I'm at Denver International Airport waiting for my flight to Indiana (aka. Americana) for Thanksgiving. Having a few minutes I figured I'd share this clip from my discussion with Rachel Maddow at the top of her MSNBC show last night. You can watch it here:
We discussed President Bush's abdication of economic responsibility in his final months in office, as well as what the incoming Obama team faces now and when it assumes office. What's interesting is the idea that Obama has to simultaneously reassure a Wall Street that is only reassured by stasis and Establishment appointments, while reassuring America that he is going to push for the opposite of stasis and Establishment thinking.
As Rachel says, he seems to be saying he's going to put policy over personnel. Or, as I noted, it's what David Axelrod told the New York Times: "He’s not looking for people to give him a vision - he's going to put together an administration of people who can effectuate his vision."
There's no real precedent for this in politics. Sure, presidents have hired bureaucrats or functionaries to implement their vision, but there's not many examples of them hiring high-profile ideologues like, say, Larry Summers and getting them to carry a vision that's very different from their own ideological vision.
In other words, it's usually the case that "personnel is policy," as Grover Norquist once said. That's especially true in an executive branch that's so large it tends to demand policy delegation. But if that truly is Obama's strategy, and he can pull it off - that is, if he can get ideological free-market fundamentalists (and nobody credible on either side of the aisle really argues that Summers, Geithner, et. all are anything but that) to carry progressive FDR-ish legislation - then he will indeed be one of the master politicians of history. And if anyone seems to have the political skills to do it, it is Obama.