David Axelrod’s art of political war

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“If your opponent is of choleric temper,” writes Sun Tzu in The Art of War, “seek to irritate him.”

Axelrod, the Chicago political boss who served as former President Barack Obama’s guru, has won more political battles than he’s lost. He is a master of media dynamics, of knowing exactly what needs to be done to flip a narrative in his favor. Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Mitt Romney could all attest.

This makes his visit to Pope Leo XIV at the Vatican last week worth examining very carefully. Because in the days that followed, the pope’s criticism of President Donald Trump grew dramatically sharper —