OF COURSE, THE UR IS ONE OF THOSE DISORGANIZED:

Reporters Jonesin' for NSC profiles (Jonathan Martin and Ben Smith, May 8, 2009, Politico)

[W]hat looked on the surface like a publicity offensive by [President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, retired four-star Marine Gen. James L. Jones Jr.] on Thursday was likely more of a publicity defensive — an effort to contain a PR brushfire before it becomes a blaze.

The White House provided an interview to the Times’ Helene Cooper on Monday, and to the Post’s Karen DeYoung on Tuesday. Both are veteran diplomatic reporters, well-known in press and foreign policy circles. (On Wednesday, Jones gave a briefing from the press room podium on Obama’s meetings that day with the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan.)

The resulting stories helped underscore the difficulty that Jones — who once held the rarefied titles supreme allied commander Europe and commandant of the Marine Corps — has had adjusting to the insular Obama operation. In this case, the media strategy might have backfired a bit, because some of the clearest examples of Jones’ troubles fitting in were evident in his own words.

“I'm not only an outsider,” he told the Post, “but I'm a 20-years-older-than-anybody-around outsider.”

The articles included accounts of Jones occasionally biking home to suburban Virginia for lunch, speaking distantly of the "Obama Nation" campaign hands who are now his colleagues, and deriding those fellow aides who put in longer hours than he does.

“Congratulations. To me, that means you’re not organized,” he told the Times.

"That was not the profile they were looking for of their national security adviser," said one prominent Democrat and Obama ally, barely suppressing a laugh.

Steve Clemons of New America Foundation, who writes the foreign policy blog The Washington Note, said Jones had blundered by criticizing his colleagues who work past 7 p.m.

"It was a mistake to make that kind of statement,” Clemons said. “The world is complex. Lots of stuff is happening.”

Clemons, noting the remarkable congruence between the articles, said: "There seems to be a campaign to dislodge him.”

There's nothing happening that requires that every flunky be at his desk at 7pm. Such a notion represents a wildly inflated sense of one's own importance on their part and of the bureaucracy's importance on Mr. Clemons's part.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 8, 2009 4:59 PM