President Barack Obama is on a roll -- and Washington's pundits are struggling to keep up.
Commentators spent weeks body-slamming the administration's vetting and second-guessing Obama's legislative strategy. One stimulus and a few polls later, however, and many of the same experts are praising everything from the president's political outreach to his rousing congressional address. All this jumpy chatter drowns out a key lesson from Obama's first month in office.
Contrary to the conventional wisdom, it is "experienced" Beltway insiders who have actually caused the largest problems for Obama.
When the new, young president stacked his administration with familiar Washington veterans, the predictable praise poured in. Washington Post columnist David Broder lauded Tom Daschle's appointment, hailing him as a "shrewd choice" to head Obama's health care reform. "The former South Dakota senator knows the politics of Capitol Hill intimately," Broder wrote in December, apparently unaware that old school politics can hinder reform.
We know how that turned out.
Bill Richardson and Judd Gregg never got confirmed as commerce secretary, and that's not the only distinction they share. Neither had a strong substantive background in business or commerce policy, but like Daschle, their supposed qualification was Washington experience.
For Richardson, however, years of politicking left him saddled with ethical questions that could not withstand public vetting. When Gregg got his turn, a caricature of senatorial indecision was on full display. The New Hampshire senator could have been representing Denmark with all his dramatic Hamlet-esque antics. If he couldn't stick to a single decision about his own career path, how could he manage the hundreds of choices bubbling up in a federal bureaucracy?
It is easy to forget, but the point of hiring Washington insiders was the promise that pros would run Washington smoothly. Obama assembled a team with "the greatest political experience of any Cabinet in memory," CNN's David Gergen declared in December, and that made for "one of the most promising Cabinets in decades."
That conventional wisdom was often accompanied by a focus on the Cabinet's centrism. "In constructing his administration, [Obama] has decided not to create a (liberal) Washington counter-establishment," journalist David Corn predicted in the Washington Post. "Instead, he's fashioning a bipartisan, centrist-loaded version of the Washington establishment to carry out his policies, which do tilt to the left."
There is very little evidence, so far, that the Obama team's Washington experience or centrism is required to advance policies that "tilt" left.
Health care reform has been delayed, at the very least. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's tax problems were a hypocritical distraction.
Then consider the new people. It is not a totally proportional comparison, but the non-Washington appointees seem to be Getting It Done without incident, from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to foreign policy adviser Samantha Power.
Now, to his credit, Obama does tend to correct course swiftly.
In naming his third nominee for commerce secretary, Obama thanked Gary Locke, former governor of the Evergreen State, for agreeing to "leave one Washington for another." Obama also joked that at the Commerce Department:
We've tried this a couple of times, but I'm a big believer in keeping at something until you get it right.
When it comes to finding new leaders instead of insiders, maybe the third time's the charm.
Meanwhile, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who rose through local politics without ever serving in Congress, will lead Health and Human Services. Locke and Sebelius don't have Daschle's mastery of legislative conflicts, but hopefully they won't have his conflicts of interest, either.
Finally, when it comes to Obama's bipartisan dreams, geography could be destiny.
While Washington Republicans march in lock step against the president's economic agenda, some of the party's governors are actually receptive. Charlie Crist of Florida already collaborated on the stimulus. California's Arnold Schwarzenegger said after huddling with colleagues recently that there's "a great shot" for environmental progress with Obama.
We know the public wants fundamental reforms, and as candidate Obama always said, change doesn't come from Washington, it comes to Washington. That is hard to pull off, of course, if you primarily work with people from Washington.
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This column was originally published in Politico.
The Xmas-New Year recess would be a good time to bring in the special team players. The Prez isn't going to be sitting idle in Home Sweet Chicago. He'll find a gym or to for pick-up games & Chicago is Chicago.
By that time the Trib & Sun-Times will have folded. The St Louis Post-Dispatch's Chicagoland ed will be going great guns. Since nobody read the S-T or Trib nobody will miss these sheets. BHO can use the P-D to float trial baloons.
This isn't the "change" I voted for. Obama is being poorly served by his establishment-encrusted insiders. Bring in Z-big and Hart for some fresh ideas and break out of the imperial box Bush put us in.
Obama's team let him down. You don't make appointments based on columnists. You make
appointments based on vetting, reviewing and vetting again.
My theory is , there are some in Obama's administration who may have known about some of the
issues his appointees had. At any rate, those mis-steps slowed Obama's march.
His after election team is not as competent as his campaign staff was. There were very minimal
mistakes made during the two year campaign. It was only after his staff was enlarged did the mistakes begin. There were more mistakes in his firts 45 days after the election, than during the two year campaign.
(By the way I was thinking the other day that the Clinton appointment really came out of left field and happened so fast that the pundits' heads are still spinning. Does anyone think that she might have been promised the spot for not putting up a floor fight during the convention? Just a thought, maybe I'm a little crazy and need to get some more sleep.)
seriously go kiss Limbaugh already and just be done with it.
Capitalism is dead and Obama in fact is doing all he can to prop it back up.
He should just wash his hands of it and nationalize the banks!
I now want to go design a horror themed rollercoaster ride...
Carol
Kennedy? Now, that's the insider pulling the strings, or was until he fell ill.
I didn't vote for Obama because I saw he had the B team backing, and I think they are and have been a large part of this country's problems.