you think about going back to another thing in that time frame, the white house brought bill daly in as chief of staff. everyone assumed part of the reason was to put him on the sunday shows because he was a big washington veteran and he had a lot of television skills. they didn t trust him on the television, on the sunday shows either. so this notion of very tight circle around obama and not trusting, not only not trusting cabinet secretaries but not trusting people not in the tightest inner circle around the president and the president himself has been an engrained part of this white house since day one. that was the secret success of the mo udahl campaign. i m being sarcastic. it stayed very small. thank you john and beth. up next it s hard to top a senate cabinet that touts her personal experience castrating pigs. one of her opponents may have done that already. that s ahead and this is hardball. (dad) well, we ve been thinking about it and we re just not sure. (agent) i unders
i m sorry, john. you know what, i think the comments are self-serving. this white house has always been all about itself and saying they could do everything better than their cabinet and sort of shunning the cabinet aside and taking credit where they can and then blaming the cabinet when things don t go so well. this is the president s signature achievement. if he wanted to make sure that the rollout was perfect he and his team should have been on top of that. they weren t. they were very passive about it, they left it to a large bureaucracy they know little about and laid the blame on kathleen sebelius for not doing it right. i agree with john they gave her a dignified exit. but to do that kind of sniping about her performance after what she s done for this president and for five years of service in that job, which by the way is probably one of the longest lasting hhs secretaries in history, was pretty lame. while you re on beth, why didn t the president set up a very direct line
obama s staff had long preferred to be running the show, on the health care law, but that sebelius and her aipds were increasingly cut out of the process after the launch of healthcare.gov escalate into a political disaster for the president. or this in the same article. sebelius was not part of the group of white house aides who told obama that health care enrollment surpassed 7 million. he did not mention her, in fact in his speech. here s the picture to prove it. no sebelius. john co-author of double down about the 2012 election, and beth bowie senior editor for msnbc. john, i want to start with you. agreeing on the time, my question maybe this is a tough question. could sebelius have stayed on through the rest of the second term if she wanted to? i think she would have had to fight pretty hard for.
boom and say well, i think the person in charge was the chief operating officer of the cmm, which is the subagency that does medication medicaid under hhs, it was so removed from him. exactly. you know what, seems sill tee say he should be on the phone each day but in this case he probably should have. this is his legacy. the aca is this president s legacy. if he wanted it to be rolled out right he and his team should have been more on top of it. now to say sebelius presided over this botched rollout that s convenient for him. i think she did a terrific job under difficult circumstances, given a good chance to leave at the victorious signing up of 7.5 million people. so it works the optics work pretty well. what beth said rings so true with what i heard about the white house operation, john, that they don t you look at meet the press and sunday shows, why don t they have the secretary this or that, they have dan pfeiffer or somebody
you think about going back to another thing in that time frame, the white house brought bill daly. assuming they would put him on the sunday shows because he was a big washington veteran. they didn t trust him on the television, on the sunday shows either. so this notion of very tight circle around obama and not trusting, not only not trusting cabinet secretaries but not trusting people not in the tightest inner circle around the president and the president himself has been an engrained part of this white house since day one. that was the secret success of the mo udahl campaign. i m being sarcastic. it stayed very small. thank you john and beth. up next it s hard to top a senate cabinet that touts her personal experience castrating pigs. one of her opponents may have done that already. that s ahead and this is hardball.