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The Insider’s Crusade

By DAVID BROOKS
Published: November 21, 2008

Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).

The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).

This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy — rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. If a foreign enemy attacks the United States during the Harvard-Yale game any time over the next four years, we’re screwed.

Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. They typically served in the Clinton administration and then, like Cincinnatus, retreated to the comforts of private life — that is, if Cincinnatus had worked at Goldman Sachs, Williams & Connolly or the Brookings Institution. So many of them send their kids to Georgetown Day School, the posh leftish private school in D.C., that they’ll be able to hold White House staff meetings in the carpool line.

And yet as much as I want to resent these overeducated Achievatrons (not to mention the incursion of a French-style government dominated by highly trained Enarchs), I find myself tremendously impressed by the Obama transition.

The fact that they can already leak one big appointee per day is testimony to an awful lot of expert staff work. Unlike past Democratic administrations, they are not just handing out jobs to the hacks approved by the favored interest groups. They’re thinking holistically — there’s a nice balance of policy wonks, governors and legislators. They’re also thinking strategically. As Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute notes, it was smart to name Tom Daschle both the head of Health and Human Services and the health czar. Splitting those duties up, as Bill Clinton did, leads to all sorts of conflicts.

Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders.

Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced “fresh faces” to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.

As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.

First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. Orszag, who will probably be budget director, is trusted by Republicans and Democrats for his honest presentation of the facts.

Second, they are admired professionals. Conservative legal experts have a high regard for the probable attorney general, Eric Holder, despite the business over the Marc Rich pardon.

Third, they are not excessively partisan. Obama signaled that he means to live up to his postpartisan rhetoric by letting Joe Lieberman keep his committee chairmanship.

Fourth, they are not ideological. The economic advisers, Furman and Goolsbee, are moderate and thoughtful Democrats. Hillary Clinton at State is problematic, mostly because nobody has a role for her husband. But, as she has demonstrated in the Senate, her foreign-policy views are hardheaded and pragmatic. (It would be great to see her set of interests complemented by Samantha Power’s set of interests at the U.N.)

Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity. Any think tanker can come up with broad doctrines, but it is rare to find people who can give the president a list of concrete steps he can do day by day to advance American interests. Dennis Ross, who advised Obama during the campaign, is the best I’ve ever seen at this, but Rahm Emanuel also has this capacity, as does Craig and legislative liaison Phil Schiliro.

Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/21/opinion/21brooks.html


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further:

Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas
November 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/politics/22assess.html

Axelrod: No "Potted Plants" In Obama's Cabinet
November 23, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/23/axelrod-no-potted-plants_n_145813.html

Progressive complaints about Obama's appointments
Nov. 23, 2008
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/23/obama/index.html

Scoop: McCain and Obama Camps Coordinated on Building Staff Rosters for Next Government
November 23, 2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/scoop-mccain-and-obama-ca_b_145827.html

Another Triumph for Clinton, Many Women Agree
November 21, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us/politics/22clinton.html

Clinton-Obama Détente: From Top Rival to Top Aide
November 22, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/us/politics/23hillary.html

A reassuring figure for Treasury
Timothy Geithner is a seasoned crisis manager with a temperament to match that of Barack Obama
Nov 22nd 2008
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12668365

The Un-Paulson
Why Timothy Geithner is a strong choice for treasury secretary
Nov. 21, 2008
http://www.slate.com/id/2205257/


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Woodward: Bush ‘Doesn’t Like Homework,’ Which Means ‘Reading,’ ‘Getting Briefed’ Or ‘Having A Debate’

By Matt Corley at 11:15 am November 23, 2008

On the Chris Matthews Show today, Matthews argued that one of the major differences between President Bush and President-elect Barack Obama is the fact that Obama is intellectually curious. As an example of Bush’s lack of intellectual curiosity, Matthews played a 2004 clip of Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward saying on 60 Minutes that Bush “is not an intellectual [ http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/15/60minutes/main612067.shtml ]” or what “would be called a deep thinker.”

Asked by Matthews to explain why Bush “shows little intellectual curiosity,” Woodward said it was essentially because Bush “doesn’t like homework”:

WOODWARD: I think he’s impatient. I think, my summation: He doesn’t like homework. And homework means reading or getting briefed or having a debate. And part of the presidency, part of governing, particularly in this area, is homework, homework, homework.

Watch it:

[video embedded; also (and better viewed) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtGuIgx_dLA ]

Woodward, who has written four books [ http://www.bobwoodward.com/published_books/ ] on the Bush White House, has reported multiple instances in which Bush has put his distaste for homework on display. In 2004, Woodward told PBS’s Frontline about how Bush describes himself as “a gut player” who doesn’t “play by the book [ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice2004/interviews/woodward.html ]“:

QUESTION: What does that tell us about this president, how his mind works and how he functions as an executive? …

WOODWARD: Bush looks at problems. And he told me, he said: “I’m a gut player. I play by instincts. I don’t play by the book.” And of course the book is Policy 101 about how you make these kinds of decisions, and all of this [is] coming from the gut.

In his most recent book, Woodward reported that Bush actually bragged about not attending meetings where key decisions about the surge were made, telling Woodward, “I’m not in these meetings [ http://www.barnesandnoble.com/bn-review/note.asp?note=19361226 ], you’ll be happy to hear, because I got other things to do.” Woodward has said that in his eyes, Bush has “often displayed impatience and a lack of interest in open debate.”

Transcript:

MATTHEWS: Bob, he obviously relies a lot on instinct and is proud of that fact. Is that why he shows little intellectual curiosity about other people’s thinking?

WOODWARD: I think he’s impatient. I think, my summation: He doesn’t like homework. And homework means reading or getting briefed or having a debate. And part of the presidency, part of governing, particularly in this area, is homework, homework, homework.

MATTHEWS: And Obama?

WOODWARD: Obama is the opposite. He mainlines homework. He does, you know, where is extra credit.

© 2008 Center for American Progress Action Fund (emphasis in original)

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/23/woodward-bush-homework/ [with comments]