Despite all the talk that Obama doesn't have executive experience, in less than a year he's built a huge, well-run, cohesive, national infrastructure of hundreds of employees and a $100 million budget.
And he's accomplished this with an amazing lack of internal "drama."
If you're looking for clues to what kind of Democratic nominee Obama will be, on what kind of President he'll be, and how the White House staff will operate, then read Ben Smith's article in the Politico today which has some great details...
More below the fold...
Smith writes...
When Barack Obama met with friends and advisors in Washington late last year to begin seriously talking through a presidential campaign, he described the operation he'd like to build.
"He laid out his theory that, if he ran, he wanted to have a campaign with a relatively tight-knit group of people," recalled Michael Froman, a friend from Harvard Law School who is now a senior executive at CitiGroup. "No matter how chaotic the campaign got that there'd be - he used the words - 'an island of tranquility.'"
I noted this early on as well.
Talking to a campaign staffer in the Spring, who asked if Obama could avoid the same kind of implosion that the Dean campaign suffered, I replied, "Obama seems to have surrounded himself with people who he knows and trusts. With Dean, there were many people there who had jumped on the bandwagon. And the campaign was cobbled together with people who had far too many competing agendas."
It was a very wise decision to consciously avoid these potential pitfalls.
Of course, who wouldn't want an island of tranquility? What's unusual about Obama is that he seems to have gotten his wish - even as he threw together an organization with about 500 employees and a budget of $100 million based in a sprawling, open floor of an office building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago.
His campaign is unique among the major political organizations this cycle, and unusual in presidential politics, for its apparent unity, and for the fact that virtually none of its internal campaign arguments have spilled over into the press.
That cohesion is a mark of Obama's personal style - "he told us he wanted a drama-free campaign" one staffer recalled...
In contrast, Smith writes...
On the Democratic side, John Edwards turned to a charismatic outsider, Joe Trippi, who swept in April, elbowing aside existing advisors and putting his own aides into place. The Clinton campaign has been characterized by years' long, creative tension on the question of how much she should be humanized, and by outside sniping from former aides to President Bill Clinton, like James Carville.
I think this also demonstrates how Barack Obama's patience and interest in looking at the big picture and not getting suckered into the politics of frenetic news cycle, helped keep the campaign moving forward. A great quality in a potential nominee...
The Obama campaign's discipline was tested most intensely in the late summer and early fall, when major donors to the campaign pressed the candidate to begin attacking the frontrunner, Hillary Clinton.
...
At a finance committee meeting in Des Moines this fall, Obama soothed donors' nerves, and defended the choices he and his staff made.
"When you signed up for this you didn't think it was going to be an easy ride," he said, according to Julius Genachowski, another law school friend and former Clinton administration official who was there. Obama continued, "Listen, it's going to be bumpy, there's going to be turbulence. If you need me to sit next to you on the plane and hold your hand I will. But I hope you won't need that, because we have a lot of work to do and we can win this."
As Bob Shrum says, staying together during the tough times, is a good sign...
"It's a sign of strength," said Bob Shrum, the top advisor to Senator John F. Kerry in 2004 and no stranger to internal strife, who recalled that the brief respite in that campaign's public infighting came when things were going well.
I, for one, am looking for a nominee who has is self-aware enough, who has the people skills, who has the patience for the long haul of the general election. And these qualities can only help him as President of the United States.
And it helps make the case that Barack's leadership style can help rally the country around a progressive agenda.