'Seething' Obama Called Out Senior Staff: Report

President Obama may have apologized to the American public over ObamaCare, but he took a decidedly different tone with senior staff, reports the New York Times. In a piece whose headline begins "A White House in Crisis Mode," Michael D. Shear reports that a "seething" Obama summoned senior staffers to the Oval Office over the website debacle and let them have it. “If I had known, we could have delayed the website," he told the group, according to an aide present. The president's anger seems to have worked, suggests the story, given the all-out press to get the website fixed this month and the story off front pages. “I think they do realize that this is Defcon 1,” an outside adviser tells the paper.

The trick is avoiding the perception that the White House is ignoring other matters as well. As the Washington Post reports, Obama was in New Orleans yesterday for a speech that was supposed to be all-economy. Instead, he had to talk ObamaCare. “I wanted to go in and fix it myself," he said of the website, "but I don’t write code." Both the Post and Politico say the White House is working on some kind of "administrative" remedy for those affected by policy cancellations, but no details were available on what it might entail. (More President Obama stories.)