Rahm and Reid: Who Gets the Blame for Judd Gregg?

Posted by Jane Hamsher, Firedoglake at 6:24 PM on February 13, 2009.

The power struggle between Rahm Emanuel and Congressional Democratic leadership continues. Sean Quinn at FiveThirtyEight:

Emanuel said the idea for Gregg as Commerce Secretary had come to the White House through Harry Reid, that it was not the White House's original idea.

But yesterday Robert Gibbs said that Gregg had approached the White House for the job. And in an interview with the Slate Journal-Register of Illinois yesterday, President Obama confirmed that:

“You know, Mr. Gregg approached us with interest and seemed enthusiastic,” the president said.

However a source knowledgeable about the selection process who did not want to be named for fear of jeopardizing White House relations said that the idea for Gregg actually had been initiated within the administration staff, but declined to specify whose it was.

According to the New York Times article on February 1 announcing that Obama would appoint Judd, this was the description of events:

The idea of offering the job to Mr. Gregg came, at least in part, from the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. (The two senators are close, aides to both men said.) Mr. Reid mentioned the idea to Rahm Emanuel, Mr. Obama’s chief of staff, who passed it on to the president-elect.

Politico says Gregg believed Reid put him up for he job, and credits Rahm Emanuel with responsibility for negotiating the deal. But public sniping has broken out between Emanuel's and Reid's surrogates of late, with Emanuel favorite Heath Shuler saying Reid and Pelosi "failed" the bipartisan test on the stimulus bill. Reid spokesman Jim Manley fired back, saying "Let me get this straight - this is coming from a guy who threw more than twice as many interceptions than touchdowns?"

Another source who is knowledgeable about how Gregg came to be suggested by Reid, who also declined to be named for fear of jeopardizing White House relations, said that Reid did suggest Gregg, "because he thought it would be a great way to destabilize the Republican caucus, to lose one of their sharpest members." (David Rogers described Gregg as "a trusted, behind-the-scenes consigliore [sic] for every leader since the mid-90s.")

"The deal that went down -- where Gregg was removed, and a Republican would fill the slot -- was not Reid's idea," said the source.

"The person who was on the receiving end of the idea should have circled back, gone to talk to the top Democratic people in New Hampshire, assured that the governor would have the balls to appoint a Democrat or a moderate Republican or whoever he wants to take over that spot, and that Gregg would actually be serious about following through" said the source. "Basically played that 'brass knuckles' politics that should be played in that situation."

"Now if that person could not pull that off, or was not sure that they could, they should have ignored Reid's idea, disconsidered Gregg."

Sam Stein of the Huffington Post wrote on January 29 that Gregg was under consideration. On February 1, disaffected moderate Republican Liz Hager was being considered to fill Gregg's seat. On February 2, Gregg indicated that he would only take the job if he was replaced by a Republican, and on February 3 it was announced that Gregg's former chief of staff, Bonnie Newman, would get the seat.

According to sources familiar with the situation within the White House at the time, there were rumblings at the very highest levels of the administration as to how things got so bungled. Not only did Gregg recuse himself from the stimulus vote (which effectively counted as a "no" vote against cloture), Newman would not run again in 2010 and would go back to being a lobbyist, and could thus be counted on to be a completely business-friendly GOP vote in the Senate. People in the White House felt like they'd given up the Commerce seat to someone who had no special abilities in that area, and gotten absolutely nothing for it.

"Just because Reid had a thought didn't excuse the White House from exercising due diligence and making sure that the process would actually work politically, as was contemplated by Reid," said the source. "The person responsible for managing the process should have made sure that it would result in a situation advantageous to the Democratic allies on the Hill."

And who would that "person" be?

"A competent chief of staff would have made sure of that," said the source. "The buck stops somewhere, right? This is the administration that talks about responsibility, right? If the President can say 'I screwed up,' why can't Rahm Emanuel?"

"When you're as dynamic as the President, with an enforcer Chief of Staff, you should be able to find out in very definitive terms if you will be able to pull this off. They should have closed the circle before they started leaking to the press."

"This is something that has been the hallmark of Rahm's leadership since he took over -- remember how he was leaking left and right, and then holding dramatic press conferences outside his house? That's how he was, it was all about Rahm."

As reported earlier, Rahm has been telling journalists that John Podesta was to blame for failures to appropriately vet Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner. Podesta, he said, was "old school" -- from an earlier era when "all you cared about were 52 votes," and not up to the high moral standards of a new administration.

But Podesta clearly had nothing to do with Gregg's nomination, so it looks like Rahm is trying to lay off the Gregg fiasco at Reid's feet.

I contacted the White House press staff and invited them to respond, but have not heard back from them since my inquiry this morning.

Tagged as: congress, house, senate, obama, reid, rahm emanuel, chief of staff

Jane Hamsher is the founder of FireDogLake. Her work has also appeared on the Huffington Post, Alternet and The American Prospect.