Transcript from a segment of The Situation Room which aired February 23,2010.
Critics say, yes. They point -- a lot of them do, at least, to the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. But is that anger misdirected?
Is that criticism fair at all?
Let's bring in our senior political analyst, David Gergen, who's taken a closer look -- David, thanks very much for coming in.
You worked with Rahm Emanuel in the early years of the Clinton administration, you know him quite well. I'm going to read from this article that Dana Milbank wrote in the Washington Post that's generated a ton of commotion out there. Milbank writing, "Sacking Emanuel is the last thing the president should do. Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow the chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter." All right. Give us your assessment.
DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, Wolf, if your chief of staff and people call for your head, that goes with the job description. We've seen this with lots of chiefs of staff. What's interesting about this, for about a year, the Obama team, the White House staff and national security team enjoyed very close relationships. There were very few leaks and tensions. When they hit the wall over the health care at the end of the year and then lost Massachusetts, the rumbling started outside the White House, and a lot of that criticism is being directed at Rahm Emanuel, because he is the chief of staff, he is in charge of the White House, and Dana Milbank in this very controversial piece in "The Washington Post" seemed to be channeling the response, if you would, the backlash from the Emanuel people. He said he never talked to Rahm, and I think most people generally agree it didn't come from Rahm, but clearly prompted by some of the allies, and the argument that some are making is, look, he didn't want to do this big, comprehensive health care bill back in year 1 that has cost so much. He did not want to try to run so fast on Guantanamo, but what the -- the Rahm critics are saying, the Milbank piece puts Rahm out there, but at the defense of the president. If he had taken the advice he would be in a much better position. So you can imagine that's really stirred the pot.
BLITZER: That article that Dana Milbank makes Rahm Emanuel looks very smart and savvy and makes the other officials in the White House less so, whether David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett or Robert Gibbs, for example, and Dana Milbank basically names those names.
GERGEN: And I think they're friends of the other Chicagoans that took great umbrage of the criticism. If this major gamble that the president is taking on health care with a summit, trying to put a comprehensive bill, if that fails we'll see more of these kinds of stories coming. Once again, the allies of Rahm will be saying he didn't want this big comprehensive bill. So we're at the early stages of what could be a bigger controversy at the White House, but we should keep in mind that there are two things. One is there are always tensions, as there are here, between say the David Axelrod wing, which wants to be the keep are of the flame, the idealists who would like the package passed which the president promised, versus Rahm Emanuel, who is the pragmatist, has to get the deals done, and understands the politics on Capitol Hill. There's always a tension between the keepers of the flame and the pragmatists, and the other thing to keep in mind is Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod are very close.
BLITZER: They certainly are. They may disagree, but I'm sure they're good friends and they have to work together every single day. That column generated follow-ups in the "Wall Street Journal," Politico, I suspect there will be more of this coming out.
GERGEN: Well, stay tuned.
BLITZER: All right. David, thank you.
Talk about criticism, our polling center shows how many people say our government is broken. Take a look at this poll. We took a closer look and asked if people trust different levels of government always or most of the time. 26 percent said yes, regards the federal government, 33 percent for state government, 52 percent said for local government. We also asked people trust the federal government to do what's right 26 percent said always or most of the time. Sixty-nine percent said sometimes, five percent said never. Then there's trust in state government. Thirty-three percent said always or mostly, while 62 percent said sometime, five percent said never.