It’s hard to think of another way of putting it; this interview is just weird. But Politico would prefer if you referred to it as “Unplugged.”
White House Chief-of-Staff Bill Daley sat down with columnist Roger Simon and sounded off on a variety of issues. The Chicago native adopted a confiding and rather blunt tone during their wide-ranging conversation.
Daley noted that the President has lately been scoring more foreign policy successes than domestic victories. He says their solution is to “figure out what we can do [without Congress] and push the envelope on some of these things” domestically.
The West Winger then restated the White House’s current frustrations with Congress, though rather less tactfully than Obama has put it while on the road. The President, Daley said, is reacting “based upon frustration,” to what they both apparently regard as a determined effort by some in Congress to put “party ahead of country or the next election ahead of the next generation.”
Their response, Daley says, must be to “re-emphasize what powers we have! What can we do on our own! Push the envelope!” As part of this strategy, the President is going to every agency and department, asking them to consider every measure possible that doesn’t require Congressional approval.
It also seems Daley’s piqued at the growing comparisons drawn in the media between him and his predecessor, Rahm Emmanuel. On the differences between the two, Daley said:
“I’m not as aggressive leaking and stroking. I’m not reflecting on Rahm, but I’m not angling for something else, you know? Rahm is a lot younger [Emmanuel is 51], and he knew he was going to be doing something else in two years or four years or eight years, and I’m in a different stage. I’m not going to become the leaker in chief.”,
Perhaps most striking of all, however, is this sentence on Obama’s deliberation process: Daley tried to describe his view on the relationship between policy and politics, saying that Obama tries “to find that middle ground. How close can we get to it being really sh– policy or really sh– politics but getting something accomplished?”
Sounds like a winning slogan for 2012.
