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Tracking the tradition of transitional traps

Thursday, February 5, 2009

A MERE TWO WEEKS OLD and Barack Obama’s Administration is already tarnished. That’s what comes, say the media’s many cynics, of raising the bar and voicing lofty ideals.

The adage “Yes we can” change the old order  … has become “maybe we can’t”. Certainly not, if we appoint the same old kind of politicians. Or if we exhibit the incompetence of ingénues and don’t really (that is, really) check out the backgrounds of our favored politicians for top appointments.

 

The withdrawal by former Senate Leader Tom Daschle (above left) from his planned trajectory toward rebuilding our nation’s broken healthcare system was appropriate and sort-of well-managed when the moment came … but it was way overdue.

 

Any careful look at Daschle’s record during the past four years - since he was appointed to the Advisory Board of his friend Leo Hindery’s private equity company InterMedia Partners, gaining an annual fee of $1 million (quite apart from that much-cited limo and driver, on which he didn’t immediately pay taxes) - should have told the Obama team to be leery about bringing this once well-grounded senator into their new cabinet.

 

For the Chief Executive to say now, as he did to CBS News’ Katie Couric: “I think I messed up”, is an understatement. Perhaps in recognition of this, when Obama sat down the same afternoon with NBC News’ Brian Williams he went straight for a verb further along the demotic scale, offering: “I’m here on television saying I screwed up”. And he niftily portrayed this straightforward acknowledgment as emblematic of his new, improved kind of leadership. “That’s part of the era of responsibility”, he claimed.

 

Messing up - or even screwing up - in such clumsy ways is clearly an occupational hazard for any new administration, in whatever era. Today's media are - no surprise - drawing some overstretched parallels with the first troubled weeks (which turned into months) of our last Democratic administration - under Bill Clinton, who seemed singularly ill-prepared. Remember Zoe Baird (above center, as captured by TIME magazine) who was Clinton's nominee for Attorney General, but who hadn’t told his transition team’s vetters that she’d employed undocumented immigrants as domestic help, and not paid their social security taxes? That, compounded with other early missteps by the Clinton team, is now etched into the sense-memory of our body politic.

 

But who, I’d ask now, remembers George W Bush’s initial choice for Labor Secretary? That was Linda Chavez (above right) who could have been the first Latina in the US Cabinet - but had to withdraw amid stories about an undocumented immigrant in her household, whose existence had not been made known to the Bush vetters. The Chavez revelations prompted the Los Angeles Times among others to treat the snafu as a case of “Zoe Baird redux” – and yet the setback was soon publicly forgotten.

 

A public relations report-card wouldn’t rate any of these any of these beginning very highly – but there are interesting and telling differences. Clinton zig-zagged through the embarrassment. Bush stamped on it. Obama promptly 'fessed up, hoping that an open-handed if brisk admission would let him “get this thing back on track”, in his words.

   

 

** EVERY WEEK CONNECTICUT'S NPR STATION, WHDD (ROBIN HOOD RADIO) AIRS A DISCUSSION BASED ON THIS COLUMN - Fridays at 7.35 am, and Saturdays at 4.45 pm.**

 

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IT’S BACK TO OBAMA BASICS in the field of actual policy-making, if not personnel apointments. The biggest weapon in the Obama campaign’s armory is, not surprisingly, being picked up again -- now that the campaign has become an (only slightly distanced) branch of government. The famous, extraordinary email list built up by the campaign and comprising some 13 million Obama-supporting citizens, is now controlled by the newly named “Organizing for America” task force.

 

OFA (the same acronym, you’ll have noted, as “Obama for America”, its campaigning predecessor) operates out of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters, and is led by former campaign digirati like Mitch Stewart, who a little over a year ago was collecting email addresses from attendees at Iowa pre-caucus meetings.  Stewart will function quite separately – we’re told – from the recently installed White House internet genius Macon Phillips, whom THE MEDIA BEAT highlighted last month.

 

Quite separately and appropriately - again, we're told - it’s from the OFA’s web-machinery, at Stewart’s direction, that this week’s energizing missives have gone out to that impressive address list, asking recipients - just like during the heady campaign days - to gather in each others’ homes over the coming weekend in a support-building exercise. This time it’s not so much “Get-out-the-Vote” as it’s “Pressurize your Senator” over the President’s stimulus plan. 

 

You may take the man out of south Chicago, but it seems you can’t take south Chicago out of this man’s make-up, and he will probably continue as he's trying to start out …  as the Organizer-in-Chief.

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