Obama's 300

the graphic in the Bumiller story is interesting. Four categories: generalists, technocratic specialists, politicos, and clintonite bigfeet. The last category are obviously unimportant window dressing, which is one of the pleasant and interesting parts of the story. the third category are relatively minor, which is nice to see because those types aren't actually all that helpful or impressive. So the first two categories are key. Obama's generalists are a mixed bag: Rice and Lake are not the best available, McDonogh is smart but an assembler rather than a policy guy. Lippert is good but young. Craig and Danzig are good. Most promising indicator: the second category types are top-notch professionals pretty much across the board, which bodes well. Remember: the Clinton NSC staff was lions led by donkeys, so the fact that the younger lions are in a position to run things this time is all to the good.

lc

One needs go no further than this line:

"Most of the core members of his team served in government during President Bill Clinton’s administration..."

to understand the foreign policy disaster that awaits us if Obama is elected....unless, of course, one wants to see the Secretary of State once again dancing in the streets of Pyongyang....

Elect Obama and get Albright and Christopher in the bargain.

*shudder*

How much does this tell us?

On one hand, it's interesting for what it does not say. Sen. Obama, whose focus has been campaign politics for a very long time, does not appear to have a circle of intimates from whom we could get a good idea of how his administration would run in the foreign policy and national security areas. This was also true of Bush when he ran in 2000, and of Clinton in 1992. Both Clinton and Bush ended up delegating large areas of policy to subordinates, with Clinton keeping in somewhat closer touch with what his subordinates were doing. Right now Obama appears to be getting advice from a lot of people, and keeping any thoughts he might have about what some of those people might do and how they would relate to him and to one another after the campaign is over very much to himself.

On the other hand, his foreign and national security advisers now are still largely self-selected, on the team because they were willing to stay off the Clinton bandwagon last year and stick with Obama during the primaries. We don't know for certain how important that is to Obama. Frankly, it would be better for him if this were not so important; the government is too big to staff only with people who were with Obama during the campaign, and there have to be many perfectly capable Clinton supporters who backed Sen. Clinton only because they thought (along with most other people) that she was likely to win the nomination.

Three other random thoughts: first, while it's nice that so many people on Obama's team are into soft power and so forth, at the moment the United States is fighting two wars. Whatever an Obama administration were to end up doing about Iraq and Afghanistan, a great deal of its attention would of necessity need to be directed at warfighting and logistics. This suggests to me that retired military officers might turn up more frequently in an Obama administration than we might think.

The second random thought relates both to my first comment and to Sec. Gates remarks the other day about the militarization of foreign policy. The State Department's position as the lead agency in foreign policy is much weaker now than it was fifteen years ago, a situation created by both the Clinton and Bush administrations. If that is going to change, an Obama administration will need a very strong Secretary of State, one able to shove aside competitors for the President's ear, to dominate his own department, and to recover some of the turf lost to the Pentagon in recent years. It isn't clear to me where such a Secretary would come from. I don't see anyone like that emerging from this group.

Finally, Bumiller's article doesn't tell us much about how Obama sees his own role in the making of foreign and national security policy. We know how he manages foreign policy advice to get him through the campaign, and that is fine. The fact remains, though, that Obama has never come any closer to doing what a President can do in foreign policy than Dan Drezner has. The state of his thinking about how he would conduct himself as President in this area is unknown at this time.

This blog article shows where Obama's policy fails
http://stockparadise.blogspot.com/2008/07/iran-talks-should-lower-oil-prices.html

I just have to assume that a Secretary of State of the ilk of Joseph Biden would be a pretty strong voice within an Obama administration. Obama benefits from having a few people with strong institutional memories of U.S. foreign policy.

Zathras says:

"If that is going to change, an Obama administration will need a very strong Secretary of State, one able to shove aside competitors for the President’s ear, to dominate his own department, and to recover some of the turf lost to the Pentagon in recent years. It isn’t clear to me where such a Secretary would come from. I don’t see anyone like that emerging from this group."

And that's why Richard Holbrooke's name will eventually get into the mix. I don't know if he scares the enemy, but he scares me--mostly in a good way.

Barack Obama's 300 Spartans (Advisors)?

It seems that you claim to be truthful and advocate CHANGE, and yet you enlist 300 soldiers, (advisors) to give advice on "as the world turns", is quite alarming. If you sir, need 300 paid advisors to help you make a decision then you have not done your homework. You have managed to create your own independent congress of people that are burning thru your $5.00 internet donations like sand thru an hour glass. It alarms me that if THEY decide to place you in that office, your staff would double?

If your 300 were like the Spartans and lead by a leader like King Leonidas , of which you are not, then your 300 advisors are justified.

But in this case they are not.

You wish to be the President of the United States of America, and yet you still lie, you hire an outrageous staff of succubus's that have their own interests, you do not attend to the poor, you are too concerned with keywords and false policy that fool those that really want CHANGE, you cannot stroll thru an American neighborhood unless you have your SS officers with you, not allowing Americans to protect you, you are so concerned that you will say the wrong thing, because you are not allowed to speak your own words, you have taken from the American people their hard earned $5.00 and given them nothing in return, you have no idea how big and deep the rabbit hole is that you have started to go down. The 300 Spartans defended their freedom and their Homeland, and you sir, are defending those that wish to rape the land and enslave Americans like Xeres attempted to do.

You are making policy on the run, without regard to the outcome, and we Americans will suffer for your mistakes and blunders.

These next four years will be yours, but the next four years after that will be for the American People.

CHANGE FOR AMERICA FOR AMERICANS!
The American Republic
A Sovereign Republic