Top White House advisers deflected questions Sunday about former “green jobs czar” Van Jones, just hours after he submitted his sudden overnight resignation amid a growing furor over his previous statements and political associations.
Politicians had been calling for Mr. Jones to resign after it was revealed in recent days he signed a petition supporting Sept. 11 conspiracy theories and called Republicans a series of vulgar epithets in a widely circulated video of a speech he made shortly before joining the Obama White House.
The Jones resignation capped a series of political missteps by the Obama administration throughout August and early September in the face of conservative opposition, including a disastrous series of town-hall meetings on health care and a planned speech to the nation’s schoolchildren that originally included an assignment on how to help the president.
Congress and the president return to Washington this week to tackle Mr. Obama’s top priority: health care, a fact the White House and Mr. Jones both cited.
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“What Van Jones decided was that the agenda of this president was bigger than any one individual. The president thanks Van Jones for his service in the first eight months,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
He said Mr. Jones “understood that he was going to get in the way” of the president’s agenda and opted not to do so.
Senior White House adviser David Axelrod said he did not believe the president knew about all of Mr. Jones’ previous associations and was unfamiliar with his remarks, which included calls for an investigation of whether the George W. Bush administration had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks but let them happen in order to provide a pretext for war.
The abrupt resignation - in a controversy which grew to a head in less than a week - renewed questions about the Obama administration’s ability to vet top aides.
The White House has been beset by quiet resignations from top picks - including former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle - and almost-departures from some of his most important lieutenants, including Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner who failed to report taxes owed the government.
New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson removed himself from consideration for commerce secretary citing an ongoing federal probe which he said would likely have stalled or blocked his confirmation to Cabinet post.
In a resignation letter released by the White House via e-mail without advance notice just after midnight Sunday on a holiday weekend, Mr. Jones said he was the victim of a smear campaign.
“On the eve of historic fights for health care and clean energy, opponents of reform have mounted a vicious smear campaign against me,” he wrote. “They are using lies and distortions to distract and divide.”
Mr. Jones said while he’s been getting encouragement from both political parties to “stay and fight,” he “cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past.”
“We need all hands on deck, fighting for the future,” he said, adding in the letter for Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Nancy Sutley that he has been honored to serve the president.
Ms. Sutley issued a short statement thanking Mr. Jones for his work and calling him a “strong voice for creating 21st century jobs that improve energy efficiency and utilize renewable resources.”
On Sunday, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean called the Jones resignation “a loss for the country,” adding that he didn’t think Mr. Jones agreed with the petition he signed.
“All of us campaigning for office have had people throw clipboards in front of our face and ask us to sign. And he learned the hard way you ought not to do that. But I don’t think he really thinks the government had anything to do with causing 9/11,” he told “Fox News Sunday.”
The Jones resignation, coupled with the White House decision to backtrack on some details of a plan to have schoolchildren watch a nationally televised presidential address, marks Mr. Obama’s return to Washington on a sour note.
Education Secretary Arne Duncan criticized as “silly” Sunday the popular “hoopla” over the White House plan, which would have had students write letters about how they could help Mr. Obama.
Mr. Obama’s public approval ratings have dipped sharply through the end of the summer and the president has planned a rare joint address of Congress on Wednesday to attempt to stem his political slide.
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