Category Archives: The Obamas

Suskind: Unkind or Untrue? Assessing the Obama White House

Ron Suskind’s book Confidence Men, due for general release this week, is already attracting headlines for its depiction of a President who is not in command of a White House staff that is riven by rivalries and internal dissent. Not surprisingly, the White House is pushing back against Suskind’s characterization, with several former Obama aides now denying the quotes that Suskind attributes to them. I have only read the excerpts from Suskind’s book, so will limit my response in this post to those. Note that I know this subject well and have a lot to say here, so I’ll break my comments into two separate posts.

The most sensational claims Suskind makes, at least based on media coverage, are:

1. Obama’s economic team was rife with discord, most noticeably between Larry Summers, who headed the National Economic Council (NEC) and OMB director Peter Orszag. As illustration, reportedly Summers was outraged when Orszag submitted a private economic report on the long-term economic impact of large deficits, but without providing Summers a copy. More generally, the two clashed on how best to deal with budget deficits and on economic policy.

2. That Summers at one point complains to Orszag that no one is in charge at the White House. “We’re home alone,” Summers reportedly confided. “There’s no adult in charge. Clinton never would have made these mistakes.”

3. That Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner simply ignored the President’s request to create stress tests for the banks to determine whether they were likely to survive the financial crisis without additional funds.

4. And in perhaps the most controversial excerpt, the President reportedly admitted that he lacked the “vision thing”, to paraphrase a previous one-term president: “I think one of the criticisms that is absolutely legitimate about my first two years was that I was very comfortable with a technocratic approach to government … a series of problems to be solved. …

“Carter, Clinton and I all have sort of the disease of being policy wonks. … I think that if you get too consumed with that you lose sight of the larger issue. … The reorganization that’s taken place here is one that is much more geared to those [leadership] functions.”

What are we to make of these revelations? I have spent most of my academic life researching and writing about life in the White House, focusing in particular on the relationship between presidents and their senior aides, and I can tell you, based on reading memos and documents from thirteen previous presidencies, the scenes Suskind describes regarding dissent in the Obama White House are neither uncommon nor nearly as problematic as he would have us believe. I should state at the beginning that I have no reason to believe that any of the quotes, by themselves, are inaccurate, but I’m also certain that he has cherry-picked the most controversial statements and probably presented them in ways that don’t do justice to the full context of the conversation he was having with these individuals. Lacking access to the full transcript, however, I can’t be certain. So we must proceed with caution. With those provisos, let’s revisit the controversial claims.

To begin, the fact that two of the President’s four primary economic advisers (the other two are CEA head Christina Romer and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner) were at loggerheads is neither surprising nor problematic. Indeed, I would be more worried if there was no clashes among them, particularly regarding an issue as complex as the nation’s economy. The truth is that economists do not agree on what caused the current economic crisis or how to end it. It thus does a disservice to the President, and to the nation, not to have those disagreements aired and thoroughly debated. In the end, Obama was forced to choose under conditions of uncertainty. This is par for the course in the White House. People forget that when Franklin Roosevelt took office in 1933, he did so thoroughly committed to pursuing orthodox economic policies, namely cutting government spending and balancing the budget. A few months into his presidency, however, he reversed course and embraced deficit spending. His budget director, a man named Lew Douglas (the Orszag of the day), who had spearheaded FDR’s initial economy act that cut government spending, was appalled by the President’s decision to now embrace a spending increase and to run historically large peacetime deficits, and he wrote anguished memos to the President pleading for FDR to return to his initial recovery program based on balanced budgets. Alas, FDR stuck to the new course, and Douglas eventually resigned. Nor was his the only resignation among senior White House staff; FDR’s other key domestic adviser, a man named Ray Moley, also resigned in reaction to Roosevelt evolving political views, and went on to write books that were critical of the President’s New Deal policies.

My point is that this type of policy infighting goes with the territory. The clashes among Obama’s senior White House staff described in Suskind’s excerpts have been interpreted to be petty disputes driven by clashing egos, but in fact they also represent sincere policy disagreements held by well-intentioned advisers (admittedly with large egos) who fervently believe they are right. Presidents need to encourage these disagreements, unsettling as they may be to the advisers who find themselves on the losing end of a policy fight.

