The Klain Dilemma

There's word tonight that Sen. Joe Biden has selected Washington, D.C. lawyer Ron Klain to be his chief of staff, and that may lead to a debate within some Democratic activist circles about just what Barack Obama's administration will look like.

Klain served Biden as counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee; he was Al Gore's chief of staff for the latter part of the Clinton administration; he joined Steve Case's Revolution start-up; and Kevin Spacey was selected to play him in "Recount," much to the pleasure of Klain's mother.

Klain knows Washington.

So -- wait -- just how Change-y are Ron Klain and Rahm Emanuel? (Klain's Wikipedia entry begins: "He is an influential Washington insider.")

Go back to the campaign though. Obama hasn't ever surrounded himself with outsiders; he was encouraged to run by Tom Daschle and Dick Durbin; Ab Mikva and Newt Minow and Bill Daley were among his top advisors; Because he lives in Chicago, David Axelrod is not a Washington insider, but he is not an outsider by any means, and certainly is an "insider" in the colloquial sense of the phrase.  Obama chose Caroline Kennedy and Eric Holder (insiders) to run his vice presidential search; the vetting was conducted by veteran DC lawyers who had done this all before.

Some Obama supporters probably expect more than a nickel's worth of change, but they may be conflating the direction of policy with the peopling of the administration. To be sure, Obama certainly has left the impression that one of the problems with Washington was its people. But he found out early on that he couldn't run a presidential campaign without Democratic insiders playing integral roles. He turned to symbolism (no lobbyist donations) over substance (staying in the public financing system). And then he picked Joe Biden. And now he's turning to people who know how power flows in Washington. It's more evidence that Obama's modus operandi is pragmatism -- (radical empiricism, some call it).  The secret is that Obama intends use very pragmatic, temperamentally conservative means to achieve radical -- not in the Bill Ayers sense but in the huge, big, transformative sense -- changes in how Washington works and how it relates to Americans.

I bet that many Obama supporters will give their guy a pass for choosing expertise over novelty in his staff selections.  They might give him a pass for being nice to Joe Lieberman. But they will be -- and ought to be -- extra anxious to hold Obama accountable for his process promises -- a transparent White House, a transparent federal government, clear and unambiguous executive orders, etc. The expectations are absurdly high, but they are high because Obama raised them to that level.  It will be mighty tempting for Obama aides to suddenly carve out exceptions from these promises because it will be very difficult to run a White House transparently.