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This is my first diary so bear with me.
The New York Times has an aricle on Obama's Foreign Policy Team. It is a cast of 300 and organized like a mini State Dept.
This man is organized!
http://www.nytimes.com/...
Barack Obama gets a briefing every morning at 8:00 AM. They are regarding major World developments and an email with questions and suggested answers for him to use when asked during the day. These are expanded on by Obama himself, of course.
Those it is a tight knit group, like most of the Obama structure, having to take on some of Clinton's foreign Policy advisers has created some tension:
"It is unwieldy, no question," said Denis McDonough, 38, Mr. Obama’s top foreign policy aide, speaking of an infrastructure that has been divided into 20 teams based on regions and issues, and that has recently absorbed, with some tensions, the top foreign policy advisers from Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign. "But an administration is unwieldy, too. We also know that it’s messier when you don’t get as much information as you can."
Obama has been receiving tutorials on foreign policy since he began the senate because of his role in the Foreign Relations Committee. Unlike Bush, who knew little about the world and policy.
Alot of Obama's advisers come out the Clinton Administration but, were mostly Jr. members who worked under the radar. Now, with having to absorb Clinton's big deals from her campaign, they are now placed under the former Jr. Advisers, which should make for alot interesting discussions.
Most of the core members of his team served in government during President Bill Clinton’s administration and by and large were junior to the advisers who worked on Mrs. Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic nomination. But they remain in charge within the campaign even as it takes on more senior figures from the Clinton era, like two former secretaries of state, Madeleine K. Albright and Warren Christopher, and are positioned to put their own stamp on the party’s foreign policy.
I can imagine old Albright just bristling having to work under and listen to people she would concider her inferiors. lol.
But, the core advisers like Anthony Lake and Susan Rice are more liberal then the old guard advising Clinton, who were very hawkish. The Obama advisers are heavy diplomacy people.
An interesting tidbit about the whole upside down situation with the advisers and how Obama is smart is working with the former jr. advisers and keeping them as his core people is that, even in the 90s, the jr. advisers, Like Susan Rice, were the ones who were right on Rawanda while the Senior ones were not.
Mr. Obama’s core team is led by Susan E. Rice, an assistant secretary of state for African affairs in the Clinton administration, who has pushed for a tougher response to the crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan, and Anthony Lake, Mr. Clinton’s first national security adviser, who was criticized for the administration’s failure to confront the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and now acknowledges the inaction as a major mistake.
McCain has about 75 people advising him and it is a much loser structure, which would explain the frequent gaffes and flubs by McCain.
After Obama received the nomination he was suppose to get Government Intelligence Briefings and has yet to get those. Figures Bush and Cheney are too power mad and secretive to even brief who could be the next president.
Mr. Obama is not yet receiving the government intelligence briefing that is typically made available to a presidential candidate upon becoming his party’s nominee.
Obama's foreign policy team is put into 20 groups, each working on separate areas of the world as their specialty. But, his two major advisers are working out the Chicago office
One person who is not on the team and was a major player on Clinton's team was Richard Holbroke. He doesn't get along with Anthony Lake. He was suppose to be Secretary of State if Clinton won. Now we may have a Joe Biden as that. I say Biden would be better.
Anyway, I hope I pulled this off okay. Breath held.
thanks for understanding.