Free Republic

SNIP...I’ll reserve final judgment until I read the entire piece. But based on these excerpts — which presumably reflect the thrust of the 10,000-word article — what is striking is the degree of self-pity we find in Obama’s advisers, which is reflected in the president’s words and attitude as well. Team Obama sounds nothing so much as overmatched and overwhelmed, unable to understand what has gone wrong, and increasingly bitter toward the nation’s capital and the pace and nature of politics.

By the time Andrew Speaker and his wife returned from Europe late last month, government officials and news reports had already branded him as a runaway tuberculosis patient who had deliberately evaded health officials and knowingly put other people at risk by traveling on crowded airplanes. “This is what we’re hearing on the news when we land,” Mr. Speaker said on Thursday from his hospital room in Denver. He called The New York Times in response to repeated requests for an interview. “My wife and I look at each other, and I said, ‘They’re going for our throats here.’ ”...