What of Summers’ alleged outrage at Orszag’s sending in a report directly to the President without Summers’ review? Isn’t that petty? Not at all. In fact, any well run White House will have a set of procedures in place to prevent memos from going to the President without the signature and comments of all relevant parties. Summers’ anger that this procedure was violated is justified. But blame shouldn’t be directed at Orszag – it should fall on Obama’s senior staff responsible for staffing papers out. Usually this is part of the Chief of Staff’s duties; typically there will be a junior aide in the Chief of Staff’s office who oversees the paper routing system. But no system will work if the President doesn’t actively police it. In the Orszag memo incident, the President should have made sure the report was vetted by Summers. In interviews with previous White House aides, I have heard more than one story about a President making sure that a particularly important policy memo was sent back to be vetted by other aides. This is not to say, however, that President Obama should be expected to serve as his own chief of staff. He needs to have someone in charge of managing the paper flow on his behalf. This incident, by the way, is precisely what I blogged about two days ago in defending Bill Daley’s efforts to tighten administrative procedures in the White House.

Perhaps the most damning excerpt is Summers’ alleged statement that no one was in charge at the White House, and that Clinton would never have “made these mistakes”. We’ve seen more than a little Clinton nostalgia these past days, but I had to laugh when I read the Summers’ quotation. In fact, Bill Clinton’s White House staff during the first months of his presidency was legendary for its administrative disorder. Critics alleged that, under the loose direction of Chief of Staff Mack McClarty, the President and his senior aides could not make decisions in a timely fashion, that policy debates proceeded far too long and without any apparent regard for proper staffing procedures and that, in effect, no one was in charge! Ultimately, Clinton recognized that he needed someone to discipline his young staff and make the trains run on time, and he replaced McClarty with his OMB director and veteran Washington hand Leon Panetta. How soon we forget!

This is not to excuse the Obama administration for any administrative sloppiness. In part, however, as I noted in my earlier posts on this topic, this is a function of being new on the job. It takes time for a president’s team to realize the importance of establishing and adhering to fixed administrative procedures designed to insure that no person talks to and no memorandum reaches the president without it being properly staffed out.

It is no surprise that the initial media coverage of Suskind’s book has centered on allegations of dysfunction in the Obama administration. The truth, however, is that the incidents Suskind describes are neither unprecedented nor even problematic. All White House staffs, if they are doing their job, will be divided along political and policy lines, and will press to have their views adopted by the President. These clashes are both necessary and healthy.

To this point, I have not addressed Obama’s remarks, including his confession that, as a self-proclaimed “policy wonk”, he may have lost sight of the “bigger picture”. I want to address this in a separate post, because it gets to a crucial point regarding Obama and his leadership that I have made since before he was sworn in as President. In contrast to Suskind’s other allegations, this one deserves greater scrutiny. .

On a (West) Wing and a Prayer: Obama This Day Is Daley Led

Predictably, Obama’s chief of staff Bill Daley is coming in for criticism recently (see also here) regarding how he is running the White House on the President’s behalf. The criticisms surfaced against the backdrop of Democratic strategist James Carville’s recent broadside arguing that in light of the Republican victories in the two recent special House elections it’s time for Obama “to panic” and “start firing people”. Although Carville denied targeting Daley, pundits have been quick to make the connection between Carville’s statement and the latet criticism from other sources regarding Daley’s performance. Those criticisms run the gamut from Daley’s failure to clear the date for Obama’s recent jobs speech with House Speaker John Boehner, necessitating rescheduling the event, to limiting staff members’ access to the President to failing to consult with senior Democrats in Congress. One specific criticism focuses on Daley’s decision to cut to once-a-week the 8:30 formerly daily White House meeting of mid-level aides that had followed the smaller 7:30 meeting of senior White House aides. The decision to cut the meetings was designed to free up time for Obama’s senior staff to perform other functions, but it rankled mid-level White House aides because it deprived them of face time with senior White House advisers. These meetings have been replaced by a greater reliance on written memorandum and tightened administrative procedures designed to insure memos are properly prepared and staffed out.

