According to Ben Smith, three sources say that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina praised Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack's handling of Shirley Sherrod's dismissal on Tuesday morning, one day before the White House apologized to Sherrod and said an injustice had been done to her (update- I am flying to Vegas now, using inflight wifi, but Gibbs said it was President Obama himself who felt an "injustice" had been done):
But three Democratic sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina singled out the White House's initial response to the incident for praise in the regular 8:30 a.m. staff meeting Tuesday morning. The sources differed on the substance of Messina's praise, but concurred that he had praised the speed of White House communications in response to the flap, which was driven by a misleadingly-edited video posted to Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website.
This, of course, was before Vilsack agreed to revisit his decision in light of the fact that he was, well, you know, completely wrong in every sort of way to have fired her.
The fact that Messina was apparently on board with Vilsack's decision as late as Tuesday morning is shocking and suggests incredibly bad judgment, not just because there was no reason whatsoever to fire Shirley Sherrod, but also because doing so was such an obvious political mistake.
At this point, every second the administration delays ordering Vilsack to reverse his decision and issue an apology to Sherrod is a second that has been wasted. There's really nothing to review -- Sherrod should not have been fired, and if and when she's asked to come back, it has to be quick enough to give her a realistic chance at continuing to succeed in her job. That means the decision needs to be made NOW. It's urgent.
As Greg Sargent points out, if there's anything to review, it's how this decision got bungled in the first place. And if anyone should be on the line, it shouldn't be Shirley Sherrod -- it ought to be Jim Messina.
Update by Susan: And some rollback and apologies begin, according to Bloomberg:
The Obama administration apologized to a black USDA employee who was forced to resign after an edited video clip of her remarks suggested she acted with racial bias in dealing with a white farmer 24 years ago.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack acted without having all the information about the speech by Shirley Sherrod at an NAACP banquet in Georgia in March. Vilsack is trying to contact Sherrod to discuss whether she will return to the agency, he said.
“A disservice was done,” Gibbs said at a White House briefing. “The secretary will apologize for the actions that have taken place over the past 24 to 36 hours.”
"Disservice" is putting it mildly.
Update: Shirley Sherrod has accepted the apology.