Going off what Ezra says here, we should probably get into this White House political office debate. Basically, the political office is the resident political operative in the White House, keeping in touch with the national and state party committees and considering the political implications of policy choices. In the Bush White House, it had disproportionate influence on policy, and in many ways was the locus of policymaking. In the three prior administrations (Clinton, Bush I, Reagan), it mostly just offered advice and did outreach work.
Now, a variety of nonprofits, some House members, and of course the Republicans are demanding that Obama shutter the office. But what Ezra gets at it in his post is that change is political. The Obama team isn't promoting some goo-goo, Carter-esque vision of the innocent country folk coming to D.C. to end all those bad practices put in place by shady influences. That's a recipe for getting rolled, and no one will see any change come of it. To change things, you need to be able to organize coalitions and move political power. The idea that you can do that without people who understand the way politics works being part of the discussion is kind of laughable. It's the same kind of foolishness you get from folks who decry partisanship simply because they don't like conflict. But citizens have fundamentally different conceptions of what government should be doing. You can't avoid that. Sure, bipartisanship is important to prevent gridlock, but it's a power-balancing mechanism, not a virtue in itself.
So what about the office? Obama should keep it, but restore it to its previous level as an outreach and advice center, not a policymaking institution, as a number of people in the Politico article linked to above suggest. To do otherwise robs the future president of a key source of information and coordination. It's time for real talk, and that means we can't pretend that politics doesn't have anything to do with policymaking, or that America's politician-in-chief shouldn't have political advisers. It would be nice to live in a world where the president could dismantle the political office and not get eaten alive by his political opponents, but we don't. If change is what is called for -- and remember, it's policy change -- you have to win the political battles first.
--Tim Fernholz
