OK, Team Obama has me worried now. Two announcements today are genuinely puzzling.
First, Patty Solis-Doyle. She manages to sound like someone I’d pay to keep away from my campaign:
She earned a reputation as a contentious, domineering boss. Along the way, many of the staff members who worked under her left or were forced out, including several high-powered members of Clinton’s inner circle, such as Kelly Craighead and Evelyn Lieberman, the deputy chief of staff to Bill Clinton famous for banishing Monica Lewinsky to the Pentagon. The frequent turnover in the fund-raising shop was a significant measure of Solis Doyle’s unpopularity. Clinton staffers are notably loyal, and turnover among them tends to be much lower than it is among the staffs of other politicians. Fund-raising under Solis Doyle was a glaring exception, chalking up the kind of body count you’d expect from an episode of The Sopranos. She was infamous among her colleagues for referring to herself as “the queen bee” and for her habit of watching daytime soap operas in her office. One frequent complaint among donors and outside advisers was that Solis Doyle often did not return calls or demonstrate the attention required in her position.
and
Here, too, Solis Doyle was disastrous; her lack of skill in areas other than playing the loyal heavy began to show. The first public sign of this came just after Clinton’s reelection to the Senate. Even though Clinton had faced no serious opponent, it turned out that Solis Doyle, as campaign manager, had burned through more than $30 million. As this New York Times story makes clear, the donor base was incensed. Toward the end of the Senate campaign, Solis Doyle did her best to bolster the impression of the inevitability of Hillary’s nomination as the Democratic presidential candidate, spreading word that Clinton’s Senate reelection fund-raising had gone so exceptionally well that $40 million to $50 million would be left after Election Day to transfer to the incipient presidential campaign. But this turned out to be a wild exaggeration…and Solis Doyle must have known it was. Disclosure filings revealed a paltry $10 million in cash on hand; far from conveying Hillary’s inevitability, this had precisely the opposite effect, encouraging, rather than frightening off, potential challengers.
So, hiring her was operationally maybe – not such a good idea. But it will help heal the rifts in the Party, right? Um, no. Kevin Drum adds:
…that Solis Doyle had become so estranged from Hillary Clinton after she was fired as Hillary’s campaign manager. Far from her hiring being a conciliatory gesture, the developing conventional wisdom is that Team Obama is sending the same kind of message to Team Clinton that the Tattaglia family sent to the Corleones in The Godfather:
“It’s a slap in the face,” Susie Tompkins Buell, a prominent Clinton backer, said in an interview. “Why would they put somebody that was so clearly ineffective in such a position? It’s a message. We get it.” She said it was a “calculated decision” by the Obama team to “send a message that she [Clinton] is not being considered for the ticket.”
Other Clinton insiders also seethed. “Who can blame Obama for rewarding Patti? He would never be the nominee without her,” one person who has worked for both Clintons and remains close to them said. The sentiment reflected what another person in the immediate Clinton orbit described as “shock” that Obama would send such a strong signal that he is not considering Clinton as his runningmate so soon.
Another Hillary supporter puts it even more bluntly: Hiring Solis is the “biggest f**k you I have ever seen in politics.”
OK, so someone help me understand what’s the play here.
And to add to it, we have the hire of Stephanie Cutter as Michelle Obama’s chief of staff. Ms. Cutter is famous for her leaden response to the Swift Boat Vets For Truth slams against John Kerry in 2004.
Another winning hire.
What the hell, Barack? There are all kinds of competent talented people out there you could have brought in for those positions. And this is what we get?
Stupid is as stupid does.
I suspect he has two considerations in mind.
First, he needs to repair the breach with the feminists from the primary. Hillary has been angling herself as the gatekeeper there, a sort of ‘no man comes to the women but through me’ ploy. He needs to either absorb her or move around her. The first being suicide he needs to start enlisting feminists with no ties to the Clinton-gumi. And somehow I doubt Ms. Solis-Doyle harbors many lingering attachments to Hill.
If he really wants to play hardball he can try to claim Doyle was scape-goated for Hillary’s mistakes and he’s simply recycling a talented organizer. A trash Hillary and build bridges to feminists double play. Seems dangerous and pointless at this stage in the game from my point of view, but who knows.
Second, she’s Hispanic with a reasonable track record of Hispanic activism. Chief of staff for the VP seems like a good way to rack up browny points on that front without burning a major position (like a cabinet slot).
I’m not sure how much of the squawking is genuine and how much is manufactured outrage on the part of the Clinton-gumi seeing a perceived end-run in progress…
Or maybe this is just a message that he intends to staff the VP side of the house entirely in political figureheads and keep them busy at ribbon cutting ceremonies. The anti-Cheney so to speak.
Let me know when he rehires Samantha Power. If he wants to slap at Sen. Clinton, she’s a good choice for that — and she might actually add something to his ticket.
I don’t know much about these things, but I’ll throw out my first thoughts anyway. Electioneering is a profession like any other, but a particularly lucrative one during the run up to the vote. I expect that these folks mostly know and hire each other in the way that other privileged groups do and that Obama hasn’t much to do with such mundane matters. He is but the figurehead of a team serving their own personal needs. And that team also includes the diplomats and academic experts who have been out of power these last eight years and hunger for their place at the table.
He might just be a bad judge of character.
