There are days when you can tell that the DC press corps knows more than it can actually say, because of off-the-record conversations and the like.  And then there are days when the press overinterprets something to death.  I think today is one of the latter. 

For Exhibit A, let’s go with this lead from Politico’s Ben Smith & John F. Harris: 

President-elect Barack Obama’s selection of Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) as his White House chief of staff is the latest demonstration of a quality Obama showed repeatedly over the course of his campaign: He’s willing to do what it takes to win.

If his goal had been to create a cordial bipartisan tone in Washington — much less a calm, profanity-free West Wing — Obama would have looked elsewhere.

Smith & Harris’ lead is pretty much how people are reading this pick — which strikes me as idiotic.  Looking back, is there any correlation between the combativeness of the chief of staff and the exent of bipartisan comity?  George H.W. Bush’s first chief of staff, John Sununu, rubbed a lot of people the wrong way — but one can hardly call Bush 41 a hyperpartisan president.  George W. Bush’s first chief of staff, Andy Card, had a reputation as a mild-mannered, moderate kind of guy — but the first term of Bush 43 wasn’t exactly brimming with bipartisanship. 

The fact is that the extent of bipartisan cooperation in DC has little to do with the temperment of the chief of staff and everything to do with the preferences and leadership styles of the President and the majority and minority leaders of Congress. 

Maybe things will be nasty between Obama and the GOP — but I seriously doubt if Emanuel will have much to do with it one way or the other. 

Tagged as: politics

Posted by Dan     2 Comments »

Noam Scheiber has an excellent story in The New Republic profiling the two leading candidates to be Treasury Secretary — former Secretary Larry Summers and current chairman of the New York Fed Tim Geithner.  It’s mostly about Gethner, but it contains this priceless example of the hubris, brilliance and abrasiveness of Summers:

Summers’s brilliance made him simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting to work for–a whirlwind of intellectual energy fueled by an endless supply of Diet Coke. “I remember once giving him a memo that was three pages long,” recalls Steve Radelet, a onetime Harvard economist who worked for both Summers and Geithner. “I’d worked on it for days and days. He read it in a minute and a half. He looked at me, saying, ‘I don’t agree with your argument. But, if I were making your argument, I could have made it better. Here’s how.’ “

I heard a boatload of stories like this when I was at Treasury.  I should also add that I heard nothing but good things about Geithner. 

Based on what I know and hear about both men, my slight preference would probably be for Geithner, but on policy grounds I don’t think there is a bad choice to be made between these two. 

Politically, I see that there’s already an effort to spike Summers.  Over at the Huffington Post, Max Blumenthal is claiming that Summers’ authored a controversial World Bank memo advocating environmental dumping in the developing world.  Regardless of the intrinsic merits of this position, Blumenthal’s allegaion is horses**t.   To read what actually happened, click here. 

Hat tip:  Ben Smith. 

UPDATE:  Fortune’s Andy Serwer thinks Summers has the inside track. 

Tagged as: economics, politics

Posted by Dan     4 Comments »

Pssst… you, the lowly intern working at the DC think tank!  Are you wondering why all the fellows seem so tense and grouchy?  My latest column at TNI Online provides a partial explanation — the stress that comes with trying to get a government job:   

Election Day profoundly affects the lives, hopes and dreams of D.C. policy people—in the form of what they might be doing for the next four years. For foreign-policy analysts, there are really only two states of being—being in charge of American foreign policy and desperately wanting to be in charge of American foreign policy.

Read the whole thing. 

[So does this mean you're lobbying for an administration position?  Is this why you decided to vote for Obama?--ed.] 

No and no.  Like the president-elect, I have young children that are quite comfortable where they are.  Unlike the president-elect, the government wouldn’t be providing us swanky public housing if we moved to DC. 

