"Why have so many people in the Obama administration vented to Mr. Suskind in the first place, when the president was only partway through his first term?"

Asks Michiko Kakutani:

Like many of Bob Woodward’s sources a lot of them are motivated by spin, score settling and second-guessing. Given the stalled economy and the president’s sliding poll numbers, some former staff members are playing the blame game early, while others seem to be hoping to goad the president into a reboot and a more aggressive stance before the 2012 election....

The president’s own assessment of his first two years in office?... “Going forward as president,” he said in the February 2011 interview, “the symbols and gestures — what people are seeing coming out of this office — are at least as important as the policies we put forward.”

Yikes.

(Buy the book — "Confidence Men" — here.)