The Royal Tenenbaum
Will Obama move beyond brand names, and pick from the field?
Inez Moore Tenenbaum is a little slip of a lady, with porcelain skin and a smile as sweet as ice tea on a sunny Southern porch.
But looks are deceiving. She has a blowtorch will to win and more organizational drive than almost anyone else in her home state of South Carolina, where she served as a very successful—and very popular—elected superintendent of education from 1999 to 2007.
It was a lucky day for Barack Obama when, two years ago, Tenenbaum became the first major Democrat in South Carolina to endorse him for president. She was taking a big risk at the time.
She, as much as anyone else, insured that he won the South Carolina primary against the formidable Sen. Hillary Clinton—a victory that, as much as anything else, got him the party nomination.
When he climbed down off the stage on primary night in Columbia, the first person he embraced (after his wife, Michelle) was Tenenbaum.
If Obama owes anybody, he owes Inez. And she is worth owing, since her record as state superintendent of education is exemplary. Test scores rose well beyond national averages; she phased in full-day kindergarten; the state was widely praised for the rigor of its testing; teacher quality improved markedly; and she managed to impress teachers unions and reformers alike—a rare accomplishment.
So she would, not unreasonably, like Obama to nominate her to be U.S. secretary of education.
I could be wrong, but I'll be surprised if she gets it. The smarter money is on Obama's Harvard-educated, basketball playing friend, Arne Duncan, who runs the Chicago Public Schools; or perhaps Joel Klein, the lawyer-turned educator who is superintendent in New York City. There are other names, too, including Stanford education professor Linda Darling-Hammond.
What do they have that Inez Moore Tenenbaum lacks? Well, they are big-city folks, for one; they have fancy university ties; they are nationally known. They are, in a word, national brand names—and Obama has shown a preference for brand names.
But what Tenenbaum has can't be measured by Ivy League degrees or big-city job titles. She has gumption, and a willingness to take risks.
If she isn't a national brand right now, she soon will be—but only if Obama rewards her with more than the hug he gave her on primary night.
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Howard Fineman is Newsweek's Senior Washington Correspondent and Columnist, senior editor and deputy Washington bureau chief. He is the author of "Living Politics," a column that began on MSNBC.COM and Newsweek.com and that now also appears in the print magazine. An award-winning reporter and writer, Fineman also is an analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, appearing regularly on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann," "Hardball with Chris Matthews" and "TODAY." The author of scores of Newsweek cover stories, Fineman's work has appeared as well in The New York Times, The Washington Post and The New Republic. His 2008 national best-selling book, "The Thirteen American Arguments," was released in paperback by Random House in the spring of 2009.
One of the nation's leading political reporters, Fineman has interviewed every major presidential candidate from (then-vice president) George H.W. Bush in 1985 to (then senator) Barack Obama early and often in the 2008 campaign cycle. His current work focuses on the Obama Administration and its top officials, as well as on Congress and politics throughout the country. Although based in Washington, Fineman travels widely in the U.S. and has covered politics and other events in 49 of the 50 states.
Fineman's work has produced many milestones and awards. A cover story in November 2001 featured President George W. Bush's first extensive interview after 9/11. Another cover, "Bush and God," was part of a series of articles that won the 2003 National Magazine Award for General Excellence. His reporting has helped Newsweek win many honors from the Magazine Publishers Association and the American Journalism Review. Other awards include a "Page One" from the Headliners Club of New York, a "Silver Gavel" from the American Bar Association and a "Deadline Club" from the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ). In 2006 he received the Alumni Award from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
As a reporter and writer, Fineman ranges widely. Besides campaign-year covers, other projects have included: race and politics, the impact of digital technology on society, the influence of Hollywood on politics, the rise of the religious right and of conservative talk radio. He has interviewed business leaders such as George Soros, Bill Gates, Steve Case and Robert Rubin and entertainment figures such as Warren Beatty, Jane Fonda and Jay Leno.
Although now under exclusive television contract to NBC, Fineman over the years has appeared on major public affairs shows, such as Nightline, Face the Nation, Fox News Sunday, Larry King Live, Charlie Rose and the NewsHour. He was a regular panelist on Washington Week in Review on PBS (1983-95) and on CNN's Capital Gang Sunday (1995-98). He worked with Ted Koppel on Nightline specials, and has been a guest on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and "The Colbert Report."
A native of Pittsburgh, Fineman began his career at The Courier-Journal in Louisville, covering the environment, the coal industry and state politics before joining the newspaper's Washington bureau in 1978. He moved to Newsweek in 1980, was named chief political correspondent in 1984, deputy Washington bureau chief in 1993, senior editor in 1995 and senior Washington correspondent and columnist in 2008.
Fineman holds an A.B., Phi Beta Kappa, from Colgate, an M.S. in journalism from Columbia and a J.D. from the Brandeis School of Law at the University of Louisville. His legal education included a year as a visiting student at the Georgetown University Law Center. He received Watson and Pultizer Traveling Fellowships for study in Europe, Russia and the Middle East, and has traveled to more than 40 countries, among them China, Vietnam, Japan, Ukraine, Israel, Turkey and the West Bank Palestinian Territories.
Fineman is married to Amy L. Nathan, a senior counsel at the Federal Communications Commission. They live in Washington with their two children, Meredith and Nicholas.
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