Without commenting on the specific merits of these criticisms, I think it is worth putting them in their historical context. First, whenever a President begins to lose political clout, supporters begin targeting senior White House officials and cabinet members, rather than aim their barbs directly at the president. The most prominent target is usually the chief of staff; indeed, serving as a “javelin catcher” is part of the job description for this position, and in this case Daley is no exception. Second, the reduction in staff meetings, an increased emphasis on written memorandum and a general movement to tighten administrative procedures while reducing staff access to the President is a pattern almost every recent White House – particularly those run by “policy wonk” Democratic presidents – has followed dating back to Jimmy Carter. Although Carter and Clinton and now Obama took office promising an inclusive, open-door staffing pattern at the start of their presidencies, they inevitably adopted a more restrictive staff system in which fewer aides had walk-in privileges as time went on. The reason is that each realized that the immersion in policy and administrative detail often came at a cost in terms of time management and overall efficiency. In each case the President gradually ceded greater gatekeeping authority to their chief of staff (in Carter’s case it meant recognizing the need for a chief of staff in the first place), and in each instance the change precipitated grumbling from mid-level aides – usually veterans from the president’s campaign – who saw their access to their boss reduced and who were not shy about leaking their dissatisfaction to the press. And so it is with Obama and Daley – according to this Politico story “Daley’s brisk, officious, closed-door corporate style has soured some White House staffers who think he’s pinching Obama’s access to his own people, depriving him of a wider variety of opinions at a time when coming up with creative solutions to the country’s economic malaise — and the president’s political slump — are at a premium While Daley has brought a new level of efficiency to the day-to-day operations of a White House buffeted by two years of Emanuel’s creative chaos, he’s remains an outsider to many of the campaign veterans who make up the core of Obama’s staff.”

But while news accounts cite Daley as the source of the staffing unrest, the reality is that the cause runs much deeper than his management style. Instead, history suggests that the change in staffing patterns Obama’s White House underwent is simply the latest manifestation of the adjustments almost all incoming presidents make as they begin to understand their administrative needs, particularly the necessity to preserve their most precious commodity: time. The longer a president is in office, the more he feels the need to husband his time and focus on priorities. This is particularly the case with those presidents who by temperament and prior experience are used to delving deeply into the weeds of policy debate and immersing themselves in administrative detail. Invariably, once in the Oval Office they find themselves overwhelmed by the relentless pressure created by the steady stream of appointments and daily decisions that reach their desk, and they seek ways to reduce that flow. That response usually takes two forms: reducing staff access to the President, and disciplining administrative procedures to save the President’s time. In the tradeoff between conserving the president’s time and maximizing his access to information and advisers, then, time management almost always win. This presidency is no exception.

It is tempting to blame Daley for his “officious, closed-door corporate style” of White House management – one that critics claim threatens to cut Obama off from new ideas and advice. But it is a style that reflects the reality of administrative life in the White House. Almost all presidents and their campaign aides enter the White House thinking they will govern through an inclusive, open-door administrative style. In Obama’s defense, he was less naive than most, as indicated by his choice of veteran White House aide Emanuel as his first chief of staff (although this book suggests Emanuel was not his first choice.) Even under Emanuel, however, there is evidence suggesting that Obama’s White House suffered from administrative overload in its first few months. I will deal with this in a later post. For now, however, rather than blame Bill Daley for the current state of affairs, critics should instead focus on their inflated expectations for what presidents, and their aides, can hope to accomplish.

The One Thing Obama Must Do To Achieve Presidential Greatness

What is the one step presidents must take to insure their historical legacy as effective leaders?

