Boom – Boom – Boom – Bambambam — Boom – Boom – Boom – Bambambam — Boom – Boom – Boom – Bambambam — Boom – Boom – Boom – Bambambam — Boom – Boom – Boom – Bambambam — Boom – Boom – Boom – Bambambam — She, she ain’t real .... She is a stranger ... Sure, she’s got it all ... Rumour has it — Rumour has it — Rumour has it — Rumour has it ...

STOP !  STOP !  STOP !  NOT “RUMOUR HAS IT”... This is  not at all like Adele’s song  —  It’s RUEMMLER  has it .... RUEMMLER, you know, the President’s White House Legal Counsel — But, the real question is this: “Just what is it that RUEMMLER has  ON or FOR  the President ?”

There was much more going on “between the lines” in Jackie Calmes’ NY Times piece about Kathryn Ruemmler than happened inside those plastic lines on the clay courts in the two Williams sisters’ matches at Roland Garros (and that includes the grueling first round loss by Venus)

Maybe the most important story to date involving Obama’s triple-scandal, certainly the IRS part of it, was what appeared in the New York Times yesterday. It started like this: “WASHINGTON —  It is a Washington truism that if the White House counsel — the president’s lawyer — is in the news, that cannot be good for either of them. ***  And so it seemed last week when the counsel, Kathryn Ruemmler, made headlines for having been told about a draft report confirming the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups. Suddenly Ms. Ruemmler, a 42-year-old former prosecutor of white-collar crimes who is as influential with President Obama as she is obscure beyond his circle, was being introduced to the nation under a cloud of questions about her role and, worse, her judgment. ***  The controversy began when White House officials acknowledged as the week opened that she had learned in April that an independent audit, expected in May, would confirm I.R.S. wrongdoing. She decided that neither she nor other aides should alert the president....” ( See “President’s Lawyer Finds Herself Center Stage for Once” by Jackie Calmes, 5/26/13, NY Times
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/us/presidents-counsel-finds-herself-center-state.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hp]). Sounds like a page-turning pot-boiler in the making doesn’t it ?  Like, who died and made her boss; who cares how good a lawyer she might be ?

Well, if you read the rest of Jackie Calmes’ article in the Times, you’ll see that this is more than a lengthy “person in the news” piece about some young and very able female lawyer, who’s giving the President bear hugs and a hand when he needs it most. What’s described in the Calmes’ article are lots of one-on-one meetings “with my lawyer,” but without any other long-time confidantes around, and lots of jokes about Ruemmler’s fancy shoes. If this was about some high class slap and tickle, that would just make her a handy John and Maureen Dean wrapped into one neat little package, or a Monica Lewinsky with some snazzy legal cred.  No, Calmes is teasing us with a better “between the lines” story than that. What Jackie Calmes is suggesting has the makings of a Kathryn Ruemmler handling the role of a female Svengali to Barack Obama’s Trilby.

You read the Times article and see what you think. Even if you come away thinking it’s only hum-drum biographical detail about Kathryn Ruemmler and a “Who’s Who...” of the rest of the President’s inner circle, you’ll be better off for that. But, I’m sure you’ll come away with a feeling that there’s much more to be told about Ms. Ruemmler and that Jackie Calmes will get around to telling it, sonner or later. By comparison, a similar article in the Washington Post is a much drier, and not nearly as suggestive as what you’re likely to read into the Time’s piece. According to the WP, “Kathy” Ruemmler is just a wonderful person, a great lawyer and wears nice shoes  ( See “White House counsel Kathy Ruemmler: From outsider to protector of the presidency” by  Philip Rucker and Juliet Eilperin, 5/26/13, Washington Post/ WP Politics [http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/white-house-counsel-kathy-ruemmler-from-outsider-to-protector-of-the-presidency/2013/05/26/78a6986e-c3f0-11e2-914f-a7aba60512a7_story.html]).