In interviews, several top Obama advisers said they are extending to domestic affairs a model of governance that has long been used in foreign policy, in which the national security adviser manages diplomatic and military matters from a perch in the White House that offers him or her ready access to the president.

...Top Obama advisers spent months studying the internal workings of previous administrations and came away convinced that high-priority issues require a White House coordinator akin to the national security adviser. White House veterans say the new posts are the clearest signal yet that the incoming president has no patience for the resistance to change that permeates the capital.

"He's taking his top priorities and doubling down by making sure they are operating in full coordination in the White House as well as in the agencies," said Patrick J. Griffin, who served as President Bill Clinton's legislative affairs director. "It really is a way of him maximizing the opportunity to control all aspects of these efforts."


There are plenty of detractors of course, who think he's nuts, that he's surrounded himself with a cabal of strong personalities who will only fight amongst themselves and furiously protect their various turfs.

Noooo...That would be George W. Bush, who sat by and watched blandly while Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleeza Rice got into a shouting match in his presence, and who otherwise turned away from all unpleasant leadership-type duties.

Obama has ground rules, and not just the "no drama" one.  He's also made it clear that he will not tolerate turf wars under any circumstances.  There will no doubt be jockeying for favoritism, but Obama's habit of allowing any and all to say their piece and to be heard by him should prevent most of that.  People jockey for position because they feel powerless and unheard.  He listens to all, clearly spells out what he expects of them, and then trusts them to do it, but he doesn't turn them lose to run roughshod over anyone they like.  This is how he ran a very efficient campaign and is very likely what we'll see in the White House as well.

He spells it out, in fact, in another Post piece by Michael D. Shear, "Obama Pledges Entitlement Reform," from January 16, 2009:



"The theory behind it is I set the tone," Obama said. "If the tone I set is that we bring as much intellectual firepower to a problem, that people act respectfully towards each other, that disagreements are fully aired, and that we make decisions based on facts and evidence as opposed to ideology, that people will adapt to that culture and we'll be able to move together effectively as a team."

He added: "I have a pretty good track record at doing that."


He described his Cabinet for Anne E. Kornblut of the Post in the January 18 piece, "Transition Signals a Centrist Approach in Obama White House":


Obama, who has sought to elude political definition since his early days as a candidate, described his almost fully formed Cabinet as having the "right blend of innovation versus old hands," and he reiterated that change will emanate from him, not from his inner circle.

"I was never of the belief that the way you bring about change is to not hire anybody who knows how things work, and to start from scratch and completely reinvent the wheel," he said. "I'm the one who brings change. It is my vision. It is my agenda. It is the one that we talked about during the campaign and those millions of people voted for. But I want some good mechanics who know how to run the system based on the goals and the vision that I set."

As for ideology, he said: "Part of what we're trying to eliminate is thinking through that lens."


What he's signaling is that yes, he's assembled some strong personalities and yes, he's brought in some "Washington insiders" as well as such creatures as a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, but he will be establishing the guidelines within which they will be working.

Have you noticed how, since the announcement was made, Hillary Clinton's appointment to Secretary State has been remarkabley leak-free?  She comes from a notoriously leaky tradition, dating back to the first Clinton campaign for the presidency in 1992, and there were hints of it again, in the beginning of this process.  But Obama does not like leaks, and Hillary is a team player.  He provided the guidelines and she has done her best to abide by them.  This is what a true leader does.  They don't micro-manage every little thing their team does but they do set guidelines of what they expect.

There is more to governing, though, than appointing a strong team of advisors and Cabinet members.  So many young readers who grew up in the 80's and 90's really don't have any idea how government is supposed to function, because all they know is screaming and shouting and name-calling and gridlock.

But true governing is a matter of reaching out to all parties, weeding out extremist notions on both sides that aren't practical or fair, looking for common ground in the middle, making some concessions and some compromises, and standing true to the core principles.

But a true leader knows how to work across the aisle with RESPECT for the viewpoints presented, some compassion, even, for their side, and he or she knows how to find that common ground.

In the end, everybody will be just a little bit disappointed, because you can't get every single little thing you want.  But if the core principles have been established and adhered to, it is something you can not only live with, but exhult in.

But it's not just about finding common ground.  It's also about horse-trading, an absolutely essential skill for any good politician.

A piece in Politico by Jonathan Martin called "Obama Tries to Seduce Republicans" spells this out pretty well:


According to Obama officials, the president-elect has personally reached out to Senate GOP leaders, Mitch McConnell (Ky.) and Jon Kyl (Ariz.), as well as key committee ranking members Charles Grassley (Iowa) and Judd Gregg (N.H.) and such moderates as Olympia Snowe (Maine).