I’ve addressed this issue in previous posts, but want to revisit it today in light of Michael Kazin’s article at the TNR website in which he tries to put Obama’s falling popularity in some historical context. After reciting the litany of woes affecting Obama’s presidency, Kazin notes that “Such a descent is neither a remarkable nor an exceptional development in American politics, which might provide a bit of ironic comfort to Obama as he peddles around Martha’s Vineyard. In fact, the history of the modern presidency is replete with disappointment and failure.” For Kazin, only “four post-TR chief executives retired from the job with their popularity and reputations either intact or enhanced: Coolidge, Franklin Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Reagan.” We can quibble with Kazin’s list (I’ve dealt with the issue of presidential rankings many times here), but that’s not what I find troubling about his article. Instead it’s his failure to fully address what factors contribute to the perception of presidential effectiveness.

Kazin suggests that in time (but how much time?) Obama’s considerable accomplishments “may yet restore his image as an effective leader.” Kazin cites the health care act, the Dodd-Frank banking bill, the auto company bailout, “and perhaps even the 2009 stimulus” as acts that will be viewed more favorably in the future. For that to happen, however, Obama must jettison his post-midterm strategy of trying to reach agreement with Republicans. Instead, he must return to “the bold stance he promised during his 2008 campaign” and make a “serious effort to reverse the nation’s decline” rather than “trying to assuage his critics with timid rhetoric about civility and compromise.”

Kazin is correct that most presidents leave office less popular than when they entered – but there are presidents who leave with lower popularity – and then there are Jimmy Carter-type failures. The essential ingredient that differentiates Carter-type failure from lesser failure, and which ties the successful presidents together is whether the president won reelection to a second term. Consider Kazin’s successful presidents: Coolidge took office when Harding died, but he easily won reelection in 1924. Roosevelt, of course won four presidential elections. Both Eisenhower and Reagan served two full terms. Winning reelection does not guarantee one’s historical legacy as a great, or good, president, but it is the necessary first step. Without it a president is destined to sit in the ranks of the average or below average presidents.

If Obama is to reverse the growing perceptions that his is a failed presidency, then, the first and most essential step is to win in 2012. How can he do so? Here Kazin is guilty of recycling the tired progressive line that an Obama victory can be achieved by changing his public tone and demeanor, in order to rediscover his 2008 election mojo. Presumably that means stop playing nice and instead come out fighting. That advice ignores the more fundamental factors that contributed to Obama’s 2008 win, particularly voter dissatisfaction with Republicans, a sluggish economy and growing fatigue with the Iraq war – fundamentals that now suggest 2012 is a dead heat, at best. These fundamentals aren’t much affected by changes in the incumbent president’s rhetorical stance or public attitude. Nor it is obvious why a return to the “bold stance” (whatever that means) that Obama exhibited in his first two years will be a surefire recipe for turning his presidency around. Indeed, it was that “bold stance”, and the legislation it engendered, that contributed, along with the sluggish economy, to the historic Republican gains in 2010. In particular, studies show that members of Congress who supported the stimulus and health care legislation suffered at the polls.

If Obama wants to join the pantheon of effective presidents, then, the first step is to win in 2012. Alas, as of today – with my usual reminder that there is still time for conditions to change – the trend lines do not bode well for Obama’s reelection. Consider the latest polling in Pennsylvania – a state critical to Obama’s 2012 reelection and which he won in 2008. A poll released today shows his support dropping rapidly, with only 35% of registered voters approving of the job he is doing, down 10% in 6 months. However, he still beats a “generic Republican” in that state by 36%-31%. That suggests that who the Republicans nominate may, in a close race, be the determining factor in Pennsylvania. Indeed, if the race is as close as the numbers currently suggest, who the Republican nominee is will play a larger role in determining the overall election outcome than it did in 2008. From a purely horserace perspective, 14 months out, this is shaping up to be a very exciting race. (Insert Dickinson caveats here.)

Nationally, of course, Obama’s approval ratings are at the lowest point of his presidency, amid continue reports of sluggish job growth. It’s not immediately clear how Kazin’s strategy promises to reverse either those polling numbers, or the faltering economy that is driving them in the wrong direction. At this stage, talk is cheap. Instead, Obama needs as a first step to get legislation through Congress that shows the potential for stimulating economic growth – and that means working with Republicans, not castigating them as paragons of evil.

