How to get a job in the Obama administration

The "diavlog" is one innovation of the Internet age I haven't much use for -- it takes an hour to listen to an hour -- but the section on transitions from one administration to the next was interesting.

I think, though, that it was somewhat unfair to the then-incoming Carter and Clinton administrations. Carter took office mere years after the Vietnam experience shattered the Democratic Party, and while the reaction to the civil rights battles of the 1960s was making the wing of the party he represented progressively weaker. Clinton had even fewer advantages, having to choose appointees from his campaign, from Congress, from an unsuccessful Democratic administration that had left office twelve years earlier or from people who had not held high appointive office before. Both transitions were replete with mistakes, but don't deserve the children's soccer game metaphor. President-elect Obama takes office not only with Clinton's example before him, but with the choice of a number of people who did good service under Clinton, plus a united party and an outgoing administration that has become a byword for incompetence, indifference and corruption. This isn't to take anything away from Obama or his transition team. It's only a recognition of the high cards history has dealt them.

By way of follow-up: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/us/politics/13apply.html?hp

The Times article on the clearance paperwork required of aspirants to jobs in an Obama administration does not mention the similarity of its questionnaire to the one Dick Cheney sent to people on the "short list" to become Bush's Vice President in 2000. An inquiry that detailed can prevent later embarrassments to an administration, but it also allows an administration, if it wishes, to hold embarrassing information over job aspirants or even to release it without the aspirants knowledge, as Cheney is alleged to have done to damage the prospects that then-Oklahoma governor Frank Keating would become Attorney General.

I was also amused to read this, which appears to preclude Dan, to say nothing of me, from ever being considered for a job in the incoming administration: "...[applicants] must include any e-mail that might embarrass the president-elect, along with any blog posts and links to their Facebook pages.

The application also asks applicants to 'please list all aliases or ‘handles’ you have used to communicate on the Internet.'"

In my executive experience as President of Student Council, I introduced a pancake day. It went over very well. May I suggest that everyone considering an appointment in the new administration consider adding a pancake day as part of their platform. You can raise, like, $800 for a homeless shelter... or General Motors.

(I also hooked up a Super Nintendo to the digital projector and turned the cafeteria into a big arcade like in the cinematic film, "The Wizard". Again, you can raise like $50 in an afternoon. I was awesome.)

of course, if you're cold-calling or first sending resumes at this point, you're highly unlikely even to be considered for anything serious or interesting. the time for such initial contacts was either several months ago (after the nomination was clinched) or, preferably, several months before that (in which case you have loyal veteran status).

Also, picking up on something Heather said, the need to understand actual foreign policymaking well enough to offer useful advice to, say, an incoming NSC senior director would exclude 99% of contemporary academics, even in IR, and the attempt to offer such advice when you don't even know the issues involved will only provoke laughter or rolled eyes.

But hey, we can all dream, eh?

Seriously, anybody starting to think about this sort of thing now is advised to think for 2012 or 2016 instead, and start with the requisite baby steps: policy-relevant publications, written in clear English, in appropriate venues; connection with appropropriate think-tanks and epistemic communities bearing on the policy world; slaving oneself to future potential senior appointees. All that, plus lots of elbow grease and luck, should get and keep one in the running to win the lottery and land a low-level spot in some future administration, from which base camp an assualt might be launched on higher parts of the mountain in still later administrations down the road.

Shorter LC: amateur job-seekers don't win when they compete against professionals.

lc