The General Services Administration (GSA) and Secret Service scandals have been a distraction for the White House as it moves toward the general election and fights the perception of an out-of-control government.
The double dose of scandals has made it difficult for the White House to get its message out, and Republicans have piled on, pushing a tone of cynicism and disappointment with a government they say needs to be reined in.
Obama’s likely opponent in the 2012 election, Mitt Romney, said this week that he would “clean house” on federal workers gone bad, suggesting that the president hadn’t done enough from a management perspective.
Other Republicans, such as Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Obama should have taken more of a leadership role.
“I don’t sense that this president has shown that kind of managerial leadership,” Sessions told reporters on Thursday.
The admission by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that he has been flying home frequently to California on the Pentagon’s tab at the cost of $32,000 per round trip is another headache.
Add that all to the reports of U.S. soldiers taking pictures with body parts in Afghanistan, and it equals one hot mess for the White House, observers say.
“It’s been a bad couple of weeks for the White House, and this isn’t such a great week either,” Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist who served as a campaign aide to Al Gore, acknowledged. “It’s definitely a minor distraction.
“But as I learned in the Gore campaign, voters don’t tally up the winners of weeks, voters think about the issue and which candidates speak to the issues they care about.”
That hasn’t stopped Republicans from attempting to politicize the issue. While Republicans have mostly left the Secret Service scandal alone, they have seized on the GSA episode.
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4 Responses
The Secret Service is non-partisan and its current head was appointed by Bush. There are no patronage staff. It’s not likely to be a problem.
GSA is full of patronage people (whose primary job qualification is party loyalty), and the tone for the civil service employees (with merit-based appointments) is set by the political leadership. Unless the wasted money can be blamed on civil servants stealing from their political bosses (which is unlikely), it could be a problem for the Democrats.
Obama is bad for the Yiden. Remember to vote him out of office in the coming Fall!
Nonsense – If ‘Reverend’ Wright didn’t put a dent in him these certainly won’t. 40 percent will go for Romney regardless. 40 for Obama regardless. This whole election hinges on the remaining 20.
#2, You know what? Obama is bad for all of America! He’s doing his best to destroy this country. This country has plenty of problems, but he’s making everything worse. It reminds of me of Russia. In Russia, they were angry at the rich people. So their answer was to make everyone poor. Obama has the same mentality, and the same goal. He’s destroying the middle class of this country, and trying to “spread the wealth” – make everyone poor!