Tagged as: U.S. foreign policy, culture, politics

Posted by Dan     5 Comments »

I was on the BBC’s Newhour with Claire Bolderson very, very early in the morning to talk about the election, so my head’s still a bit groggy.  Still, a few assorted odds & ends this morning:

1. I said that the concession speech was going to be my favorite part of the evening, and John McCain did not disappoint.  He turned his audience’s boos at the mention of Barack Obama to relatively warm applause (though click here as well).  UPDATE:  I agree with Jonathan Martin that President Bush hit the right grace notes in his morning address as well. 
2. Obama’s acceptance speech was equally gracious.  Mickey Kaus notes the things that weren’t mentioned.  What I found interesting was the fact that he explicitly addressed non-Americans. 
3. Stepping back, the election night does not appear to have been as strong for the Democrats as some had hoped.  They’re not going to get to 60 seats in the Senate — though that was always an outside shot at best.  The House gains also appear to be smaller than expected.  Given the gains they had two years ago, this is not terribly surprising, but it is worthy of note. 
4. So much for the Bradley Effect. 
5. Now comes the fun part for the policy wonks — who gets what job, and who gets snubbed!!  Based on Obama’s organization to date, I expect the transition to be pretty quick. 
6. I’m hopeful that after this week, the names Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, and Tony Rezko will never be uttered on news shows ever again. 
7. 45 years ago, in his “I have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. said that, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”  Obama was two years old when King said that.  It’s a testament to King’s vision that, in 2008, Obama ran a campaign that asked Americans to do just that. 
8. I’m sensing from my readers that they would like to see some more Salma Hayek posts.  While not involving the lovely and charming Ms. Hayek, I hereby link to the World’s Most Awesome Commercial Ever.   

That is all. 

Tagged as: politics

Posted by Dan     23 Comments »

Over at Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee asked a bunch of people — your humble blogger included — to recommend the book that the next president should read before taking office. 

I went old, old school: 

I’d probably advise the president to read the uber-source for international relations, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Too many people only read portions like the Melian Dialogue, which leads to a badly distorted view of world politics (the dialogue represents the high-water mark of Athenian power — it all goes downhill after that). The entire text demonstrates the complex and tragic features of international politics, the folly of populism, the occasional necessity of forceful action, the temptations and dangers of empire, and, most importantly, the ways in which external wars can transform domestic politics in unhealthy ways.

 I was torn between Thucydides and Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, but I figured — correctly — that Obama was already familiar with that work.

I’ll put the same question to you that Scott put to me:  what one book would you recommend to the president-elect? 

Tagged as: Academia, U.S. foreign policy, culture

Posted by Dan     24 Comments »

Comment away on the election results, the media coverage of the results, and the blog coverage of the media coverage of the results.

One thing I’ll note is the contrast between experts saying that the exit polls should be discounted, but that it could also be an early night because of so many key states closing their polls so early. 

UPDDATE, 9:15 PM:  CNN calls Georgia for McCain, which means that my prediction won’t be right on the nose. 

As of 9:15, the Electoral College breakdown is an exact replay of 2004.

UPDATE, 9:25 PM:  And a few minutes after I type that, I discover Fox and MSNBC call Ohio for Obama.  Given what we know about everywhere else, that’s the ballgame. 

UPDATE, 9:51 PM:  MSNBC’s First Read has three sources confirming that Obama has offered Rahm Emanuel the chief of staff position.  Politico’s Ben Smith reports on one upside of an Emanuel pick:  “leaks.”

UPDATE, 10:55 PM:  Is it me or is Fox News doing the best job of quickly and accurately calling states?  They’ve beaten CNN on New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Mexico, and Virginia. 

UPDATE, 10:59 PM:  Obama should have it in the next minute.

UPDATE, 11:00 PM:  That’s President-elect Barack Hussein Obama to you. 

Tagged as: politics

Posted by Dan     12 Comments »

Readers are encouraged to post their electoral predictions for tomorrow night in the comments.  Here are mine: 

• Electoral College:  368-170 for Obama
• Popular Vote:  53-45 for Obama
• Senate:  +8 for Democrats

Post your predicions in the comments.  The commenter who comes closest to the actual results wins the ultimate prize — s/he can select the topic of a post for your humble blogger. 

UPDATE:  Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com posts his prediction based on the final poll numbers:  Obama 349, McCain 189 in the Electoral College, with a popular vote margin of 6.1%.  For what it’s worth, I have the Electoral College breaking exactly the way Silver does — except that I have Obama pulling off an upset in Georgia (essentially, I think Obama overperforms his poll numbers in the South but not in the rest of the country). 

Here’s my map: 

Tagged as: politics

Posted by Dan     40 Comments »

And now, the end is near….

In Newsweek, Nate Silver provides a useful hour-by-hour description of what to expect tomorrow. 