Kyl, Gregg and Snowe were three of only six Senate Republicans who joined with most Democrats Thursday in opposing a resolution disapproving of Obama’s request to release the remaining bailout money.

Among Republicans, Obama seems to have made deeper inroads thus far in the more consensus-driven Senate, where he already has personal relationships from his four years there.

“I think he understands that 41 Republicans can affect what finds its way to his desk,” said Burr, alluding to the need to get 60 votes in the Senate for most bills to procede to a vote.

But Obama hasn’t necessarily shirked the more conservative House GOP minority.

Cantor said a hearing that Republicans held Thursday on the stimulus came after Obama call for more bipartisan cooperation in a meeting with Congressional leadership.

“He was very clear: he said bring us your ideas,” Cantor recalled. “I take the president-elect at his word that he really does want to change the way Washington works.”


During the Tom "The Hammer" and Newt Gingrich nightmare-days, even moderate REPUBLICANS were shut out of the Bush White House.  The thought that Obama is reaching out even to conservatives can make all the difference in the world in his achieving the progressive progress we all want.

It does not mean he is "selling out."  Nor does it mean that he is conceding power to Congress, which some are already fretting over.

It means he knows how to get things done.  The House and the Senate is nothing if not a gigantic cauldron of huge egos.  Even little signs of respect--such as his visiting the House rather than making them all come to him right now--can go a long way to soothing those petty little egos and getting our country out of the mess they got us in in the first place.

One last point on the subject of Obama's governing style.

He speaks directly to us, the voters, the citizens, his fellow Americans.  He does it in ways we understand, in language we can comprehend, and talks to us like the adults we are--unafraid of complexities and gray areas of various issues.

And he uses the new technology to do it, which brings us back to the original theme of this series.

Again, in the Post, a piece called "Obama Makes a Point of Speaking of the People, to the People," by Chris Cillizza, from December 11, 2008, makes this point very well:


Bush's topic yesterday (in the weekly White House radio address) was the fight against illegal drugs; other recent subjects have included Thanksgiving and the transition process. Even when Bush dedicated six straight radio addresses to the economy -- from mid-September to late October -- the tone was more review than preview.

The incoming president's approach to the address also differs in how content is presented, by marrying the 100-year-old technology of radio to 21st-century tools: The speech is still beamed out to radio stations nationwide on Saturday mornings, but now it is also recorded for digital video and audio downloads from YouTube, iTunes and the like, so people can access it whenever and wherever they want.

"One of the fundamental precepts of our campaign was to use the new technology to reinvigorate our democracy. That's a commitment we will bring to this administration," senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said.

That strategy speaks to a broader revolution of how Obama will communicate with the American public, said Doug Sosnik, who was a senior aide in the Clinton White House.

"Once a decade or two, a president comes in and redefines how the White House communicates," Sosnik said. He noted that President Ronald Reagan, who introduced the weekly radio address in 1982, also perfected the political power of television broadcasts. That built on the concepts first grasped by John F. Kennedy in the early 1960s, while President Bill Clinton took it a step further by focusing on cable and satellite television.

"The mainframe for this White House will be the Internet, not TV," Sosnik added. "They will cater to TV. And it will be integrated into the overall digital strategy. But it's not going to be the end-all."


It's not just You-Tube addresses where Obama can be an effective communicator.  He can mobilize his powerful network of enthusiastic supporters, via the Internet, to help him get policy initiatives that matter to them passed:


Now, instead of asking backers to register friends to vote, Obama will aim to use technological advances to build grass-roots support for policy initiatives, according to Joe Trippi, who managed former Vermont governor Howard Dean's 2004 Democratic presidential bid.

"Obama will be more directly connected to millions of Americans than any president who has come before him, and he will be able to communicate directly to people using the social networking and Web-based tools such as YouTube that his campaign mastered," Trippi said. "Obama's could become the most powerful presidency that we have ever seen."

I will get into more of the specifics on how you--yeah, I'M TALKIN' TO YOU!--can get involved in this thrilling new experiment in democracy, especially if you feel like one supporter said on November 5:  "Now what?"

Those details coming up in Part IV.  I should get it up in the next couple of hours, and for those of you perusing TPM during the Inaugural parade, you should have some interesting reading.

Just for your reading pleasure, though, you might consider Matt Bai's New York Times Magazine piece, "The Edge of Mystery," from last Sunday.  It's about Obama compares to another charismatic young president, John Kennedy, and how in many ways, he might be more effective.