OMB -- Obama's Right Hand Men and Women

Poor little Barack Obama. Boohoo. If you were to listen to the mainstream media and his legion of lapdog apologists, we should be playing the game of zero expectations.  You can't expect this poor, overworked and overwrought President to understand and manage the sprawling, out of control and scandal ridden federal bureaucracy all by himself.  Why he is just too busy recruiting gaggles of first responders, covens of betrodden women and collections of multicultural kids to gather behind as a backdrop for his contrived rants and raves.  

I am almost at a loss for words. Has anyone who works for the AP, the New York Times, the major television networks, CNN or MSNBC ever heard of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)? Let me help them out. I know it's out there. It's not hard to find. The physical manifestations are front and center.

Let's start right at the White House. Co-located, within the White House's security perimeter and across the parking lot from the West Wing, is the Old Executive Office building. I snapped a picture of it our last Christmas Eve in Washington. I know that the animatronic wearers of blinders in the media find it hard to discern, but the Old EOB is that white rococo, French provincial architectural thing, topped by multiple U.S. flags, peaking out from behind the National Menorah.

Old Executive Office Building Behind National Menorah, Christmas Eve in Washington

Is OMB located there? For sure, but much of that prime space is needed to satisfy office requirements of the White House Czars (who are appointed to influence and control specific elements of the federal bureaucracy on the President's behalf). The old EOB doesn't have near enough space for all the OMBers, though it has two miles of corridors. To give a measure of how far we have come, in the decades before the federal bureaucracy spiraled out of control the OEOB was large enough to house the War and Navy (collectively DOD) and the State Departments.

To find the OMB overflow, que just across Pennsylvania Avenue. Less than a half block up the street is the ten-story New Executive Office building, tucked just behind the Renwick Gallery.

This photo of the White House's New Executive Office Building is courtesy of TripAdvisor, which ranks it 85 out of 401 tourist attractions in Washington, DC.  

Let's look at the structures together.  Obama has quite a complex working for him.  The Old Executive Office Building (formally named the Eisenhower Executive Office Building) is the light colored six story structure in the foreground.  The New Executive Office Building is the red brick structure behind and partially offset to right from the Old EOB. To the right of the Old EOB is the roof of a small flat structure, which is actually the West Wing of the White House, housing the Oval Office where the dunderheads in the mainstream media and the Kool Aid drinking Obama supporters would have you believe the only management resources of the President are located. If you want to get this view live, all you would need to do is travel to the top of the Washington Monument, if only the crackerjack Obama administration were to get around to repairing and reopening it, now almost two years after the earthquake.

OMB exists for one reason and one reason only -- to manage and control the federal bureaucracy at the President's behest. OMB is the instrument of the President's will.  Regulatory actions, including all proposed rules and regulations, must be cleared through the OMB.  Most OMB career employees work in the New EOB, while their political bosses in order to be close to and have easy access to the President, work across the street in the Old EOB.  OMBers are well trained.  Every request, every instruction uttered to their colleagues in the cabinet agencies, is prefaced by some such statement as the President wants or the White House needs.  Their word is law. 

Obama doesn't lack power, resources or the reins to influence and control the federal government. Far from it.