LOCKED IN THE CABINET - The worst job in Barack Obama’s Washington.

[FarCenter]

“We are completely marginalized … until the shit hits the fan,” says one former Cabinet deputy secretary, summing up the view of many officials I interviewed. “If your question is: Did the president rely a lot on his Cabinet as a group of advisers? No, he didn’t,” says former Obama Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

Little wonder, then, that Obama has called the group together only rarely, for what by most accounts are not much more than ritualistic team-building exercises: According to CBS News White House reporter Mark Knoller, the Cabinet met 19 times in Obama’s first term and four times in the first 10 months of his second term. That’s once every three months or so—about as long as you can drive around before you’re supposed to change your oil.

...

The most serious maelstrom to engulf the Cabinet in years came in October, when it became clear that neither Kathleen Sebelius nor her counterparts in the West Wing had adequately prepared for the staggering technical challenges of launching Obamacare. The health and human services secretary was well-liked—she was especially friendly with Jarrett—but many of Obama’s aides still pined for Tom Daschle, the wily former Senate Democrat whom Obama had originally tapped for the HHS job. Daschle, who withdrew from consideration in 2009 over a tax issue, was canny enough to know the way power flowed in Obama’s circle: As a condition for taking the job, he requested a West Wing office so he could keep close tabs on the executive staff. For years, Daschle privately expressed his concerns that Sebelius, who didn’t have the stature to make the same demands, simply wouldn’t have the power to implement the health care program.

Yet, in the end, it may not have been her lack of power that caused all the headaches, but a breakdown in communication and coordination between the White House and Sebelius’s staff. It started with a slow-walk of critical Obamacare rulemaking, a key part of Plouffe’s do-no-harm election-year strategy of minimizing controversial regulatory action. “The number-one culprit was [that] they deferred rulemaking until after the election,” says Mike Leavitt, the Bush-era HHS chief whose face Bob Gates couldn’t quite place. “When they did that, it threw the entire process off. … They were issuing rules in September for implementation in October.” The secretary herself admitted that Obama had been blindsided by the near-meltdown of the program’s web portal, and several administration officials involved in its creation told me they had been alarmed by pre-launch signs of trouble, even offering to tap outside computer experts to help the agency. Sebelius, they say, demurred. That Obama’s staff didn’t press the issue on the president’s signature policy initiative illustrates a paradox central to understanding his governing style: The president who forcefully pushed through the largest expansion of the federal government in generations has been significantly less zealous in overseeing its operation.

Presidencies, at least most of them, tend to end with a whimper, not a whoop. Cabinet secretaries often do rise to greater prominence late in the game, but they can fall harder, too—just ask Sebelius, whose nearly five years of quiet service are now being defined by the Obamacare rollout. Never mind that Congress starved the system of much-needed cash or that Obama and top West Wing staff were kept informed of the program’s progress. Republicans are calling for Sebelius’s head.

Chu knows how she feels. That’s why he’s happy to be back in California, not running a federal agency.

“Going into D.C., I didn’t know the political side. I knew the science and technology side,” recalls Chu, who today professes thinly veiled disdain for the people who “hover around”—the political types who felt little compunction about condescending to a Nobel Prize winner. “It took me a while to realize that one’s own instincts and judgments are sometimes better than the people that have been on the scene for a while.”

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/locked-in-the-cabinet-99374.html

[ZRT2209]

1. Sebelius blew it.

[Beacool]

2. Read it earlier.

Notice how no one wants to comment.

[Enrique]

3. too long maybe

or more likely it is perceived as being anti-Obama. which drives me crazy.

It's a great article, despite being in Politico.

[Beacool]

5. It was a good read.

I read it earlier in the day, but thought better than to post it because I already had one thread about the women of Afghanistan that was attacked mercilessly. I wasn't in the mood for another battle. I guess that they preferred to simple ignore your post.

[ProSense]

4. Ah, just in time

At State, meanwhile, the gaffe-prone Kerry has gotten somewhat better reviews. Unburdened by the White House dreams that made Clinton so cautious, he has attacked big issues, reopening Israeli-Palestinian peace talks and hurling himself into the negotiations over Syria. But Kerry—whose stentorian earnestness grated on Obama during 2012 debate prep sessions, when he played the role of GOP nominee Romney—hasn’t always endeared himself. His seat-of-the-pants management style is more senatorial than secretarial (he’s known to direct-dial foreign leaders without giving a heads-up to diplomats or his aides), and he’s spent more time on the road than staffing up. Obama flagged this as a problem early on, inviting Kerry to the Oval Office prior to his confirmation to tell him to focus on quickly assembling a management team. “My people don’t even know who to call. They don’t know who your people are—can we fix that?” Obama asked, according to a person briefed on the exchange.

The most serious maelstrom to engulf the Cabinet in years came in October, when it became clear that neither Kathleen Sebelius nor her counterparts in the West Wing had adequately prepared for the staggering technical challenges of launching Obamacare. The health and human services secretary was well-liked—she was especially friendly with Jarrett—but many of Obama’s aides still pined for Tom Daschle, the wily former Senate Democrat whom Obama had originally tapped for the HHS job. Daschle, who withdrew from consideration in 2009 over a tax issue, was canny enough to know the way power flowed in Obama’s circle: As a condition for taking the job, he requested a West Wing office so he could keep close tabs on the executive staff. For years, Daschle privately expressed his concerns that Sebelius, who didn’t have the stature to make the same demands, simply wouldn’t have the power to implement the health care program.

...the bullshit hit piece from Politico.

These assholes are laughable.