Friday, August 8, 2008

Obama Challenges

I was talking to a friend yesterday, and he brought up something I hadn't previously considered. Obviously anyone paying attention to politics is familiar with the primary argument against an Obama presidency -- he's not ready to lead, he doesn't have enough experience, etc.

What my friend mentioned and I found fascinating wasn't that he's not ready, but that he doesn't have the infrastructure around him to effectively accomplish things once he's elected. He argued that the biggest obstacle to his relatively short political career and extremely short amount of time in Washington was that there wasn't a big enough group of "Obama people" that had been cultivated in order to fill positions. In particular, he talked about the staffs of his cabinet members and those in the top layers of the bureaucracy.

The argument goes that you need a bunch of people in a bunch of different positions that are loyal to you, and that you can count on in difficult situations and that Obama hasn't been around long enough to have a high number of people that fit that description.

This wouldn't manifest itself outside the beltway, at least not in an obvious way, but might hinder his ability to accomplish his (probably very sizable) agenda in his first year.

Now, I think it's worth noting that Bush, who's famous for valuing loyalty over competency, and who brought a ton of people up from Texas with him after being elected, has...struggled, but I still think the concept is worth thinking about, and I do think it might be a challenge should he be elected.

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