Via John Sexton of Breitbart.com, I’d sure like to know which ray of Hopeychangey sunshine shared this bit of bright good cheer with Woodward. To be clear, he doesn’t specifically say it was someone inside the White House; I’m assuming that from Politico’s description of this very short clip (“Bob Woodward pulled back the curtain on his battle with the White House over a recent column on the sequester”), but maybe it’s someone from outside the building. Jim Messina, maybe? Remember, he’s into “punching back twice as hard.”
The clip also helps explain why Woodward took off the gloves this morning on MSNBC. Not here, though: Even when he’s telling Politico about being threatened by Obama’s lackeys, he feels inexplicably compelled to say that The One would surely disapprove if he found out. But why? Letting surrogates do his dirty work has always been key to Bambi’s above-the-fray brand. It started before he became president; it continued in last year’s campaign; it goes on happening today. Would a man who chose Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, for cripes sake, be shy about playing rough with people? There’s nothing unusual about a pol getting surrogates to fling shinola on his behalf. What’s unusual is that Obama, uniquely, continues to get a pass for it, even by people who claim that his toadies have threatened them.