The New York Review of Books has what can only be called an epic take-down of Barack Obama and his administration.

I really cannot do justice to the piece, you should read it, but here a re a couple of quotes:

Plouffe’s advice to the President defines not just Obama’s policies but also his behavior. Plouffe tells the President, according to this observer, that the target group wants him to seem the most reasonable man in the room. Plouffe is the conceptualizer, and Bill Daley, the chief of staff who shares Plouffe’s political outlook, makes things happen; Gene Sperling, the director of economic policy, and Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, are smart men but they come out of politics rather than academia or deep experience in their respective fields. Once Austan Goolsbee, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, departs later this summer, all of the President’s original economic advisers will be gone. Partly this is because the President’s emphasis on budget cutting didn’t leave them very much to do. One White House émigré told me, “It’s not a place that welcomes ideas.”

(emphasis mine)

It sounds an awful lot like what John Dilulio characterization of the Bush Administration’s lack of a policy apparatus as, “The reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis.”

Every time I hear something like this, I become increasingly convinced that there’s not a damn bit of difference between them and the Bushies.

And then I read this, and realize that there is a difference:

According to a report in The Hill newspaper in late June, the tough-minded, experienced, and blunt Democratic Representative Henry Waxman of California told Obama in a White House meeting that he’d asked several Republicans about their meeting with him the day before, and, “To a person, they said the President’s going to cave.” Then the congressman said to the President of the United States, “And if you’re going to cave, tell us right now.” The President was reported to have been displeased, and responded, “I’m the President of the United States; my words carry weight.”

Obama, while just as petulant as Shrub, lacks his guts, and everyone knows it.

Just read the whole thing.  It’s very good.