Maureen Dowd weighs in on the firing/resignation of White House counsel Greg Craig, and what it says about Barack Obama. She's spot on, as she often is when she puts aside the snark.
There were complaints that Craig was out of the loop, but couldn’t Obama have walked the single West Wing staircase up to his counsel’s office and looped him in?You have to wonder if Obama is even aware of the discontent.
Craig was, after all, simply defending positions that Obama himself took during the campaign, from closing Gitmo to greater transparency.
The way the Craig matter was handled sent a chill through some Obama supporters, reminding them of the icy manner in which the Clintons cut loose Kimba Wood and Lani Guinier. But then, Obama is surrounded by many old Clinton hands (and a Clinton).
Writing in Politico, Elizabeth Drew called it “the shabbiest episode of his presidency,” saying that it had caused people who had helped Obama rise to question whether he would behave in as classy and non-Clintonian a fashion as they had hoped.
