••
Transition Time
Obama is not wasting any time on getting his transition team on the ground and running.
The "Obama-Biden Transition Project" will be overseen by former White House chief of staff John D. Podesta; Obama friend and senior campaign adviser Valerie Jarrett; and Pete Rouse, Obama's former Senate chief of staff and top campaign aide, officials said today. It will occupy offices in Washington and in a federal building in Chicago.
The transition co-chairs will work with an advisory board stacked with Clinton veterans and Obama and Joe Biden allies and confidants. On the list: former Environmental Protection Agency administrator Carol Browner; Obama friend and former Commerce Secretary William Daley, University of California-Berkeley law school dean Christopher Edley; Obama law school friends and advisers Michael Froman and Julius Genachowski; former Gore domestic policy adviser Donald Gips; Governor Janet Napolitano; former transportation secretary Federico Peña; Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and Sonal Shah of Google.org.
Mark Gitenstein and Ted Kaufman, old friends to Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., will serve as co-chairs of his transition team.
Obama will hold a press conference tomorrow focused solely on the economy after his meet with his economy staff; and Obama starts to get his first intelligence briefing, just as President Bush, today.
Caroline Kennedy is rumored for either UN Ambassador or Ambassador of the UK post. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is rumored to head the EPA, which I think is an excellent choice, solely by his work on the environment.
Rahm Emanuel, Congressman from Chicago, gave notice to Speaker Nancy Pelosi that he will leave his post to become Obama's White House Chief of Staff. There has been much flap by the Republicans for this pick, stating he is strictly partisan, but I view this differently. Emanuel worked in the Clinton White House, so he is familiar with how the House runs. Emanuel is familiar with the workings of congress, he was the main wizard who flipped 30 seats in 2006 for the Democrats to retain the house. Yes, he is abrasive, abrupt, an a**hole to many, just being real here, but I think he can be an effective Chief of Staff. Remember, it is Barack Obama who will set the tone in Washington. Obama is a no-drama man and as we have witnessed throughout this campaign, if you are bring "drama" with you, the door will be opened for you to leave.
Robert Gibbs, the Obama Campaign Communications Director is rumored to become the White House Press Secretary and David Axelrod to be Obama's Senior Adviser.
President-Elect Obama will meet President Bush on Monday at the White House, Michelle Obama will accompany the President-Elect to meet with First Lady Laura Bush and tour the private residence of the White House.
Barack Obama has a lot of work to do, this is just a beginning.
••
Striking a Balance While Becoming a First Family
When Verna Williams called to congratulate Michelle Obama on Wednesday morning, she half-jokingly offered to stop calling her old law school buddy “Meesh” and start calling her something more dignified.
Mrs. Obama dissolved into giggles, and the two traded title ideas, one sillier than the next, all of them too ridiculous to repeat to a newspaper reporter, Ms. Williams said.
One day after the presidential election, the Obama family of Chicago’s Hyde Park is only beginning to figure out how to become the first family of the United States.
As the first African-Americans in the role, they will be a living tableau of racial progress, and friends say they are acutely aware that everything they say and do — the way they dress, where Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7 , go to school, even what kind of puppy they adopt — will brim with symbolic value.
“Here’s an intact black family, a happy family, with beautiful kids and a loving extended family,” Ms. Williams said, “and they happen to live in the executive mansion.”
For President-elect Barack Obama and his family, leaving Chicago means dismantling the protective cocoon they have built around them. continue
••
Palin Fallout Continues
Two things strike me that I will remember about the McCain Campaign. First, the words after the collapse of Lehman Brothers on Wall Street, "...the fundamentals of our economy are strong..." That statement alone mired McCain in not understanding the economy and being totally out of touch with the average American. And the pick of Sarah Palin.
This sums up the Palin pick by one strategist I overheard state, "she was great for August but a disaster for November." So true.
As in all losing campaigns, the big guns always come out to point the barrel at those who dragged a campaign down, well enter Palin.
Palin did energize the base, a base that was not excited about McCain. I give her credit for that. She was a good attack dog. But the race was always for the middle and it was here that she helped McCain lose. McCain Campaign thought putting her on the ticket would help with the disenfranchised women who were Hillary voters, but they ceased to remember that many of these women are issued voters. Just because Palin was a woman did not mean that women would flock to McCain and vote for him. As the voters became familiar with Palin's rigid, hard right views, many women said adios to McCain and hello to Obama.
She became a favorite among some social conservatives, but her cringe-worthy performances in TV interviews raised questions about her competence and provided fodder for late-night comedians. Her charisma attracted tens of thousands to Republican rallies, but voter surveys found her presence tilted a majority of independents and moderates to Barack Obama.
It was the Katie Couric interviews that turned many women, moderates and independents off, not only to Palin but to John McCain and his judgment to put a complete novice, uninformed of national issues on the ticket. The combination of the Katie interviews, Palin's apparent lie of the 150K in clothing, not just for herself but her family and the disatrous prank call of a fake President Nicholas Sarkozy has pointed the guns at her.
The disputes between the campaigns centered in large part on the Republican National Committee’s $150,000 wardrobe for Ms. Palin and her family, but also on what McCain advisers considered Ms. Palin’s lack of preparation for her disastrous interview with Katie Couric of CBS News and her refusal to take advice from Mr. McCain’s campaign.
But behind those episodes may be a greater subtext: anger within the McCain camp that Ms. Palin harbored political ambitions beyond 2008.
As late as Tuesday night, a McCain adviser said, Ms. Palin was pushing to deliver her own speech just before Mr. McCain’s concession speech, even though vice-presidential nominees do not traditionally speak on election night. But Ms. Palin met up with Mr. McCain with text in hand. She was told no by Mark Salter, one of Mr. McCain’s closest advisers, and Steve Schmidt, Mr. McCain’s top strategist.
On Wednesday, two top McCain campaign advisers said that the clothing purchases for Ms. Palin and her family were a particular source of outrage for them. As they portrayed it, Ms. Palin had been advised by Nicolle Wallace, a senior McCain aide, that she should buy three new suits for the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in September and three additional suits for the fall campaign. The budget for the clothes was anticipated to be from $20,000 to $25,000, the officials said. continue
There is much out there about Palin and it does not smell like roses. Instead of McCain picking a Vice-Presidential choice that is competent, ready to step in for any reason to the presidency, he picked an inexperience boob. And I am being nice here, while her dirty laundry is being talked about all over the teevee.
••
and.................
It was women who put Obama in the White House
Obama wins North Carolina
Nevada’s Change of Color
World leaders congratulate Obama
When red states, go blue, Doug Wilder
President-Elect Obama and Vice-President Elect Biden Pictures of Election Night
••
Chuck Todd, First Read
Home Page
Share
