Morning Must Reads — McChrystal gets rolled

What is Gen. Stanley McChrystal doing granting extensive access to Rolling Stone for a piece on the Afghan war? Was he trying to burnish his image? Did the White House authorize the interviews in hopes that they could placate the increasingly critical publication?

What a disaster.

Writer Ernesto Londono got an advance copy of the piece “Runaway General” that will be out Friday. In it, McChrystal and his aides batter his rivals inside the Obama team.

It comes at a terrible time.

The American death toll continues to rise, achievements are amorphous at best and there is obvious dissention within Obama’s defense cabinet about whether the August 2011 end date for the Obama surge is firm or just a suggestion. The question for the White House today: what did you know and when did you know it about the Rolling Stone article? The answer will tell us a lot about whether McChrystal can survive this epic failure in judgment.

“McChrystal and some of his senior advisors are quoted criticizing top administration officials, at times in starkly derisive terms. An anonymous McChrystal aide is quoted calling national security adviser James Jones a ‘clown.’

Referring to Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s senior envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan, one McChrystal aide is quoted saying: ‘The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal. Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.’

On one occasion, McChrystal appears to react with exasperation when he receives an e-mail from Holbrooke, saying, ‘Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke. I don’t even want to read it.’”

New York Times — Poll Finds Deep Concern About Energy and Economy

The good news for President Obama in the New York Times/CBS News poll is that his approval rating held at 47 percent in the survey of American adults.

Bearing in mind that this is not a survey of registered or likely voters and therefore friendlier to Obama than the electorate, 47 percent isn’t so bad.

But the ground is very obviously shifting under Obama. While he may have managed to hold off a slide by throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the crisis last week – an overnight visit to the Gulf, an Oval Office address, a $20 billion deal with BP, and more – the guts of this poll show that as the Obama barrage wears off, skepticism about Obama will return.

Key points:

— Obama dropped 8 points on having “strong qualities of leadership” from 70 percent in January.

–49 percent thought the administration was “hiding something” on the leak and 11 percent thought the White House was “mostly lying.”

— Only 32 percent of people think the president has a clear plan for dealing with the oil spill and 61 percent think he was slow in responding.

— Despite an effort to connect global warming legislation to the Gulf, environmental concerns barely register on public interest – 1 percent versus 40 percent on jobs/the economy.

— Support for offshore drilling ticked back up to 42 percent, though it is still a far cry from the 62 percent support pre-spill. Gulf Coast residents are getting there sooner, with 54 percent backing drilling.

— While BP comes off looking like a bum in the poll, 68 percent of respondents thought that lax enforcement of existing regulations deserved considerable blame for the explosion and leak. And you wonder why Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced Tuesday that the Minerals Management Service would now be called “the Bureau of Ocean Energy.”

Houston Chronicle — Judge considers request to block drilling ban

Expect a decision today or tomorrow on a lawsuit by oil exploration firms that seeks to block President Obama’s six-month moratorium on existing deepwater drilling all around the U.S.

BP agreed to pay $100 million to the workers displaced by the Obama ban, but the drillers say that if the ban goes on they will see oil companies move equipment out of U.S. waters altogether leaving contractors and their employees permanently out of work.

The legal argument is that it is unfair and capricious to punish operators who were in full compliance because of BPs bad actions. The administration says it needs the ban because it can’t afford to have two deepwater spills going on at once and needs the six moths to reassess the regulation of the industry. Not mentioned in court filings is the political need for the president to show he is getting tough on big oil.

Writers Jennifer Dlouhy and Tom Fowler explain that the administration has shot down calls from Gov. Bobby Jindal and others to let drilling continue but to have regulators on site at each of the 33 Gulf wells around the clock.

“The officials cite findings by the Louisiana State University Center for Energy Studies that even if the ban lasts just five months, it will result in the direct layoff of 3,339 Louisiana workers and cost another 7,656 jobs indirectly in the state.”

Washington Post — Obama uses powers to expand federal rights, benefits for gays and lesbians

President Obama’s Fathers Day proclamation celebrated families with “two fathers” and he is moving faster than originally announced to expand access to federal benefits for same-sex partners. The administration continues to push for a vote on allowing gay members of the military to openly express their sexualities and tonight, Obama and Vice President Biden will host gay activists at a White House celebration.

