Of the Clinton transition, one very senior and longtime Clinton adviser said: "No one would have imagined how quickly it all got screwed up."
In 1992, the only Democrats who had run the White House in the past quarter century had worked for Jimmy Carter -- and Carter's tenure didn't exactly inspire confidence. Clinton had James Carville -- the most brilliant Democratic strategist at the time, and he had a lot of young guns. But he did not have a John Podesta to walk him through what it took to ran the White House, and certainly not a Rahm Emanuel.
The Clinton team thought that the cabinet mattered more than the White House staff, and spent a lot of time arguing, deciding, negotiating over cabinet picks. But the real power and control in Washington is centered in the White House...that was true even in the Bush White House with its high-profile roster of cabinet appointments. (David Addington, anyone?)The White House staff was not named until just before Christmas -- a mistake. They didn't get their bearings until well into the administration.
One other mistake that Obama seems disinclined to make: surround himself with plenty of Senators. Many senior Clinton White House aides were used to the partisan rough-and-tumble of the House of Representatives - Emanuel, George S., Howard Paster.
The power and custom of bipartisanship was in the Senate, not the House. Mr. Clinton famously never called Pat Moynihan during the transition even though Moynihan was the chairman of the finance committee. Obama, being of the Senate, has a lot of pals, and he has the ultimate dealmaker as a close confidant, ex-Sen. Tom Daschle.
Which leads us back to Rahm Emanuel.
Why did Obama want Emanuel to be chief of staff? Surely his standing in and knowledge of the Congress.
But more importantly: Rahm knows the White House. He knows how to make the White House work.
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