President Axelrod?

By Ed Lasky

The trips to battleground states, the stimulus money being directed towards blue-tinged states, the omnipresence of Obama in the media, the high profile trips, the Bush-bashing, the formation of astrotruf groups, the threatening of adversaries, the name-calling -the non-stop campaigning. Isn't it now becoming more obvious by the day that David Axelrod is running the White House?

After all, Axelrod went from campaign strategist to senior policy advisor ; he occupies the office closest to the Oval one, sits in on meetings with foreign leaders, pops up on Sunday shows and opines on a wide variety of subjects. But the limits of his experience is becoming obvious by the day. He does not know how to run the nation. He does seem busy doing what he knows how to do: run campaigns. The locus of how to run America seems to be his office-but instead of running America, he is just running a campaign.

Contrast this image with that of Karl Rove. He was called Bush's brain. But did Bush run the presidency as a campaign? If he did so, and was concerned with reelection, would he have undertaken the tough decision to go to war?