Remember the fobs? There were reportedly thousands of them, all anxious to do Bill’s bidding, to send an encouraging word or to help minimize the damage when another bimbo or other Clinton scrape erupted.
The anointed one doesn’t seem to be so lucky. No FOB lists this time around, just a very small and very elite inner circle. It is reported that Obama has few friends outside of his old circle. He never invites the guys in to watch a movie, no dinner parties for two or three couples, no social visits outside his own haunts. It is just Obama’s tripartite inner circle—call it his Politburo—that runs the place and calls the shots.
Our cover story this month opens the door to Politburo member David Axelrod who, along with the President, Valerie Jarrett, and Mrs. O (not necessarily in that order), runs the White House. Axelrod, according to Paul Kengor, professor at Grove City College and one of the leading experts on America’s lefties, is the person most “responsible for making Barack Obama president…. [The 2008 election] was nothing short of a stunning change for America, a genuinely historical feat Ax hopes to repeat in November 2012.” Since the Obama White House is now 100 percent in reelection campaign mode, any effort to distinguish between Axelrod’s role as presidential adviser and campaign manager would be pointless.
Axelrod is a red diaper baby and long-time Chicago activist, reporter, and political consultant who—just like his boss at the White House-is, according to Kengor, “the product of some far-left influences, from the progressive left to the communist left.” Like fellow Chicagoans Bill Ayers, Valerie Jarrett, and Jeremiah Wright—previous subjects of in-depth Spectator reports—Axelrod got to know Obama years ago, stuck with him, and now he and the Politburo’s two women are the keepers of Obama’s flame, the mentors and guardians and those with the most influence.
We’ll be hearing plenty from Ax, as they call him, between now and early November—not directly, of course, but via the ubiquitous Obama teleprompter as he orchestrates the reelection from his old haunts in Chicago. Says Kengor, “the campaign salvos are already flying, with special attention to class warfare.” Axelrod will be brutal to whomever the Republicans nominate, but especially relishes trying to destroy Romney, “not a job creator but a corporate raider” and, in Axelrod’s mind, a poster-boy for Wall Street and the reason the wealth needs to be spread around (while Axelrod himself rakes in millions from his campaign and lobbying work on behalf of Obama).
As Kengor concludes, both Axelrod and Obama—and the rest of the Obama Politburo—have roots in the far-left’s Old Guard, and have made a career of grafting those roots, to the detriment of the rest of us, onto the current generation of liberals, malcontents, and the mainstream media.
And speaking of malcontents, let me call the attention of our readers to Charles Johnson’s perceptive analysis of the President’s favorite set of protesters. “You are the reason I entered politics,” Obama told the Occupy Wall Street crowd, who happened to be about as ideologically attuned to the far left roots he and his Politburo shared.
But it is those far left roots that set the tone and the agenda for what Obama and his Politburo want to do to America, despite what anybody might interpret from the smooth phrases and ringing speeches thought up by David Axelrod.