Is the White House getting worried about a Log Cabin Republican surge because Elton John played Rush Limbaugh’s wedding?

Its all part of a “Pride Month” push to get gay and lesbian voters and donors fired up about an administration that had previously kept an arm-length relationship with the gay lobby. With midterms looming, the president needs to get the Democratic coalition back in shape.

As the White House continues to try to turn out the Left, the Obamanauts also fire up the religious Right and raise concerns among moderates about what it means to live in a society increasingly defined by sexual identity.

Writer Michael Shear makes the case for the administration’s commitment to expanding gay rights.

“Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reinterpreted the Violence Against Women act to cover partners in a same-sex relationship. In remarks Monday to gay employees at the Justice Department, Holder promised more of the same.

‘Too many of the challenges that confronted the LGBT community 16 years ago . . . confront us still today,’ he said at the department’s celebration of gay pride month. ‘Too many of the same obstacles that existed then remain for us to overcome. Too many talented men and women cannot, in the words of this year’s motto, ‘serve openly, with pride.’’”

Wall Street Journal — Obama’s Budget Chief to Step Down

Budget Director Peter Orszag was one of the only interesting parts of the self-serious Obama team.

The budget boss who helped hustle through Obamacare with some, er, optimistic deficit projections and made the case that the stimulus was affordable is leaving next month and likely heading to a fat private sector payday.

Many assume the next to leave will be Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel whose more rankly political style has proven to be at odds with the ponderous policy fixations of the rest of the West Wing think tank. Whenever Emanuel does go, you can bet that between now and December you will see an ongoing shakeup and a concentration of the trend toward governance by colloquia in the administration.

To wit: Writer Jonathan Weisman explains that the frontrunner for the job is mega wonk and Clinton economic team veteran Gene Sperling who is famously proud of his 110-hour workweeks.

“Already, administration officials have begun vetting possible successors. One, Gene Sperling, a director of President Bill Clinton’s National Economic Council and a top aide to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, has been cleared to take the position of deputy budget director, but uncertainty about Mr. Orszag’s departure date had frozen Mr. Sperling’s move. Along with Mr. Sperling, White House officials are considering new names, including Laura Tyson, a former top Clinton White House economist and dean of the University of California’s Haas School of Business; Robert Greenstein, director of the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Rep. Artur Davis (D., Ala.), an early supporter of Mr. Obama’s White House bid who recently lost the Democratic nomination for his long-shot campaign to be Alabama’s first African-American governor.

According to a source familiar with the deliberations, Ms. Tyson’s name has surfaced because she is seen as a confident, credible spokeswoman for White House economic policy as the record budget deficit moves to perhaps the most prominent spot in the president’s domestic agenda.”

What to watch in today’s primaries:

–In South Carolina, Mamma Grizzly gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley looks likely to win in a walk off in her runoff with Rep. Gresham Barrett. Barring the revelation that the attacks on her fidelity and faith are not proven true between now and November, she’s a shoo in this fall and the hottest commodity in the GOP.

–Also in South Carolina, another incumbent may lose his seat in a primary – the fifth this year. Rep. Bob Inglis lost the first round of the primary to local prosecutor Trey Gowdy and will have more trouble in the head-to-head with his popular opponent. Gowdy has mostly taken heat for his vote for the Bush-Obama bailout.

–In North Carolina, a lackluster runoff between White House favorite state Sen. Cal Cunningham and first-round winner Elaine Marshall could go either way with turnout expected under three percent. Either way, the winner will have a hard time unseating incumbent Sen. Richard Burr.

–In Utah, Republicans are split over their successor to the already ousted incumbent Sen. Bob Bennett. Tea Party, outsider conservatives Tim Bridgewater and Mike Lee have been in a pitched battle. Bennett, who was defeated at the state party’s nominating convention, has endorsed Bridgewater, who has led in the polls taken in the race.

–The possible shocker could come in the Utah Democratic primary in which five-term Blue Dog Rep. Jim Matheson could get bounced by liberal challenger, Claudia Wright, who was moved to jump in the primary after Matheson voted no on Obamacare. The district includes the eastern half of the state, but the primary will be dominated by the urban/suburban precincts around Salt Lake City. Wright had a strong showing at the nominating convention and could bounce Matheson. Republican Morgan Philpot has a chance this fall against Matheson but would undoubtedly crush Wright, whose platform seems to have been written by Mother Jones.

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