"The president is a person, not a product," adviser David Axelrod reportedly told her, according to a Times story this morning that recounts her brief White House tenure. "We shouldn't be referring to him as a brand."

It was, perhaps, an understandable mistake.

Last week, in unrelated news, Organizing for America—the grass-roots arm spun from the Obama campaign—asked Hiram Monserrate to stop using the president's logo.