Robert Gibbs

The Obama White House is apparently very serious about learning absolutely nothing from Massachusetts or the public's rapidly dwindling faith in Washington to solve any problem.

When Republican leaders Eric Cantor and John Boehner sent a letter looking for assurances that they and their ideas might be considered at Obama's proposed bipartisan health-care forum, they got this response:

Andrew Malcolm writes:

Many political observers are coming to see that the ex-state senator from the South Side is running his federal administration in Washington much the way they run things back home: with a small....

...claque of clout-laden people from the same school who learned their political trade back in the nation's No. 3 city, named for an Indian word for a smelly wild onion.

That style is tough, focused, immune to any distractions but cosmetic niceties. And did we mention tough. A portly, veteran Chicago alderman once confided only about 40% jokingly, that he had taken up jogging to lose weight but quickly gave it up as boring because "you can't knock anyone down." That's politics the Chicago way.

Obama and his top advisers Rahm Emanuel, Valerie Jarrett, and David Axelrod all hail from the Chicago school. Press secretary Robert Gibbs is an Alabaman who worked for North Carolinian Democrats, but he's adapted to the Chicago method with ease. Together, this band of operatives has not deviated from the themes and goals of Obama's 2008 campaign. They do not admit errors of substance. Faced with a troublesome midterm election, Obama did not search out new figures and guides for his party. He reached back to his 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe.

It has been a month since Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab nearly killed 289 people on Flight 253. In the weeks since the Christmas Day attack, we've learned some very disturbing things about the Obama administration and terrorism.

The president's well-known penchant for "making himself perfectly clear" has, in this case, created quite a quagmire for his press secretary to navigate.

Bloomberg reports: