White House staffers jump ship before it sinks

Ask anyone on the street, if a bunch of heavy hitters that were running say, a company, all started resigning and retiring one after another, what would you think was going on?

“Probably the company's going under,” said Gillian White, a New Yorker.

“They're not happy with their boss or they're not happy with the working conditions,” said another New Yorker.

Now, what if that place of employment was the White House, and their boss, the President of the United States?

“That’s a tough question,” answered a New Yorker, one of several who were more tight-lipped about the latter scenario.

Whether people find it more complex or find themselves more politically correct, there’s no ignoring that something's up when all the President’s men – or at least a lot of them…start lining up for the door one by one.

“At this point before a critical midterm election this is highly unusual to have so many people leaving the White House,” said political analyst and RT contributor Wayne Madsen. “I've been told what this is emblematic of is a White House in crisis.”

And excuses of exhaustion or jobs at premiere universities don’t seem to fully explain recent and imminent departures that read like a laundry list of Obama’s once nearest and dearest.

They include: chief of staff, top political advisor, director of the council of economic advisors, chairwoman of the council of economic advisors, budget director, national security advisor, defense secretary, and general commanding forces in Afghanistan.

With all of these people jumping ship you have to wonder if it’s because the administration is sinking into a sea of the country’s bottomless problems.

“The poor economy, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are not going well,” Madsen cited as examples. “Obama ran on a promise of removing troops from Iraq and they're still there.”

“The White House doesn't have a magic wand,” agreed Danny Schechter, a blogger and filmmaker. “It can't fix the economy no matter who's in office but policies that really are inadequate are unable to really even dent the problem are not going to work, and that's what we've had here.”

So where does this leave the once popular president who won over much of the world with his pledge of hope and change? High and dry?

“He was an American Idol president and now he's being voted off the island,” said Madsen.

And maybe he even wants to be. Critics have said he’s depressed, spending more time golfing and campaigning on the stump to escape promises that even the average person could see he would have to desert.

“I think he came in during a really tough time and it's going to take more than two years to fix it,” said New Yorker Gillian White. “It took more than two years to throw everything down the drain.”

“They're fighting probably an endless war in Afghanistan,” Elliot Stein, a New Yorker, argued. “They're looking for one man and for some reason the world can't find him.”

While a country in crisis might be resulting in a White House in crisis, what this means for the United States if its leaders can't maintain a united front remains to be seen.

Matthew Hoh, a former US State Department official said he left Washington and policy as a “matter of principle.”

“My conscious was telling me, hey, you supported this once, don’t support it again,” he said.

While working for the US government he witnessed the same failed policies he objected to repeat themselves year after year, between Iraq and Afghanistan. It was frustrating to show up day in and day out for a job he felt was not proceeding as he felt it should.

“It’s very frustrating to see us repeating mistakes, not just the Soviets made, but mistakes we made in Iraq,” Hoh said. “It’s very frustrating to see good young men and women fighting every day, our country spending money we don’t even have and not even having an effect on al-Qaeda.”