So the hot topic around Washington these days, at least in the foreign policy community is. . .
Israel/Gaza? Uh-uh.
Russia/Ukraine pipeline issues? Nope.
Hillary’s confirmation? Well, that’s getting a lot of attention, but even that isn’t at the top of the list.
No, story number one with a bullet is Laura Rozen’s post that many Obamanistas in the foreign policy community are not happy with the transition:
[S]ome Obama campaign foreign policy volunteer advisors – many of whom put in long hours for no pay, taking career risks no doubt in part with the hope that should the long-shot junior Senator win, their hard work might eventually be rewarded – are finding themselves on the outside looking in, and not sure where they should knock.
In conversations over the past couple weeks, sources have told The Cable that something has definitely changed about their relationship to Obamaland since the campaign ended. The transition’s inner circle has become excessively secretive, closed, and far from transparent with them about the process for appointing people to jobs.
I’m not surprised — after all, this is what I wrote two months ago:
[I]t’s already pretty clear that Obama foreign policy types, particularly those who chose to support him back when he was far from a sure thing, are not at all happy with [the choice of Hillary as SecState]. . . .
They are wondering why they stuck their neck out twenty months ago only to see Hillary’s supporters get the plum foreign policy jobs. At the time, they supported Obama not to get a job (after all, Hillary looked like a near-lock then) but because they sincerely believed that Obama represented a new and fresh approach. Most knew that they were taking a big chance — after all, they had been warned of the consequences were they not to support Hillary. (And again, I believe that most of those who supported Hillary did so because they thought she was the best person for the job.)
My friends would be less than human if they did not want some reward for the chance they took. Now, they feel, their payoff is to see the key jobs at State go to those who played it safe. Although it’s true that Hillary might appoint some Obama loyalists to her team, most of my friends don’t think that’s going to happen.
So at least to me, Rozen’s report is not that surprising. That said, I’m sympathetic with those of my colleagues who feel like they’re not being heard or “rewarded.” I was on one of the foreign policy teams and I haven’t heard anything back either. And I think there is some truth to the suggestion in Rozen’s story that the nature of email communication has limited the type of networking that in the past has given those advising the campaign a leg up.
But come on, people. It’s not even the middle of January. No transition in history has started appointing positions below Undersecretary in January. And unlike past transitions, this one has focused not just on personnel, but also on fixing what everyone regards as a broken system. Since those recommendations just went to Secretary-Designate Clinton in the past week or two, it’s awfully hard for people to get appointments for positions that may be eliminated in a reorganization.
In addition, I’m guessing that the foreign policy transition process probably wasn’t helped by the fact that two of those managing it — Mona Sutphen and Susan Rice — received early appointments that may have had an impact on personnel review. In particular, Sutphen’s appointment to one of the Deputy White House Chief of Staff jobs may really have created a bottleneck. As the email quoted in full by Rozen notes, she originally was going to coordinate personnel side of the foreign policy transition:
Please also feel free to copy Mona Sutphen who will be tracking your applications at: [redacted], with any resumes and materials you submit in the official channel.
Furthermore, while the process has not been transparent, that’s typical, not unusual — both the Clinton and the Bush process were just as opaque. There are good reasons for that: you don’t want people to know who the other candidates for a given job are, and you want to make sure that the process is designed in a way to limit favortism, not reward it.
To be clear, I would love it if my friends and contacts on the transition teams were to tell me I was a lock for a job. But then they not only would be disingenuous, they also would exceed their authority.
And the notion that Hillary and Biden loyalists are getting all the good jobs simply isn’t true. Most of the rumors reported by both Rozen and WaPo’s Al Kamen include Obama loyalists, Hillary supporters, and those who did not take sides in the primary.
The very idea of a scorecard is nothing more than the latest media version of the supposed Hillary-Barack throwdown. Folks seem to forget that in the general, everybody worked for Obama. For example, I know several people who were part of team whose members got up each morning at 4:00 am to put together a summary of that day’s big foreign policy stories. Some were Obama supporters and some were Hillary supporters. Do the former now think the latter somehow worked less or got up later?
This story is in some ways an extension of the media’s obsession with the NYT’s story this summer about Obam’s supposedly huge foreign policy team (more than 300!). The problem is that the original piece was predicated on the belief that Obama had created something new and different. Here’s what I said at the time (apologies in advance for quoting at length):
I have absolutely no illusions about this. We are not Barack Obama’s “mini State Department,” as the Times claims. In fact, one of the main purposes of these teams is… to keep us out of the way of the people actually making the decisions.
You see, every four years, every presidential campaign is inundated with officeseekerwannabes, some idealistic, some not so much. There are newbies who have never before been involved in a campaign, worker bees who have served in mid-level policy positions in previous administrations, and Prominent People who don’t have much time but want to help where they can. All of them have some sort of expertise on a given issue. All of them want the candidate to win. And almost all of them know that if you want a job in the next administration, you have to put in your time.
