Mr. Obama has asked his former campaign manager, David Plouffe, to oversee House, Senate and governor’s races to stave off a hemorrhage of seats in the fall. The president ordered a review of the Democratic political operation — from the White House to party committees — after last week’s Republican victory in the Massachusetts Senate race, aides said.
-Zeleny/Baker, New York Times, 1/24
Martha Coakley lost a Senate seat because she was tone-deaf, her campaign failed on messaging, and pollsters had bad numbers…or so the story goes. However, Coakley’s defeat - which effectively froze health care legislation and plunged Democrats into immediate despair - could be the best thing to happen to the party long-term.
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A joke among us health care types:
There are two kinds of people - those that don’t understand health reform, and those who don’t know they don’t understand health reform.
I was put on the health reform beat about a year ago - almost to the day - and steadily fell into a routine in pursuit of The Story. Wedging into crowded committee hearings. Mining my reporter friends or buddies on the Hill for tidbits. Sitting in my dark office, illuminated only by the computer’s glow, the click-click of the keyboard marking the time.
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A handful of books–the really clever, timely, and especially lucky books–end up becoming “memes,” or ideas that gain some sort of cultural traction. Think “The World is Flat” or “The Wisdom of Crowds.” Heck, even “French Women Don’t Get Fat” is accepted shorthand.
It took several years and a vicious campaign, but Doris Kearns Goodwin’s 2005 book “Team of Rivals” is bidding for meme-dom, too. The story–exploring Lincoln’s bold decision to offer cabinet positions to men who despised him for winning the presidency each had sought–seemingly offers lessons for a divided, partisan America today. After all, Lincoln saved the union, thanks in no small part to opponents-turned-loyalists; who can quibble with that?
So even though a NYT Book Review dismissed the title as “uninspiring,” Goodwin’s “team of rivals” does have the simple, onomatopoeic-esque quality of all good memes, a perfect encapsulation and distillation of a theory to its essence. It’s a term that popped up in the spring, during talk of an Obama-Clinton ticket; it’s re-emerged now that Obama’s picking his cabinet, with his message of unity and post-party politics. Note the uptick in news pieces mentioning “team of rivals,” as shown below.
Intriguingly, it’s not just pundits calling on Obama to pick a team of rivals; the president-elect himself is reading the book “carefully,” close adviser Valerie Jarrett said on Meet the Press this week, and has previously hinted at adopting the model.
But…why would he want to do that?
We don’t use leeches for blood-letting; mail isn’t sent via the pony express. There are plenty of 1860s ideas that aren’t feasible 150 years later, and a true team of rivals is likely one of them. Note that there’s already been such a team this election season–and it dramatically flopped.
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