Clinton band back together: "the great good fortune of a Party with a usable past"

[DeepModem Mom]

Politico: The Clinton band is back together
By BEN SMITH & CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN | 11/14/08


President-elect Obama answers a question as his Chief of Staff-designate Rahm Emanuel, a former Clinton White House aide, listens during a news conference in Chicago, Friday, Nov. 7, 2008. (AP)

Here's how you can tell the campaign is over and the transition has begun: Barack Obama's aides now wear suits and ties, their desks are in the Federal Building on 6th Street in Washington — and Clintonites are everywhere.

Obama's victory in the general election produced what his primary campaign couldn't: A swift merger of the Clinton Wing of the Democratic Party with the Illinois Senator's self-styled insurgency. The merger began, during the campaign, in the policy apparatus — which is now rapidly becoming the governing apparatus.

The absorption of the Clinton government in waiting represents Obama's choice not to repeat what he and his advisors see as an early mistake made by the last two presidents: Attempting to wield power in Washington through an insular campaign apparatus new to town.

Obama's first major appointments have been Democrats who worked for President Clinton and did not endorse him in the primary: Transition chief John Podesta and Rep. Rahm Emanuel, who will be White House chief of staff, stayed neutral, and Ron Klain, who will be Joe Biden's chief of staff, backed Biden. Obama, advisers told Politico, may even be weighing offering Hillary Rodham Clinton herself the Cabinet plum of Secretary of State.

"Obama is showing great good sense in making use of their experience," said William Galston, a former Clinton domestic policy adviser who’s now at the Brookings Institution. "You have an entire cadre of people in their 30s and 40s and early 50s who were either in senior jobs or second- and third-tier jobs in the Clinton administration, who really earned their spurs and know their way around — and know something about how the institutions in which they served actually function."

Galston noted that while Clinton shunned the remnants of the Carter Administration in 1992, Obama's Democratic predecessor led a popular eight-year administration, and the party is no longer riven by deep ideological splits.

"The president-elect has the great good fortune of having a Democratic Party with a usable past," said Galston, who downplayed the differences between the Clinton and Obama camps during the primary. "It was never a substantive or an ideological split — it was more like Team A and Team B."...

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1108/15617.html

[dorktv]

1. Makes sense to me. That way his own people can get some time to learn

about the process before he gets rid of the Clinton people.

[11cents]

2. That's not the way it will work....

...since the incoming administration will be run by adults and not squalling redfaced babies.

[Captain Hilts]

3. The Carter Admin. was not a good example of how to run things. Sorry.

And it had been 12 years since they were in office.