A team of rivals
Some hard-core supporters of Barack Obama are getting annoyed that early plums being handed out by the incoming administration are going to Hillary Clinton backers.
Chief-of-staff-to-be Rahm Emmanuel, attorney general designate Eric Holder and possible budget chief Peter Orszag all had high-ranking positions in the Clinton administration. And then there’s Clinton herself, who could become Obama’s secretary of state.
The angst is trickling down to Maryland, where many of the Marylanders getting involved in Obama-land didn’t work particularly hard to get the Illinois senator elected, or worked for Hillary during the primaries.
Transition team member Gary Gensler, the former treasurer of the Maryland Democratic Party, was a big Hillary backer. Susan Ness, former FCC member and a Montgomery County resident also on the transition squad, was a bundler for Hillary. Alan H. Fleischmann, a transition aide, was chief of staff to Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, who endorsed Clinton. Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown endorsed Clinton, and is now reviewing veterans issues for the transition.
As one observer said during a recent discussion: “This is not a team of rivals; this is the rival’s team.”
Comments
I'm wondering if this is an issue of electing a Senator as President? An executive (Governor, Vice-Pres) would have a core group of advisers and executive aids ready to be would-be cabinet members. Obama had his campaign team, but didn't have that type of political infrastructure that say, Clinton would have. So, you're a Democractic President elect looking for folks with top-level executive experience. Not that many places to turn too.
(Though, on the flip side, many of Bush's organization, especially early on, hailed from the Reagan-Bush 1 era)
Posted by: GMan | November 20, 2008 12:43 PM
Gman:
That's certainly part of it, and a fair point. Another part is that Obama clearly wants to hit the ground running, so needs a team with Washington experience. The reality is that the last Democratic administration was the Clinton administration. Obama is calculating that the positives of having, say, a chief of staff who knows how the White House and Washington operates outweigh the negatives of being too closely aligned with Clinton. In a sense, he's adopting one of Clinton's arguments during the primaries: That to enact change, you need to have the experience to do so. We'll see how that works out.
Posted by: David Nitkin | November 20, 2008 12:49 PM