So what is a campaign to do? You can’t have three hundred people advising a candidate, no matter what the Times may think. If a campaign is smart (and that certainly is true of the Obama campaign) they do what any sensible organization does: they form committees. Except they call them “foreign policy advisory teams,” invite all the officeseekerwannabes to join, and then (for the most part)… ignore them.
Am I being cynical here? A little. But my disdain is for the Times’s breathless reporting, not the process.
Here’s the thing. Four years ago, I co-coordinated one of these groups for the Kerry campaign. I was one of two people who designated roles, set deadlines, assigned responsibility for drafting, and held conference calls. Lots and lots of conference calls. It was our job to get stuff done when the campaign needed it. I wrote two of the five “core” position papers as well as a few smaller ones and the relevant sections of the platform and the debate prep book.
I’m not trying to brag — I just want to give you a feel for what was (and is) involved. There were plenty of other people who did even more.
Did we have any influence on the Kerry campaign? I have no idea. I know that the people managing foreign policy for Kerry — Rand Beers, Dan Feldman, and Susan Rice, among others — did a good job of making us feel like we were being heard — just like I was trying to do with the people on my team. But I never actually heard a talking point I wrote come out of Kerry’s mouth.
Our team had 50 people on it. There were 20 teams. Now think about that for a moment. Do the math.
So why weren’t there reporters covering the number of people on the Kerry team four years ago?
Oh. Wait. There. Were. Took me five minutes on the Google to find the stories. Except back then, we were called a “mini-NSC” instead of a “mini-State:”
“I’ve put together for Kerry a small group of mostly younger foreign policy advisers, a sort of mini-NSC,” says [Dan] Feldman, 36. Feldman says he helped pick the group by the expertise of its members to mirror the various directorates within the National Security Council, including experts on areas like the Middle East or Africa and on topics such as counter-terrorism or weapons of mass destruction. “We have a weekly conference call, write position papers, and do opposition research on the Bush administration,” says Feldman.
Nice going Times. You just ran a front-page story that is virtually the same as one reported by you and others four years ago.
Yet despite all of this, some folks continue to think that the sheer number of Obama’s foreign policy advisors is the problem. Take Jason Zengerle over at TNR, for example:
I think there’s one explanation for their being left out in the cold that Laura Rozen–who recorded their discontent–ignores: Obama may have had more foreign policy advisors during the campaign than he now has foreign policy jobs to fill. . . .Now, obviously, the real State Department–not to mention the Pentagon and the NSC–employ more than 300 people. (Here’s the ‘Plum Book’ list of State Department jobs that can be filled via political appointments.) But I don’t know how many of Obama’s foreign policy advisors would want to leave their tenured professorships to be, say, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans.
There are several problems here. To begin with, there are more than 300 jobs on the Plum Book list Zengerle cites (11 pages, roughly 50-60 jobs listed per page). Some are designated for “career incumbents” (meaning foreign service officers) and others, such as most of the ambassadorships, will go to senior FSOs even though they technically are political appointees. But even if you take out those, there are at least 350 to 400 jobs there. And that doesn’t even include the jobs in NSC, Defense and DHS, not to mention the fact that Obama has pledged that Ambassadorships will go to talented experts rather than wealthy donors — and not all of those are going to be career FSOs.
Perhaps most importantly, there are a lot more political jobs at State today than there were sixteen years ago when Clinton had just as large (if not larger) team. And I don’t remember any of those folks going wanting. Think I’m wrong? Here’s my list of some of State Department political appointments that are new since Clinton first took office (some created under Clinton and some under Bush):
- Deputy Secretary for Administration;
- Undersecretary for Global Affairs;
- Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs;
- Undersecretary for Arms Control;
- A handful of Assistant Secretaries and Deputy Assistant Secretaries (some of which have gone and will continue to go to senior foreign service officers);
- Numerous Ambassadors at Large, Special Representatives, and Coordinators (for example, Religious Freedom, War Crimes Issues, and Afghanistan);
- All the new Iraq and Afghanistan positions (the Iraq “desk” now takes up a huge chunk of the second floor at Foggy Bottom);
- New positions mandated by the White House, Secretary of State, or Congress (for example, trafficking in persons, PEPFAR, conflict response and stabililty).
It’s likely that any reorganization will lead to the elimination of some of these jobs, as well as a few that predate the Clinton Administration. But it’s equally likely that any such effort also will create new positions. For example, one rumor going around the building is that the various undersecretaries will have more resources and responsibilities, which probably means more staff positions. In fact, if you listen to the foreign service gossip, those positions are being created in order to find more jobs for those aspiring to a political appointment.
There’s one other thing Zengerle gets wrong: almost every single one of the people who volunteered for the Obama campaign would be delighted to be Deputy Assistant Secretary for Oceans — because that would mean they got offered a job in the Obama Administration.
The bottom line? It’s way, way, way too early to panic. I suggest everyone take a deep breath and stop worrying about whether they’re going to get the job they want — or, in their more frantic moments, whether they’re going to get any job at all.
At least that’s what I’m telling myself.
P.S. Thanks for your patience while I coped with life. It’s good to be back.
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