It may be that Kazin is right – that at some point we will look back at Obama’s presidency and realize that it accomplished a great deal. But it makes a considerable difference to his historical legacy if that turning point takes place in the next 12 months, or the next 12 years. His chances of joining the pantheon of above- average presidents, rather than the below- average cohort, depends first and foremost on the outcome of the 2012 election.

Addendum: Apropos of my previous post, the White House released this photo today showing the president receiving a national security briefing while on vacation. I understand the logic driving the decision to release the photo, but it says something about the state of political discourse today that the administration felt compelled to “prove” the President is keeping up with events.

Vacation Advice to the President: Avoid The Nude Beach

If it’s August, I know three things will happen:

1. France will essentially shut down;

2. I’ll be late writing my APSA paper;

3. The President will be criticized for taking a vacation.

And right on cue, the lead story in most media outlets today centered on the critical reaction to the First Family’s departure for a 10-day stay at Martha’s Vineyard. It is, of course, now customary for the political opposition to rail against the President’s willingness to take time off while the country’s future is at stake. And at taxpayer’s expense, no less! (Never mind that the lodging is paid for privately – what about all those security and transportation costs!) President Bush’s travels to his Crawford, Texas ranch elicited the same indignant reaction, as did Bill Clinton’s vacations (which often included trips to Martha’s Vineyard as well), George H. W. Bush’s frequent stays at the family compound in Kennebunkport (where he terrorized the locals in his speedboat) and Ronald Reagan’s regular trips west to his California ranch to clear brush, and ride horses with Nancy.

I don’t know when taking a vacation started becoming bad politics, although I think it began with Reagan’s trips to California. Of course August is always a slow news month, which makes it easier to justify running the “Should the President Be on Vacation At a Time Like This?” story. Although this is the Obamas’ third trip to Martha’s Vineyard, the attacks on him seem more intense this time. I think this is for at least two reasons. First, the stock market’s recent roller-coaster ride has entered another downward plunge, amid continuing reports of weak job growth. Second, we are deep into the invisible primary season, and his vacation timing and locale provides ample fodder for Republican candidates out on the campaign hustings to scold the president for his seeming obliviousness to the plight of the common man. For example, consider Mitt Romney’s remarks from two days ago: “if you’re the president of the United States, and the nation is in crisis, and we’re in a jobs crisis right now, then you shouldn’t be out vacationing.”

Of course, the choice of locale doesn’t help. Much of the criticism centers on the message the President seems to be sending by staying in opulent vacations digs hobnobbing with the glitterati at a time when almost 1 in 10 Americans lack jobs. As one columnist put it, “Which begs the question – why did the president go ahead with his vacation despite the worst approval ratings of his presidency, plunging stock markets, falling consumer confidence, and overwhelming public disillusion with his handling of the economy? I think the answer lies in Obama’s professorial-style arrogance, and a condescending approach towards ordinary Americans.”

Forgive me if I don’t share the outrage. The reality is that presidential vacations aren’t like the ones you and I take (if I ever took one!). Sure, there’s some recreational downtime. But it’s mostly much of the same daily grind: the intelligence briefing, the meeting with staff, the constant stream of memoranda and official documents. In terms of intensity, I think it’s a lot closer to vacationing with Clark Griswold and his family: things are always going wrong, and the stress level is very high.

Moreover, Obama’s vacationing no more frequently than did his immediate predecessors. Indeed, at this point, Obama’s vacation time (I don’t count time spent at Camp David) seems about average for presidents. By one count, in their first year as president, Reagan (42 vacation days) and both Bushes spent more time on vacation than did Obama, while Clinton and Carter spent less. (I’ve never been to Plains, GA, but perhaps the locale partly explains Carter’s aversion to vacationing? Or maybe Democrats just work harder.)

In any case, Obama has a ways to go to match his immediate predecessor’s vacation time. Across his eight years as president Bush took 77 vacation trips to his Texas ranch, spending 69 days there during his first year alone. By comparison, Obama only vacationed 26 days during year one of his presidency. And this doesn’t count the more than 450 days Bush spent at Camp David. Similarly, Clinton spent 171 days “on vacation” during his eight years. Keep in mind as well that Obama has two kids, and something tells me they have some say in the vacation decision.

