‘Great Countermove’ Seen in Obama’s Search Team

Senator Obama, who won the Democratic presidential nomination largely on a promise to shake up Washington, has turned to a team of mainstream, establishment advisers to oversee his search for a running mate. In some ways, it’s a team not much different than one that might have aided Senator Clinton had she prevailed in the nominating contest.To oversee the vice presidential search, Mr. Obama has tapped a former chairman and CEO of the Federal National Mortgage Association, or Fannie Mae, James Johnson; a Washington lawyer who was second in command at the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, Eric Holder, and the only surviving child of President Kennedy, Caroline Kennedy.“Two of them, Johnson and Holder, are definitely establishment figures,” a professor of politics at the University of Virginia, Larry Sabato, said. “Caroline has an establishment name, but she really hasn’t been that involved in Democratic politics since her Uncle Teddy’s campaign for the presidency.”On liberal Web sites, some embraced the choices, particularly that of Ms. Kennedy, as an effort to head off a drive by supporters of Mrs. Clinton to encourage her selection for the vice presidential slot.“Great countermove,” one comment posted on the DailyKos site said.Others were less receptive. “That is a pretty sucky bunch if one is hoping for a progressive approach,” another poster on the Kos site said.Mr. Johnson, who vetted vice presidential nominees for Senator Kerry in 2004 and played a similar role for Vice President Mondale in 1984, seemed to draw the most vitriol and concern.“When you start to connect the dots with Jim Johnson … you end up with a portrait of crony capitalism by Seurat,” one visitor to the New Republic’s site wrote.Liberal activists said they were watching the process warily, but were unsure how much weight to put on Mr. Obama’s largely conventional choices of veep vetters.“Barack Obama has one foot firmly planted inside the establishment and has presented himself as having one foot outside the establishment,” an author of two books on the potential of grassroots political organizing, David Sirota, said. “Were you a candidate who used the pretense of insurgency to be another establishment stooge or are you the real deal? … Is the guy going to start surrounding himself with the Bob Rubins of the world or is the guy going to start surrounding himself with labor leaders?”Mr. Sirota said he is eager for Mr. Obama to pick a running mate with true outsider status, such as Senator Webb of Virginia, and not others with longer tenure in Washington, such as Senator Bayh of Indiana or a former senator of Georgia, Sam Nunn.Mr. Sirota said President Reagan, who made sweeping changes in Washington on taking office, could be one model for Mr. Obama. “Is he going to be for change in a more confrontational, more Reaganesque way?” the author asked.A political consultant close to liberal Web loggers, Joseph Trippi, said Mr. Obama should be judged by whom he chooses for vice president and not who helps him pick. The political strategist also defended Mr. Johnson, noting that he helped choose Mr. Mondale’s running mate, Geraldine Ferraro.“He picked the first woman,” Mr. Trippi, who served as a senior adviser to John Edwards’s presidential campaign, said. “This was way out of the box in 1984.”One woman who is being aggressively promoted for the same slot this year, Mrs. Clinton, tried to ease the pressure on Mr. Obama by issuing a statement yesterday. “While Senator Clinton has made clear throughout this process that she will do whatever she can to elect a Democrat to the White House, she is not seeking the vice presidency and no one speaks for her but her,” a spokeswoman for the former first lady, Caroline Adler, said. “The choice here is Senator Obama’s and his alone.”A prominent Clinton supporter who launched a petition urging her selection for the no. 2 slot, Lanny Davis, said he didn’t take the statement as a rebuke. “I don’t read it as a cease and desist order. No one called me to order me to cease and desist,” he said. He noted that the petition calls the ultimate decision Mr. Obama’s and that all signers must commit to working for Mr. Obama’s election no matter whom he selects.Mr. Trippi said he was heartened by the announcement from the Democratic National Committee yesterday that, at Mr. Obama insistence, it would stop taking money from political action committees and registered lobbyists. “The question is, Is Washington going to change him, or is he going to change Washington?” the strategist said. “It’s his party now. I think you’re going to see a lot of change …. It’s looking pretty good.”Mr. Sabato said he believes most left-leaning Web loggers and activists have adjusted to the idea that the key change Mr. Obama offers is the symbolism of electing a president of African descent and that any other change will be incremental. “He’s going to govern as most Democratic presidents would. That’s what the selection of these people indicates,” the professor said, referring to the vetting team. “There will not be major change, except in the racial sense.”

‘Great Countermove’ Seen in Obama’s Search Team

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