Kensky Street: Wasserman Schultz, Cecil, Mook, Tanden et al.

Wednesday, 13 April 2011

Wasserman Schultz, Cecil, Mook, Tanden et al.

Back in March 2008, as the contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama entered its death march phase, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Clinton campaign co-chairwoman, delivered the taunting talking points of the day.

“Sen. Obama set a tone for this campaign and has talked about the politics of hope,” she said on a campaign conference call in response to Obama adviser Samantha Power (now a top National Security Council official), calling Clinton a “monster.” “For either the candidate or his senior advisers to degenerate into negative personal attacks and name calling … is below the belt and out of bounds.”

Flash forward to April 2011 — last week, in fact — when Obama and his inner circle chose Wasserman Schultz to chair the Democratic National Committee. Meanwhile, other former Clinton aides have quietly come to occupy the top echelon of their party’s infrastructure: Former Clinton aides, for instance, now run the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

These are not, for the most part, Clinton die-hards, much less anyone who could be accused of being a Clinton mole. A hard core of loyal staffers surround Clinton at the State Department, but most of her former campaign aides have moved on, having shed their ties to a campaign that was not exactly defined by loyalty and esprit de corps. Their rise, though, reflects a somewhat expected sense of unity within a Democratic Party that, while headed by Obama, hasn’t been remade or purged or dominated by a president who has rarely been criticized for excessive loyalty. The bad blood many anticipated between the Obama and Clinton camps either never materialized or has long since been relegated to the political history books.

“Obama has made some good choices to strengthen his political machine,” said former DNC Chairman Don Fowler Sr., who points to Obama hires like Wasserman Schultz at the DNC or Tom Donilon as national security adviser as smart personnel choices based on talent and skill — not political loyalty or expediency.

“He’s not somebody who demands absolute uniformity in policies or strategy,” Fowler said. “He recognizes good people.”