But there’s a more important reason why I’m not sympathetic to the “no time for vacation” crowd. History suggests that these trips help presidents cope with the burden of being president. And if they cope better, the nation benefits as well. Have you seen before and after pictures of the President? He’s clearly aged at a rapid clip since taking office. It’s worth remembering that at one time presidential vacations were viewed in a more positive light. Franklin D. Roosevelt made forty-one trips to his cabin in Warm Springs, Georgia during his presidency, often spending a week or more in a working vacation. He had purchased the property there shortly before reentering politics, in large part because he believed the warm springs to be therapeutic. Aides noted that Roosevelt invariably came back from these working vacations reinvigorated. (We now know, of course, that he spent his last visit to Warm Springs secretly rendezvousing with his former mistress, Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, who had to be quickly secreted away when the FDR suffered a massive cerebral hemorrhage and died). Of course, media criticism of FDR may have been muted because the visits to Warm Springs could be linked to the foundation he established there to treat polio victims.

But Harry Truman made 11 separate trips to the “Little White House” in Key West Florida, often staying three weeks or more at a time. (Here is an exterior shot of the building which is open to visitors).

During the day he would sit by the beach, while aides played volleyball, in between work sessions. (The shorter guy holding onto the post is presidency scholar [and my dissertation chair] Dick Neustadt, author of Presidential Power, for which this blog post is named).

Most evenings he played small stakes poker (he was reputed to be a middling player) in a small room with close friends. (Truman sat in the corner with his back to the wall. The table is still there, complete with playing cards, if you want to visit). Today, of course, the thought of the President gambling with his cronies at “seaside resort”, while the stock market dropped 500 points, would elicit howls of outrage from the chattering class. But somehow the republic survived Truman’s trips. As I suspect it will survive the next ten days.

Unless the President has a Clark Griswold moment.

Now, back to my paper. Au revoir!

Where Is The Most Powerful Person In The World?

What happened to the most powerful man on earth? That’s the question Dana Milbank poses in his Washington Post column yesterday. Milbank’s query was triggered by Obama’s evident inability on Monday to use the bully pulpit to halt the free fall of stock prices in the wake of Standard and Poor’s downgrading of the U.S. credit rating last week. Obama gave a public statement designed to reassure the markets, but as Milbank writes, “When he began his speech (and as cable news channels displayed for viewers), the Dow Jones industrials stood at 11,035. As he talked, the average fell below 11,000 for the first time in nine months, en route to a 635-point drop for the day, the worst since the 2008 crash.” Although Milbank acknowledged that Obama probably shouldn’t be blamed for the slide, he then goes ahead and blames him anyway: “It’s not exactly fair to blame Obama for the rout: Almost certainly, the markets ignored him. And that’s the problem: The most powerful man in the world seems strangely powerless, and irresolute, as larger forces bring down the country and his presidency.”

Milbank’s comments are a reminder, if anyone needed one, that the favorable – at times fawning – media coverage Obama received in the 2008 campaign has long since disappeared, at least among the White House press corps. More than two years into Obama’s presidency, the White House press corps has resumed its more familiar role as nattering nabobs of negativism (to recycle Vice President Agnew’s famous description of the Nixon-era press, using words penned by Nixon speechwriter William Safire).

But what I found most interesting about Milbank’s column, and of the press conference held yesterday that Milbank describes, is not confirmation that White House journalists have turned on the President. Rather, it is how the press corps contributes to the already inflated expectations regarding the president’s very limited power to influence the economy.

After an initial segment dealing with education policy, Obama’s Press Secretary Jay Carney opened the press conference up to further questions. Reporters immediately zeroed in on what the president was going to do about the falling stock market and the dismal economy more generally. Nora O’Donnell led the way by wondering why Obama did not seem to demonstrate a greater sense of urgency in confronting the economic crisis. Ever helpful, she suggested Obama might want to call Congress, now in recess, back to Washington for an emergency session.

