TomP, in his most recent post, quoted a piece that mentioned the following:
(Reuters)
[President Obama] is frustrated — particularly at Republicans on Capitol Hill, but also at some of his own aides, according to people who have spoken to him recently — that he has been unable to rise above the morass of Washington and recapture the spirit that helped him win election.
The president should be frustrated. He is not being served well. Since the appointment of Bill Daley as Chief of Staff Jan. 13, the president has seen his approval rating go from 50-42 approval/disapproval to 42-50 today according to Gallup. That is after holding relatively steady for almost two years post-honeymoon. Who in the White House or among his supporters could possibly defend such an abysmal performance?
Even if one were generous and placed all the blame on the political environment or the Republicans, who could possibly come to defense of this:
Daley met with the heads of several business groups more than two weeks before Obama withdrew the regulation — an unusual level of senior White House involvement in the regulatory process.
“We saw that as a positive — his level of interest, him sitting in on these meetings, him weighing in on this issue within the administration,” Johanna Schneider, executive director of external relations for the Business Roundtable, told The Hill. “I think it’s emblematic of his role in the administration as part of the outreach to the business community.”
The Business Roundtable wrote to Daley directly on July 15 and urged him to void the proposed ozone regulation. Schneider said Daley’s attention to the rule made it a top priority at the White House.
“It moved the issue up to the top of the agenda for the president. That is what happens when you have a White House chief of staff getting involved,” Schneider said. “You have one of the two or three people in government who can control the agenda.”
Why is Bill Daley spending any time at all focusing on regulations when the president is seeing his clout, his popularity and his prospects for reelection heading towards the ditch? Ridiculous.
Bill Daley should have one thing on his mind and that is seeing to it that this White House is on top of one fundamental mission: getting President Obama reelected and running a tight ship to make that happen.
But it's not going to happen if you screw up political outreach so bad that now Senate Chairwoman of the Environment and Public Works Committee Barbara Boxer (D-CA) is publicly encouraging environmental groups to sue the president:
“I’m not making any charge. I’m just saying I disagree, strongly, with their decision,” she told reporters Tuesday. She added, “And I hope they’ll be sued in court and I hope the court can stand by the Clean Air Act.”
This is going to work wonders for upcoming Hollywood fundraising! We all know folks in LA aren't at all worried about smog. Oh ... well, except for Robert Redford. And I'll bet the president won't get a single additional dime from Business Roundtable that he wasn't already going to get.
This is a fuck up. A fuck up that should cost Daley his job.