Washington's New Marriages Of Convenience

Matt Rourke/AP If you think the Obama-Clinton union is a bit rocky, you should see the low-level power battles going on in Washington, D.C.

The marquee names get the transition headlines. For that reason, the potential Obama-Clinton marriage has the pundits stirred up. The pundit business being what it is (which is the least entertaining branch of the entertainment business) the focus has been on the potential for conflict. That said, it is pure idiocy to think that there is a problem with the idea of picking for Secretary of State one of the Democratic Party’s best internationally known leaders, a proven strong spokesperson, someone with known toughness, a brilliant, hard-working disciplined student of national security policy whose approach to issues is very close to that of the president. History shows that we have problems when we have weak Cabinet officials rather than strong ones. The secret to success with such strong figures is a strong president. The potential problem would be were Obama to prove to be a weak leader who doesn’t know what he wants from his team and frankly, if that were to prove to be the case, it wouldn’t matter who he picked.

But for all the focus on glamorous celebrities like Tom Daschle and Janet Napolitano, the real work of the government gets done down below the cabinet level. It’s the deputy secretaries, under secretaries, ambassadors, and special envoys of tomorrow who will have to tackle the big problems of the day. And the competition for those jobs is, if anything, fiercer and less dignified than that for the top jobs. Which is, of course, saying something.

These campaigns, unlike the presidential spectacle, are often deliberately conducted stealthily. Character assassination works best that way and so does self-promotion.

The breakfast room at the Four Seasons Hotel in Georgetown is under construction these days. Given its quasi-institutional role in the inner workings of the governance of the U.S., it’s a good metaphor. It’s one of the informal trading floors on which Washington’s power brokers quietly do their work. But despite the genteel quality of the notices around the hotel apologizing for the renovations that are in progress, despite the muted earth tones and the signature floral arrangements, you can still sense that feral feeling that has gripped the capital since weeks before the election when it became clear that Barack Obama was going to be the next president.

It doesn’t take more than a moment or two of scanning the room to understand the term “political animal.” There are mating behaviors going on, the pissing out of territorial boundaries, whispered but deadly attacks, and well-dressed men and women with hard-to-conceal hunger in their eyes. It is hard to imagine any other city in America going through this, a transformational redistribution of power, the remaking of pecking orders, the rewriting of the A-list and all its subsidiaries. Given the nature of elections the slate is not wiped clean and rewritten every four years, but every so often it is and watersheds like this one remind everyone of the fundamental difference between political communities (like Washington) and economic ones ( virtually everywhere else).

Power is pretty close to a zero sum game. If I’ve got it, you don’t. In New York, if I’m a billionaire, that doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty of money to go around for others with similar aspirations. But if you want to run American foreign policy, or energy policy, or economic policy, there are just a handful of meaningful slots, and if I’ve got one of them then the odds go down a lot that you are going to get one. If I am in the small meeting with the new President and there are just so many places to sit in the Oval Office, well you are likely to be on the outside looking in.

With the stakes so high, it is small wonder that the behavior of Washington’s elite becomes so low. Campaigns are waged fiercely both for and against candidates for key jobs. These campaigns, unlike the presidential spectacle, are often deliberately conducted stealthily. Character assassination works best that way and so does self-promotion. High minded op-eds are written. Casual encounters are carefully orchestrated. Old promises are called in. Books are carefully timed to come out to turn the spotlight onto selected members of the wonkocracy. But this all must be handled carefully, with a certain touch of discretion. In a town that is as known for liars and lies as Florence is now for its frescoes and churches, the most common of all lies these days is “I’m not interested in ‘going in.’” Or, as it is more commonly phrased, “I’m not interested in ‘going back in’”—because if you are up for one of the top appointments, the odds are you were “in” before, and for Democrats that means back in the Clinton days.