"It's all about the insularity. Otherwise how do you explain how a group who came in with more goodwill in decades squandered it?"

A quote from "a longtime Democratic strategist who works with the White House on a variety of issues." He says that Obama and his inner circle "miscalculated where people were out in the country on jobs, on spending, on the deficit, on debt... They have not been able to get ahead of any of it."

From an article about how members of that inner circle are going to be leaving:

The inner circle - Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, senior advisers David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, press secretary Robert Gibbs and Vice President Biden - is breaking up, or at least breaking open. Emanuel is widely expected to run for mayor of Chicago, and Axelrod is likely to leave this spring to prepare for Obama's 2012 reelection effort.

Obama will soon lose other top advisers. His chief economic adviser, Lawrence H. Summers, announced that he will return to Harvard, where he is a professor; Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina is expected to join Axelrod in Chicago; and national security adviser James L. Jones is said to want out by the end of the year.

Some former aides and allies of the president expressed hope that Obama will take advantage of the departures - which are common at the two-year point in any presidency - to bring in outsiders who will challenge the president's current team.

Like some sort of "Team of Rivals"? If only he'd thought about that at the outset of his presidency!