One prominent party strategist said Obama “should take a flamethrower to his office.”

“He needs dramatic change — it’s not even a debatable point,” the strategist said. “The general consensus that the president is surrounded by people who do him more harm than good because they are more focused on pleasing him than they are challenging him or proposing a different course.”…

“When he lost Plouffe, when Axelrod left, there aren’t too many people who can walk into the Oval Office and shut the door,” said Democratic strategist Peter Fenn, referring to former Obama strategists David Plouffe and David Axelrod.

“And those guys could, they could speak really frankly to him,” Fenn said. “How does he put people in the White House with serious political chops?