President Obama needs to fire himself. Not literally, of course, but practically: He needs to shake up his team so thoroughly that the new blood imposes change on how he manages the federal bureaucracy and leads.
A series of self-inflicted wounds during his fifth year in office, capped by the botched launch of the Affordable Care Act, have Americans questioning the president’s competence and credibility. History suggests that second-term presidents rarely recover after their approval ratings fall as much as Obama’s have this year.
History also suggests that there are two types of White House shake-ups. The first is mostly cosmetic and is aimed at sending a signal that the president is serious. He fires somebody, anybody, as a sacrificial lamb. The second is deep cleansing–that rare occasion when a president rebuilds his team to change himself.
The latter is what Obama must do.
Could be exactly what Obama needs to reinvent himself.
I know you might think there’s no recovering from this debacle, but remember, just a few short weeks ago, Sen. Ted Cruz was destroying the Republican Party. People’s attention spans are about 15 seconds long.