I second that Marcus. This should be no surprise. If there is one thing we have learned over the past few months it is that Obama has gravitated to and surrounded himself with people of dubious character, ethics, etc. Rev. Wright, Rev. Flager, Bill Ayers, Rezco, 2 of 3 choices for VP vetters, the connections with former Iraqi ministers, etc. etc. Obama seems like a nice guy, but it more than abundantly clear that he is either (a) not a good judge of character, or (b) so politically ambitious that he doesn’t care about the ethics and thinks he can get away with it (which he largely has, so far).
Sorry – Fr. Pfleger, spelling correction.
How about I edit to fix the spelling in your post, and remove these follow-up messages – would that suit you?
#2 from Treefrog:
bq. _”Second, she’s Hispanic with a reasonable track record of Hispanic activism.”_
That might be it.
Barack Obama has bad character judgment. That’s obvious. He likes anti-white racists and activist types. That’s obvious too. And he wants the Hispanic vote. That’s enough to explain his decision, with no need to speculate on arcane tactical considerations or messages sent.
He might just be a bad judge of character.
I think it more likely that he just doesn’t know what is going on. The man is new, parochial, and has never done anything large scale before. He has also demonstrated a remarkable ignorance of the US, of Iraq, and of the world at large. Given time, he might figure things out. But I think he has been pushed too far, too fast.
I’m going with “Hispanic vote”.
I think a lot of the failure attributed to Solís Doyle and Cutter really belongs at the very top, the candidates they were working for.
Whatever one thinks of Obama’s policies, his campaign has been well run. I’d suggest the benefit of the doubt.
#11 from Andrew J. Lazarus:
bq. _”Whatever one thinks of Obama’s policies, his campaign has been well run. I’d suggest the benefit of the doubt.”_
Yup.
Also, burning through millions of dollars will not be a problem for Obama. Spend what you like, he’ll just raise more.
Whatever one thinks of Obama’s policies, his campaign has been well run.
This seems to be the conventional wisdom, but it it really true? Or is it that Clinton’s campaign was too poorly run that it looked good in contrast? I would think that a well-run campaign would have limped into the finish line as his did. And Hillary retains her delegates going into the convention. It’s not over until it’s over.
He’s shown a facility for not being able to get good help in the past. This seems to be part of a pattern.
D’oh!
“…so poorly run…” and “…wouldn’t have limped…”
Clinton’s response, delivered via an aide:
Translation:
It’s a Chicago thing. Outsider candidates always bring the local pols with them.
Whatever one thinks of Obama’s policies, his campaign has been well run. I’d suggest the benefit of the doubt.
I’m not really convinced of that.
On the one hand, I’m really not interested in the hip-wader version of Democrat infighting, because I’m neither a Democrat nor a Republican. If Obama sends a fuck-you to Clinton supporters, or if Clinton supporters are reading too much into a behind the scenes manuever, I really just don’t care that much. To the degree I care at all, it’s an emotionally detached chessboard interest, and that only holds my attention for a few minutes.
On the other hand, there are some people who fall into the category of being known for being wise, insightful, knowedgeable, etc… and yet who, every time I look in on them or have attention brought to them or are speaking about something I have knowledge of, seem to be saying or doing stupid things. I’m thinking primarily of Yglesias here, but he’s far from alone– there are Nobel Prize winners in that category. For all I know, that describes me, too.
But I am beginning to think that Obama belongs in this category. I started feeling that way around the time of the “We will renegotiate NAFTA” flap, and haven’t seen a reason to change that opinion, except that people keep telling me he’s brilliant, runs a good campaign, picks good advisors, etc.
So color me skeptical and in need of convincing, anyway.
Either Obama has narrowed the VP to a few people and Doyle is acceptable to all of them or the VP is going to be a figure head with no real power or influence over policy. If it is the first, why announce before the VP is? It doesn’t make sense. If it is the second, then Obama will have trouble getting people of substance to accept the position. That shows poor management skills.
I’m agree with A.L. on these hires – but also agree that Obama has run a smart campaign.
We’ll see. I want the campaign to continue the smart practical decisions, no drama, smart use of funds campaign we’ve seen thus far. (Although there are signs that the campaign is beginning to take the money for granted, which is never good.)
We’ll know more as other things happen.
So color me skeptical and in need of convincing, anyway.
You know, I forgot to add a necessary post script to my own entry, above. The post script is:
But then, this is an election, not some guy’s blog. There are vested interests in showing me every gaffe Obama makes, just as there are vested interests in convincing me that he’s a brilliant non-partisan organizer. Skeptical here is not a code-word for closed-minded. Skeptical just means skeptical.
I don’t see anything surprising about the PSD hire. _It was to send a message_.
Obama pointedly said when he spoke about the Democratic Party no longer would take money from lobbyists,” _My Party_” will no longer do this. This guy has just lead a successful insurgency against a powerful political Empire and won. He is methodically going about extirpating the remnants of the Old Regime and one way to do it is throwing the defeat in the face of the defeated. Hillary has no power anymore and she and Bill have to realize this.
I do not underestimate Obama. I think he is ruthless, a good trait in a politician and he believes, down deep that it is better to be feared than loved, another good trait in a politician.
Anyone that thinks that this guy is not a formidable adversary or is in any way soft is kidding themselves. This is the first whiff of testosterone that the Democratic Party has experienced since Lyndon Johnson.
P.S.
I knew Suzie Tomkins Buell personally when she was married to Doug Tomkins and owned Esprit. Let’s just say her experiences and Hillary’s are similar and equally irrelevant at this point in time.
Their brand of feminism is stuck in about 1980. The world has passed them by and they both will be surprised how flimsy their suuport is as we get closer to the election. No one ever remembers who lost the league championship games once the build up for the Super Bowl starts.