Meanwhile, I see that David Broder thinks this has been the best election campaign ever.  Yeah, not so much. It was the greatest primary campaign ever.  Both the Democrat and Republican races being seen as up for grabs for much longer than anyone anticipated, and from a narrative perspective, the eventual victories of McCain and Obama were entertaining. 

By comparison, the general election has been a bit of a bore.  In part, this is because the expectations for both McCain and Obama were higher.  They were both seen as interesting, idiosyncratic, atypical politicians with broad-based appeal.  The general election campaign has not earned any of those adjectives. 

However, I will make one prediction – whoever loses should give an awesome concession speech. 

It fits with both campaigns.  For McCain, it would be his chance to do the honorable thing — and help to improve his media image.  For Obama, it would be consistent with his message of reaching across party lines. 

I like the ritual of concession speech, and this year it will be more important than ever.  If Obama wins, there will be a lot of angry GOPers upset over a foreign Muslim socialist who had his memoirs ghostwritten liberal Democrat winning office; Obama will be lucky to have McCain’s imprimatur. 

If McCain wins, the collective shock from the media and the Obama faithful will be enormous — so big that only a good concession larded with lots of grace and promises that the election actually was free and fair. 

Question to readers:  what are you looking forward to the most tomorrow? 

Tagged as: Uncategorized, politics

Posted by Dan     15 Comments »

Daniel Larison has an excellent post at Eunomia on the Obamacan phenomenon, of which I guess I’m a reluctant member.  His main point: 

Pretty clearly, the Obamacon phenomenon is on the whole not really an endorsement of Obama or anything he proposes to do, which is why most of the endorsements coming from the right cannot withstand much scrutiny.  That’s the whole point: the Republican ticket is so unappealing to these people that they will vote for its defeat in full knowledge that there is little or nothing to say on behalf of the man they’re electing.  

He’s got a point — when I read the policy platforms of both candidates, I like more of McCain’s than Obama’s.  But recall what I said way back in January: 

[T]hings like pesonality and leadership style are relevant to voting decisions (and are tough to capture in suveys). A candidate’s policy positions are not the only thing that matter. The way in which the candidate will try to implement these policies matters too. I wouldn’t vote for a candidate who shared my precise policy positions but decided to implement them by constitutionally questionable methods, for example. Process matters just as much as substance.

And this is where I disagree with Larison.  The one positive trait that conservatives of all stripes have linked to Barack Obama is his first-rate temperament.  A more conservative way of saying this is that Obama understands and practices prudence.  This doesn’t mean that he’s timid — simplu put, he reflects before he acts. 

Does this mean that I agree with everything Obama says and does?  Hardly.  I do, however, respect the way in which he arrives at his decisions.  I can’t say the same thing about John McCain’s decision-making process. 

Tagged as: politics

Posted by Dan     24 Comments »

There are myriad reports and anecdotes about how early voting numbers are favoring Barack Obama, making it much tougher for John McCain to win in certain states, especially with lower levels of enthusiasm for the GOP ticket. 

This might very well be true, but the political scientist in me wonders about the perverse effects of early voting.  It’s not like I was a huge fan of it anyway, but the more I game this out, the more I wonder if the candidate with the more enthusiastic base is hurt by early voting.   

Bear with me here….

Let’s posit that a voter with greater enthusiasm for a candidate will be willing to incure greater costs to go and vote.  So, an enthusiastic voter is more willing to ignore foul weather or long lines at the polls to have their vote counted. 

All well and good.  If you’re the candidate with the more enthusiastic base, however, then this means you wouldn’t necessarily be a huge fan of early voting.  Presumably, early voting reduces the costs of going to vote on Election Day, in the form of shorter lines and waiting times.  Therefore, the candidate with the less passinate base of support is helped by early voting, because supporters who would otherwise be turned off by long lines are now willing to vote.  If, on the other hand, all voters had to cast their ballot on Election Day, then the costs of voting would be higher, and the enthusiastic supporters would crowd out the more tepid voters. 

There are two caveats to this.  First, if voting turnout is at the record levels predicted, then the effect I just described would be muted.  Second, if Obama is disproprtionately banking the early votes of his more tepid supporters, because of that option, then he’s still better off. 

Am I missing anything here? 

Tagged as: politics

Posted by Dan     18 Comments »