Political advisers good, bloggers – simpletons (Krugman mostly)

Click here to add text

Click here to add text

A series of articles I’ve been looking for exploring the question “who advises Obama”

Sorry Sirota, B0bots who think yourselves policymakers – it ain’t you, he told this to the New York Times.

Of course, considering the topic, the venue and the subsequent insult, I doubt he was even thinking of B0bots:

And part of the reason we don’t spend a lot of time looking at blogs is because if you haven’t looked at it very carefully then you may be under the impression that somehow there’s a clean answer one way or another – well, you just nationalize all the banks, or you just leave them alone and they’ll be fine, or this or that or the other. The truth is this is a very complex set of problems and bad decisions can result in huge taxpayer expenditures and poor results.

So, who is that simplistic idiot who can’t figure out complexity the way Obama does? I can only think of one “simpleton” who writes a blog for the New York Times and spends a lot of time on Banks nationalization lately: Paul Krugman.(see his simplistic entry here) Whether he reads him or not, the Reagan admiring Hope & Change” fast talker took time to call the Nobel prize in economics a simpleton.

Which brings into question: whose brilliant minds is Obama trusting?

Well, a puff story in Chicago Times says that this guy

is reading Obama’s mind

Obama has called his head speechwriter a mind-reader.

I mean how could these two not understand each other?

And when not scripted by frat party boys, he is handled by this guy, according to a puff piece in the New Yor Times

Similarities (and differences) exist in David Axelrod’s relationship with the current president and Karl Rove’s with the past.

Of course the Jr.Jr team doth protest

Both Mr. Rove and Mr. Axelrod forged partnerships with their clients long before they began campaigning for the presidency, guided them through elective office and, ultimately, to the White House. Mr. Axelrod rejects the comparison, saying that he is more of a protector of Mr. Obama’s image and message than a policy maker or strategist intent on remaking the country’s political DNA, as Mr. Rove often talked about.

He only plots enemy lists and such, gingerly called by NYT “back and forth”

The recent back-and-forth with Rush Limbaugh, for example, was explicitly authorized by Mr. Axelrod, who told aides that it was not a moment to sit quietly after Mr. Limbaugh said he hoped that Mr. Obama would “fail.”

And while Favreau “reads Obama’s mind”, Axelrod is the speech center in the brain

There are few words that come across the president’s lips that have not been blessed by Mr. Axelrod. He reviews every speech, studies every major policy position and works with Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, to prepare responses to the crisis of the day.

The cutest thing about the new political henchman running the White House? He somehow humbly thinks of himself as the voice of the people

. “Can I speak on behalf of the American people here?” he said Mr. Axelrod often asks aloud.

Not that we the people elected him for anything ever, but if you look back at the primaries, we didn’t elect his puppet either.