President Obama's detachment from the obsessive insiders

Over the last few years the Washington DC villagers have developed a myth that President Obama is cold, aloof and detached. That myth is directly contradicted by those who actually know him and people he interacts with outside the beltway bubble.

So you have to wonder what all those folks will do with this storyline once Mark Leibovich's book This Town about the incestuous and manipulative nature of those inside that bubble is finally published.

We already know that Politico reporters Mike Allen and Jim Vandehei are pretty nervous because they wrote what is clearly a pre-emptive strike on the book before its even published. But Jim Newell at The New Republic wrote that their reaction demonstrates exactly the point Leibovich is likely to make.

Politico attempts to pass off its column as a neutral, "fun" look at an anticipated Beltway book that's still under the lockdown of a particularly stringent publisher's embargo. But Allen and VandeHei don't do the discretion thing very well, and it's clear before long that this is their clunky attempt to kneecap a writer whose upcoming revelations may well depict them as the people that they are: obsessive insiders who are obsessed with insiderism.

From what I've seen so far, none of this is really all that newsworthy or interesting except that I'm always up for a Politico takedown.

But as a justification for why President Obama keeps his distance from all of that insider obsession, its a pretty powerful statement. Its clear the culture is sick and dysfunctional. That the President choses to remain cold, aloof and detached from it all speaks boldly to his own wisdom. That none of them seem to notice speaks only to their own obsession with it.