“This is a clear respite from the theme that Obama had lost control,” said David Rothkopf, a former Clinton administration official who wrote the definitive history of the National Security Council, the organization American presidents have used for 60 years to assert authority around the country and the world. “He sent a loud and clear message to the generals about who is in charge. And he has engineered a pivot-point in U.S. economic history, an end, or at least a big change, to the ‘leave it to the markets’ era.”
The White House certainly has an enormous interest in portraying Mr. Obama as a president who has grown comfortable with his powers and is unafraid to exercise them. They conceded that Mr. Obama had no legal basis to force BP to create the $20 billion fund; they said he was making a moral argument, and used the jawboning power of the presidential pulpit to push the company.
One top national security aide noted to a reporter on Wednesday that the decision to oust General McChrystal and replace him with Gen. David A. Petraeus was “considered, decided and executed in less than 36 hours” and sent a message that the president would not tolerate what he called “division” in the ranks of his team after he had set strategy.
And the financial regulatory bill, they argued, got stronger in the last few weeks, leading Mr. Obama to boast at the White House that it was “the toughest financial reform since the one we created in the aftermath of the Great Depression.”
He can rightly claim that the bill actually got stronger as it worked its way through Congress rather than having the legislation eroded as one lobbyist after another found a way to carve exceptions. (The exception to that rule was the handling of derivatives, a business the banks get to keep, even if they have to operate under new restrictions.)
“I think we used this week or so not only for a reassertion of executive authority, but as an demonstration that, when presidential power is judiciously applied, you can get a lot done,” said Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, who argued for a more confrontational approach to BP and for General McChrystal’s ouster. He described financial reform legislation as one of five pillars of “a new foundation” for the economy, after the stimulus package, the health care overhaul and the re-engineering of college aid. (The fifth, an energy bill, may prove the hardest.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/26/us/politics/26assess.html
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