Chicago Jesus and his disciples.
Via USA Today:
A new book says President Obama’s staff features “a cadre of idolizers,” but he is also trying to reach beyond the confines of what he calls the White House “bubble.”
“Barack Obama has said that the hardest thing about being president is staying in touch with ‘the flow of everyday life,'” says author Kenneth T. Walsh. “And he has admitted that one of the biggest mistakes he made during his first term was confining himself to the White House too much.”
Walsh, the veteran White House correspondent for U.S. News & World Report, has a new book out Wednesday, Prisoners of the White House: The Isolation of America’s Presidents and the Crisis of Leadership.
Walsh discusses the attempts by different presidents to break from the White House, which President Harry Truman described as “the great white jail” and President Bill Clinton called “the crown jewel of the federal penitentiary system.”
“Obama has a cadre of idolizers around him, people such as Chicago friend and confidante Valerie Jarrett, and devoted adviser Denis McDonough, who is now White House chief of staff,” Walsh says in a note about his book.