In the Arena

Team of Strategists

Matt Yglesias thinks that the Obama transition has a different book from Doris Goodwin’s Team of Rivals as its blueprint. Maybe so, but Obama sure does talk a lot about Lincoln (and Goodwin). In any case, after one of the best run campaigns I’ve covered, this is now one of the best-run transitions. Especially notable is the fact that Obama broke with the FDR precedent of lying low and letting Hoover stew in the Depression, which a lot of talking heads were advising him to do: he’s taken an active, public role in attempting to reassure the markets. So far as I can tell, there have been no false steps yet.

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  • spinmd

    Pretty good for a muslim terrorist!

  • sgwhiteinfla

    Which talking heads were that? On FoxNews you have those stooges calling it an “Obama Recession”. On MSNBC you have Joe effin Scarborough and Tweety saying Obama is leaving a leadership vacuum by not coming out and saying anything. On CNN you have their motley crew criticizing Obama because he wouldnt talk about the auto bailout while he was trying to get his lunch last week. So again I ask who exactly were saying Obama should lay low. Better yet who exactly were saying any thing that be construed as them saying they would allow him to sit back and relax until Jan 20th withough throwing him under the bus. Please tell me who those people are so I can start watching THEIR programs from now on.
    .
    Thanks in advance.
    .
    P.S. Obama has also talked about Fareed Zakariya’s book a lot but I don’t see many people giving Fareed all that free press and push for book sales. I wonder why

  • trifecta

    Gergen has been on CNN demanding that Obama do more. Bush seems like he is holed up drunk. He has checked out.

  • Dee in Columbia MD

    This entire premise is so absurd. Basically, the msm is spending most of its time trying to attribute Obama’s success to anyone other than Obama so everything he does must come from a book somewhere. Are you saying that the man, the author of two book (not ghost written) is incapable of formulating his own ideas?

  • sgwhiteinfla

    Hey Dee
    .
    Did you get a chance to see Jane on Rachel’s show last night? I would say she was very impressive

  • Dee in Columbia MD

    Yes SG I saw her and yes she was good — and I will take back my harsher criticism for now — but I’m watching.

  • pafro

    Are you making rapidfire posts to stay ahead of the criticism you are going to get about your recent comments saying that Bush’s little “Mission Accomplished” party was a mistake, even though you are on the record as being, at the time, in awe of the bulge in his flightsuit?

  • gysgt213

    I been reinstalling windows and moving to Vista. Did I mention it sucks?

  • textee

    Somebody named Matt Yglesias “thinks that the Obama transition has a different book from Doris ["The Serial Thief and Plagiarist"] Goodwin’s Team of Rivals as its blueprint”? If the thoroughly unqualified, terrorist fraternizing, community organizer wants to rely on a serial plagiarist for inspiration, why doesn’t he turn to the hair-plugged buffoon and Soviet useful idiot who ran as his vice presidential nominee?

  • formerlyjames

    textee, just an update for you. The Soviet doesn’t exist anymore. Hasn’t for several years. How often do you troll online? Is there a newspaper near the bridge or cave you live in?

  • davemc321

    Out of curiosity, what is the statute of limitations for media misjudgments. Five years? Ten? Or is the self-satisfaction of having been right too good to let go?

  • cfukara

    sgwhiteinfla Says: :
    ” I don’t see many people giving Fareed all that free press and push for book sales. I wonder why “
    Yea!
    Why, Joe?

    Even some right-wingnuts who eagerly fly off the handle at the slightest of perceived provocation have wired their jaws shut so that they don’t say anything till after Jan 20 – lest you point at their joker-king Bush.

    ” .. there have been no false steps yet. ..”
    You haven’t seen nothing yet, so it is said.
    [Mike Murphy is breathlessly at work - compiling a list.]

  • http://www.inworldstudios.com jayackroyd

    ut of curiosity, what is the statute of limitations for media misjudgments. Five years? Ten? Or is the self-satisfaction of having been right too good to let go?
    .
    There isn’t any, really. It’s like anything else, when you eff up, fess up, fix it and move on.
    .
    The trouble is that sometimes the thing is sufficiently big that the fix it part pretty much entails your saying “Hey, maybe I don’t deserve this gig anymore.” That’s little Tommy Friedman and “Suck. On. This.” It could well be that Tommy has proven himself sufficiently lacking in judgment and foresight that it would be best that he remove himself from the public stage.
    .
    But, for the most part, it’s sufficient to say “Hey, I thought the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Powell troika were seasoned, wise men. On balance, I trusted their judgment. I was wrong. I have learned from my mistake.”
    .
    But you have to admit the error. You can’t pretend that you’ve felt, all along, that they were irresponsible war mongers with no sense of proportion and no concern for humam life. When Little Tommy does an interview with the New Yorker where he claims all kinds of ass-covering ambiguity in his writing, and blaming people for doing things wrong, he is not following the formula. When you are tragically, deeply wrong, and were very influential in the projection of those deeply wrong views, it really is incumbent of yuo to embrace (the somewhat humiliating) facts of the matter.

