton’s Treasury secretary for the last 18 months of his term, says, "It used to be there was a kind of rhythm to the day" with the tempo picking up after the markets closed and as newspaper deadlines approached, between four and seven P.M. "That’s gone." And, according to Rahm Emanuel, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta thinks "it’s a huge problem" that Washington runs at such "a highly caffeinated speed."
Emanuel calls it "Fucknutsville," and Valerie Jarrett says she looks back wistfully to a time when credible people could put a stamp of reliability on information and opinion: "Walter Cronkite would get on and say the truth, and people believed the media," she says.
That old world is gone. If they can't swim in the currents that are flowing now, they aren't serving the president, his administration, or the American people by holding on by their fingernails and fantasizing about decisionless days on the beach. It sounds like this White House needs some younger people, people more in tune with the real pace of the media and the culture. Heh, maybe they should hire a few bloggers.