Obama Should Keep Rahm, Fire Gibbs

Dana Milbank: President should have listened to Emanuel
By John Johnson,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 20, 2010 2:22 PM CST
Obama Should Keep Rahm, Fire Gibbs
In this photo provided by CBS, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel appears on CBS's "Face the Nation" in Washington, Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009.   (AP Photo/CBS Face the Nation, Karin Cooper)

President Obama should ignore the rising sentiment to fire Rahm Emanuel, writes Dana Milbank. He needs him desperately. Emanuel has become the whipping boy for the first year's failures mostly because he's good at making enemies. Truth is, if Obama had taken Emanuel's advice on everything from health care (go smaller, forget the public option) to Gitmo (no way could it be closed inside a year), he'd be in a much better place and health care reform would be reality.

Milbank contrasts Emanuel's gruff and results-oriented style to that of Obama advisers Valerie Jarrett and Robert Gibbs. They remain blind adherents to the "Cult of Obama," he writes in the Washington Post, and both should go. "It's hard to make the case that you're a post-partisan president when your on-camera spokesman is a hyper-partisan former campaign flack," he writes. Obama's in trouble. He "needs fewer acolytes and more action. Rahm should stay." (More Dana Milbank stories.)

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