    I was wrong. This is how I was wrong. This is what I learned from being wrong in this why. This is how I suggest other people avoid similar errors.

  • kathy

    Jayack – you might read Broder’s column today. Doesn’t exactly admit an error, but admits abject ignorance and confusion about what is going on in the economy, and says he’s supposed to know. Gives thanks for Obama’s brain.

  • centfan

    With all due respect Joe, I’m not going to rely on you or any of your peers to tell me if there are any “false steps”. You folks are like weather forecasters certain you know what day it will rain in 2011. It goes from being rain to the Storm of the Century. When you’re finally proven wrong you walk away paid with your ego above the fray and you start predicting 2030.

  • sgwhiteinfla

    Joe Klein
    .
    Georgia’s former Ambassador to Russia says that Georgia started the war with Russia by attacking South Ossetia and it was because President Mikhail Saakashvili seemed to think he had George Bush’s tacit support for such military action against South Ossetia. Now what do you think gave him THAT idea? lol Another story that the MSM won’t cover I am sure. Time to move on and all of that.

  • Paul-no not that one

    I posted this the other day, but for those that missed it and are interested, here is a different view of the Team of Rivals that I found helpful for context beyond the Doris Goodwin stuff.
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/20/opinion/20oakes.html?ref=opinion

  • http://www.inworldstudios.com jayackroyd

    Yet neither of them left the White House with a record of great achievements.
    .
    It’s crap like this that has me shaking my head when I read Broder. Clinton accomplished plenty. Likening him to Carter is ridiculous. He was one of only three post-war presidents who served out two full terms, solved a fiscal issue no other president had ever solved, and governed over the longest post war expansion, while playing a key role in what may have been the last war in Europe at a minimal loss of American lives.
    .
    Reagan’s list of accomplishments is much shorter.
    .
    As for his confusion about the economy, it’s very simple. People promised to provide money they didn’t have.

  • James, Los Angeles

    Yet neither of them left the White House with a record of great achievements.

    What Carter??? Broder is more ignorant and senile every single day. Has he completely spaced out theCamp David Accords ? That was one of the great achievements of the post WWII era.
    .
    Reagan didn’t do sh!t compared to Carter and Clinton, except precipitate the S&L crisis, the BCCI scandal, Iran-Contra. Raised taxes, financed dirty wars in Central and South America, propped up Pinochet, ignored the AIDS crisis when intervention may have averted much death and disaster. His administration was a human rights disgrace and a domestic policy disaster and a foreign policy disaster.
    .
    When? O’When? Will someone send Broder out to the glue farm?
    .

  • James, Los Angeles

    Meh. I miss preview.

  • davemc321

    Thanks jackacroyd. I should have been more specific. I have no pity for Friedman or Broder. Friedman grew tiresome long ago with his six-month timeframes and taxi conservations that only served to demonstrate how befogged he was on Bush’s Iraq policies. And Broder is so stuck in the ’70s he reminds me of those old men who hang around courthouses and tell you how really nifty things used to be.

    I was speaking more about rising tide of unforgiving sentiment against Joe Klein. People can hold whatever grudges they want against Klein or any journalist. But the “Oh yeah, well in 2001 you wrote” school of criticism strikes me as more than a little self-righteous.

    I have no idea if he’s made adequate mea culpas about his Iraq views, but I think his coverage has reflected an increasingly sharp awareness of the lies and misdeeds of Bush, Cheney et al. He’s not refiltering the Administration crap for public consumption, which is something Friedman and Broder still do. Or worse, completely misunderstood what’s happened.

  • davemc321

    Oh. And I hope you all had much to be thankful for.

  • sgwhiteinfla

    davemc321
    .
    I put a comment on the thread above this one about an instaputz post that takes Joe Klein to task. You might want to read it and be sure to keep clicking on the source links to get to the origin of a lot of the anti Joe Klein sentiment. One big clue is the instaputz post is about Joe Klein’s repeated appearances on wing nut radio start Hugh Hewitts radio show.

  • davemc321

    sg…mea culpa. I posted an answer in the other thread. The shorter version is: I don’t like national journalists to go on shows like Hewitts. It cheapens journalism. But what he said doesn’t fall to the same level of Halprin’s sycophanticy.

    If/when Klein says something stupid, hit him for it. That doesn’t necessarily negate what he gets right.

  • cfukara

    davemc321 Says:
    ” ..I hope you all had much to be thankful for. ..”
    Mmh.
    Iraq. Kids dead for nothing. For ‘intellectual’ fun? For the “ideology of hatred”?
    Neither will Kissinger-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-*-William_Kristol live for ever.
    That is something to be thankful for.

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