TNR’s Norm Schieber takes a close look at the candidate’s advisers in economics and foreign policy:
The real difference between the Obama campaign
and, say, Hillary Clinton’s, is twofold. First, while many of the
Obamanauts had previously served in the Clinton administration, they
tended to be younger or less influential than the officials who signed
on with Hillary. Clinton advisers like former secretary of state
Madeleine Albright and former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke tend to
be “more invested in justifying or glorifying” the Clinton record, says
one Obama foreign policy hand, whereas the Obamanauts don’t have the
same “permanent need to fight for the legacy of your time in
government.”The second difference is that
the Obama hands tend to feel less hemmed in by establishment opinion.
As one Obama adviser puts it, “Democrats want to be just a little bit
different from Republicans, but not so different that they get attacked
for being weak.” Like Hamilton, the Obamanauts generally reject this
calculus–not because they favor some radical alternative, but because
clinging to received foreign policy wisdom can preclude highly
practical courses of action.
February 26th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Right… and I too am excited by the obamanauts… I’m pretty close to drinking the Kool aid for sure. However, I must ask the question, what happens when the “less influentials” become the “influentials”?
February 26th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
The Democrats are exhibiting the same “old” (defend the past) vs. “new” (invent the future) dichotomy that Karl Weick observes in the business world.
February 27th, 2008 at 6:43 pm
Is this a fancy way of saying Obamanauts are, um, younger?