"Bringing Back David Plouffe Will Totally Work"

By GottaLaff

Via the Daily Beast, Mark McKinnon* opines about David Plouffe. Yes, that Mark McKinnon.

Oh, why not:

Washington and the media are obsessed by process and personnel stories. They always confer ridiculously exalted status on consultants, rewarding them with outsize responsibility when they win and disproportionate blame when they lose.

And Washington wants a pound of flesh. The media feeds on conflict. They want an admission from the president that things are not going well. And they always read a personnel change as a white flag. And it doesn’t matter that in this case nobody was thrown under the bus. As Axelrod told ABC News: “I think that the reaction to it has been overblown, but I know that Washington loves the shakeup story. Washington loves the ‘When are we going to throw a body out?’ story. That's not how we roll.” [...]

Now, here’s the catch. Team Obama will get a short grace period, during which they’ll need to show results. Success will depend on showing real and fundamental changes in policy and governing. Plouffe is a campaign guy, which is a little problematic; some will interpret his hiring as an attempt to apply a political fix to policy problems.

But Plouffe does have the right stuff. And he will help get operations outside the White House better coordinated. He has great political antennae and will help anticipate and avoid disasters like Massachusetts. Or he’ll become the next body they throw into the propellers.

*As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, Mark McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, corporations and causes, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono.

Former Bush Advisor: "Some of Santorum's behavior is just a little bizarre."

By GottaLaff

From the Dep't. of Understatements:

Former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon says a presidential bid by former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) is a scary prospect.

"Santorum represents, in my view, much of what is wrong the in the Republican Party. While I disagree with him on some fundamental issues, I am much more concerned with his lack of character."

And then there is this little known tidbit: "I'm a pretty tolerant guy, but beyond his ideology, some of Santorum's behavior is just a little bizarre. For example, Santorum has six children. In 1996, he had son born prematurely who lived for only two hours. He and wife brought the child home and introduced the dead infant to the rest of their children as 'your brother Gabriel' and slept with the body overnight."

Yeah, he's just a little bizarre.