“Q The President said our problems are imminently solvable, and he talked about a renewed sense of urgency. Why not call Congress back to work?

MR. CARNEY: Well, I think that what we can do, after the process we just went through, is make clear that when Congress does get back from its recess, it is very clear —

Q That doesn’t sound very urgent.

MR. CARNEY: Well —

Q I mean, the Dow dropped below 11,000. Where’s the sense of urgency?

MR. CARNEY: Look, I think there is a great deal of sense — a great sense of urgency here about the need to continue to work to get our fiscal house in order, create jobs and grow the economy. The reality that we live in is that this is — as set up by the founders — is a government that has different branches with different amounts of power, and we need to work together to get significant things done, and we’ll continue to do that.”

Carney’s reminder that the President worked within a system of shared powers fell on deaf ears. Instead, O’Donnell’s suggestion to call Congress back from recess was echoed by other reporters. Here is NBC’s Chuck Todd:

“Q Jay, there are, I think, six specific things that the President has been calling Congress to do on the jobs front — free trade agreements, the infrastructure bank, patent reform, unemployment insurance, payroll tax cut — that’s seven. [Seven? I count five. But never mind.] Why not bring Congress back now to just do that? I understand the answer to Norah’s question about the urgency on the debt, that you’re going to let the committee see if it actually works —

MR. CARNEY: Well, it seems we’re getting a drumbeat here to call Congress back from its recess.

Q — but why not — well, it does seem that the markers are crashing; we’re now below 500 points since this briefing began. I mean — I’m not implying any relation, just that — I mean, the point is, the economy — the American public seems to be in a little bit of a panic, and yet Washington is like, well, we’re going to stand back and wait until school starts.”

Call Congress back to Washington? Did any of these reporters read the S&P report explaining their decision to downgrade the U.S. government’s credit rating? It was based in part on their belief that the political polarization in Washington prevented elected officials from addressing key economic issues in timely fashion. And yet these journalists seem intent on driving that point home by having Obama call Congress back into emergency session, only days after the near default, in the naïve (or perhaps self-interested!) belief that during an emergency session Congress would move more quickly this time to pass a series of not uncontroversial legislative proposals. Never mind that it would likely result in a reprise of the months-long debt default negotiations. At least it would demonstrate leadership!

Politico’s Glenn Thrush’s question near the end of the conference aptly summarized the tenor of the press queries:

“Q — you said he will be contributing to the process, talking about the super committee, but he won’t be leading it. He is the leader of the free world. Why isn’t he leading this process?

MR. CARNEY: I think that was a technical recognition of the fact that it is a congressional committee, Glenn. Look, this President, his leadership on these issues is quite established.”

Evidently Carney’s reminder that the Congress has some say when it comes to economic issues did not satisfy Milbank. In the conclusion to his WaPo piece, Milbank muses about Obama’s seemingly feckless leadership: “That is the enduring mystery of Obama’s presidency. He delivered his statement on the economy beneath a portrait of Abraham Lincoln, but that was as close as he came to forceful leadership. He looked grim and swallowed hard and frequently as he mixed fatalism (“markets will rise and fall”) with vague, patriotic exhortations (“this is the United States of America”).

‘There will always be economic factors that we can’t control,’ Obama said. Maybe. But it would be nice if the president gave it a try.”

Here’s the real mystery: where was Milbank and his White House press colleagues during the debt debate? They clearly weren’t in Washington, or they wouldn’t be urging the president, to paraphrase Milbank’s words, to give it the old college try. Instead, they would be explaining to their readers that when Carney defended his boss by, in Milbank’s words, uttering “something about the founders and the separation of powers” Carney was actually writing Milbank’s lead. But Milbank evidently views references to the Constitution as a possible explanation for Obama’s “failure to lead” as too esoteric for his readers. Far better to blame it on Obama’s lack of a “fire in the belly”. Shades of Drew Westen!

Where’s the “most powerful man in the world”? I suspect that he’s in the White House, talking to Lincoln’s portrait about how a White House press corps hungry for news seems determined to make an impossible job even harder.