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Tim Fernholz notes Marc Ambinder wondering if there's not some tension between Obama's promises of change and the decidedly Beltway flavor of his staff. This has long been present in the Obama organization, and its something Dana and I looked at in our piece on Obama's party-building:
Though Obama himself is a newcomer to Washington, the upper echelons of his Senate and campaign staff are populated almost exclusively by experienced Democratic Party operatives. Continuity with the established party infrastructure is a defining characteristic of the Obama campaign...[Conversely] most outsider candidates for the presidency recruit an outsider team to deliver it. Bill Clinton's main strategists in 1992 were the little-known Paul Begala and James Carville. His first chief of staff was Mack McLarty, a childhood friend who had risen to become chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party. It was a team untainted by Washington but also unschooled in how Washington worked.The Obama campaign and Senate staff, by contrast, are full of Daschle and Gephardt veterans--an unexpected rebirth of the power bases and reputations of two politicians who had long been written off. Obama's chief of staff is the aforementioned Daschle associate, Pete Rouse. His deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, managed Daschle's 2004 campaign. His director for battleground states, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, and his director of communications, Dan Pfeiffer, were both deputy campaign managers for Daschle in 2004. Obama's foreign-policy director, Denis McDonough, was Daschle's foreign-policy adviser, and his finance director, Julianna Smoot, was head of Daschle's PAC. Many of those who didn't come from the Senate minority leader's office came from the House minority leader's office. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, was Gephardt's deputy campaign manager in 2004. His head of delegate operations, Jeff Berman, played the same role for Gephardt. His national press secretary, Bill Burton, was Gephardt's Iowa press secretary. Dozens of others come from related arms of the party, in particular the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.This gets to the question of what Obama meant by change." One theory was that he meant a different Washington, with new faces and fresh players. When Dana and I examined the situation, we concluded that he meants something very different. A working Washington, with frequent successes, which required players who knew how to wield power:
Obama's theory of change is simultaneously less inspiring and far more pragmatic than he's given credit for. It relies less on a new vision of politics than on an uncommon mastery of old procedures, institutions, and organizing tactics...The strategy is not necessarily in opposition to Obama's top-level message of bringing the country together and healing partisan divisions, but it mostly seeks to do so through the machinery of the Democratic Party, by building party organizations in counties where voters haven't had a respectful conversation with a Democrat in decades, and electing the sort of governing majorities that can end the legislative gridlock that so enrages the polity. The theory is that Democratic successes--or at least Obama successes--will ease divisions because voters will be glad to see something finally getting done.A focus on legislative achievement as an answer to polarization was always, to some degree, implicit in Obama's rhetoric. He described divisiveness as the result of ineffectual politics and unity as the reward for effective policy-making. "I think the American people are hungry for something different and can be mobilized around big changes, not incremental changes, not small changes," said Obama last January. "I think that there are a whole host of Republicans, and certainly independents, who have lost trust in their government, who don't believe anybody is listening to them, who are staggering under rising costs of health care, college education, [who] don't believe what politicians say. And we can draw those independents and some Republicans into a working coalition, a working majority for change."...His rhetoric has often signaled an appetite for compromise that has left some wondering about what, exactly, Obama's core policy commitments would be in office. But less attention was given to what Obama seemed to think would attract folks from across the aisle: real policy-making, which Obama's campaign believes requires a Democratic Party infrastructure strong enough to pass the president's priorities. In other words, strong parties aren't the problem; they're the solution.And strong parties mean experienced parties. Which is exactly what we're seeing in Obama's transition.
