Spare a thought for those Obama foreign policy advisers left on the shelf

by | Jan 21, 2009


[youtube:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=DTNhU4zwAh0]

Here’s Joe Biden swearing in the new White House senior staff as President Obama looks on (looking rather unamused at Biden’s wisecrack about the Chief Justice’s memory, one might add).  But over at ForeignPolicy.com, there’s dark muttering from some of Obama’s foreign policy advisers during the campaign, who are feeling as though they’ve been left on the shelf.

As we reported here back in October 07, some of the people advising Obama on foreign policy were taking a career risk, given that

Team Clinton has put the word out that the usual process – whereby foreign policy advisers to other candidates are allowed to switch horses as and when their candidate gets eliminated during primary season – has been abolished, at least as far as Hillary as concerned. The ‘you’re with us or against us’ ethos is no longer limited to the GOP, it seems…

So: payback time for them now that Obama’s in office, right? Not exactly.

The irony, these people say, is that those who joined up with the Obama campaign early onsome at the risk of alienating their old bosses in the Clinton administrationnow find that the Clintonistas have a patron who is taking better care of her people, as they see it, than Obama is of those who worked for him.

“People feel certain groups have patrons,” said another Obama campaign foreign policy advisor who asked to remain anonymous. “The Biden people have Biden, the Clinton people have Hillary. And then there’s Chicago,” referring to Obama’s political operation. But the people who “staked their careers,” by contributing their foreign policy expertise and loyalty to Obama early in the campaign aren’t finding they have such a patron, for the most part. Partly it was because they were kept at arms’ length from the Obama political operation during the campaign, she observed, and that the vast majority of their contact was indirect and coordinated by people who now aren’t returning calls.

“The point is, how did it happen,” the second volunteer advisor continued, that those who signed up earliest with Obama as foreign policy advisors feel most shut out of the process now and without a patron in the current scramble for jobs?

“The problem is,” she continued, “these people [the Obama political operation] don’t understand that government is different from forming coalitions during the campaign. When you run a campaign, you can say, ‘send emails, get on my blog,’ you can have a rally, in order to get votes. But [the government] is made up of interlocking directorates. People play hardball. They all take care of each other.” And some Obama people feel there is nobody fighting for them to get in, after they fought for him.

Still, not everyone’s joining in the carping.  Another campaign adviser said,

“Look, I think [Hillary Clinton] is loyal to a fault. She takes care of her own people, even when that is to her detriment, as was obvious during the campaign. Biden to a lesser extent, but there it is obvious that he would bring his own people from his Foreign Relations Committee staff into the government to advise him.”

“As for Obama, as great as he is, loyalty is not his primary consideration in personnel selection,” he continued. “He wants to pick the best and brightest, and he doesn’t particularly care whether or not you were there with him from the very beginning. How else do you explain the Jim Jones pick for NSC?”

“There is carping out there. I am one of them who feels it is unfair. But you know what, it doesn’t matter. So what if Obama pisses off some inside the Beltway wonks? We will all still be there for them in four years.”

Author

  • Alex Evans is founder of Larger Us, which explores how we can use psychology to reduce political tribalism and polarisation, a senior fellow at New York University, and author of The Myth Gap: What Happens When Evidence and Arguments Aren’t Enough? (Penguin, 2017). He is a former Campaign Director of the 50 million member global citizen’s movement Avaaz, special adviser to two UK Cabinet Ministers, climate expert in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and was Research Director for the Business Commission on Sustainable Development. Alex lives with his wife and two children in Yorkshire.


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