"Reax Quotes"

From Noam Scheiber’s great look in The New Republic on what is causing Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, some disillusionment of the Washington “culture”— although he knew the place was trouble to begin with:

A very idealistic streak: “He does not see politics as the art of the transaction. He sees it much more in a human context, that people are motivated by a connection to something bigger than themselves. That view is just very different from passing legislation like health care, where you have to cut deals.”

At the same time — and almost at the other end of the spectrum — he is very much a realist, even sometimes bordering on fatalism: “In his recent campaign memoir, [David] Plouffe recalls Axelrod as a brooding presence with a gift for finding the booby trap in every field of daisies. “This could be an unmitigated disaster,” Axelrod announced to Plouffe and strategist Robert Gibbs as Obama trooped off to his first primary debate.”

In my book, that makes him a pragmatic idealist.

And here’s how Scheiber ends the article, which resonates with me: “As long as he was a civilian, Axelrod could blame the pace of change on the flawed politicians he helped elect. He could always move on and invest his hopes in someone else. But now that he’s serving in government, it’s clear that the problem isn’t so much flawed people—though, like anyone, Obama has his flaws—as a ferociously stubborn, possibly irredeemable system. For an idealist like David Axelrod, that may be the most terrifying thought of all.”