The Note
Clinton Game Continues, While Economy Looks For Leadership
"Of the $7.5 million owed to vendors, nearly $5.4 million was to her former adviser and pollster, Mark Penn. Clinton owed vendors a high of $12 million at the end of June," per the AP write-up.
The rest of Obama's national-security team is taking place: "Democratic sources tell ABC News that President-elect Obama appears to be turning to two retired four-stars for his National Security Adviser and his Director of National Intelligence," ABC's Jake Tapper and Martha Raddatz report.
"Marine Gen. James L. Jones (Ret.), the former head of NATO and U.S. forces in Europe, has emerged as the leading candidate to serve as the National Security Adviser for President-elect Obama," they report. "Admiral Dennis C. Blair (Ret.), former Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Pacific Command and a 6th-generation naval officer, has emerged as the top candidate to be President-elect Obama's Director of National Intelligence. He recently met in Chicago with the president-elect."
At Public Strategies, Inc., Dick Keil rounds up some names: Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack for Agriculture, former Mississippi Gov. Ray Mabus for Education, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., very much in the mix at EPA. "If Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is selected to head the Environmental Protection Agency, as informed Democrats say is likely, corporations will have more work to do complying with new environmental laws and executive orders promulgated by the Obama administration," he writes.
Pritzker is out, after (briefly) being in at Commerce: "The same business holdings and connections that made Ms. Pritzker so vital to Mr. Obama's ability to raise campaign money also came under sharp scrutiny. On Thursday, she released a statement declaring that she would not be a candidate for the job," Charlie Savage writes in The New York Times. (And the rest of the story explains why vetting wasn't necessary to take her out of consideration.)
"Nomination for a Cabinet post would impose significant scrutiny and financial disclosure requirements upon a powerful businesswoman who oversees a portion of her family's giant financial empire, which includes the Hyatt Hotel chain but also ranges from construction equipment to a credit data company," The Chicago Tribune's Mike Dorning reports. "Although the Pritzkers are prominent philanthropists in Chicago, the family is famously publicity-shy about its business dealings."
At this point, it's worth remembering that not a single one of the people mentioned thus far has been formally confirmed to have been offered anything by the president-elect himself.
On cue, from the Obama-Biden transition team: "Today, President-elect Barack Obama will hold private meetings in Chicago. Vice President-elect Joe Biden will be in Delaware. There are no public events scheduled."
The illusion of control, or actual control? "Top aides to the president-elect had hoped to take a methodical approach to selecting and unveiling their new team, starting with the announcements of top national security and economic players shortly after Thanksgiving," Shailagh Murray and Chris Cillizza write in The Washington Post. "But leaks and rumors have disrupted that plan, suggesting that the 'no-drama Obama' mantra famously repeated by his staff may not be as operational in Washington as it was at campaign headquarters in Chicago."
His army is, just maybe, getting restless: "Now what? That's the question for millions of volunteers who worked to elect Barack Obama -- and for the organization that mobilized them," USA Today's Martha T. Moore reports. "Keeping Obama supporters engaged and active through the Obama transition website change.gov is 'our first priority,' transition spokesperson Jen Psaki says."
"Electoral campaigns, like circus tents, quickly disappear after the show is over. But Obama is our first community-organizer president, and he sees the way he got elected as being almost as crucial as the fact that he won," E.J. Dionne Jr. writes in his column. "Because of the emphasis he put on organizing, barackobama.com might fairly be seen as the most successful high-tech startup of the past two years."
Learning lessons from the Clinton years: "President-elect Barack Obama will not move for months, and perhaps not until 2010, to ask Congress to end the military's decades-old ban on open homosexuals in the ranks, two people who have advised the Obama transition team on this issue say," Rowan Scarborough reports in the Washington Times.
We can't say where this ranks -- but when it comes to the auto bailout, good luck following the action:
"With a whirlwind set of press conferences, supposed deals, nixed deals and frustration over whether to bail out the auto industry with $25 billion in low-interest loans or take the chance of letting it go bust, the Congress's lame duck session keeps getting longer and longer," per ABC's Z. Byron Wolf.
Congress will be back Dec. 8 to deal with it -- but only if the automakers present a plan worth dealing with.
"Faced with the choice of bailing out the ailing auto industry or letting it fail, Congress picked a brave third option: procrastination," Time's Jay Newton-Small writes.
"The Big Three are on their own for now," The Wall Street Journal's Greg Hitt, John D. Stoll and Alex P. Kellogg report. "Congressional efforts to rescue Detroit's auto makers collapsed Thursday, with lawmakers saying the industry lacked credible plans to return to profitability."
"Until they show us the plan, we cannot show them the money," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
What was going on behind closed doors?
"For 90 minutes, it looked as if a last-minute deal had been struck to quickly pass $25 billion in aid to automakers. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., may have put the brakes on efforts by a group of auto-state senators to hold a vote Thursday on a compromise $25 billion auto bailout," Gordon Trowbridge and David Shepardson report in the Detroit News. "Instead, congressional leaders demanded a plan from Detroit's automakers by Dec. 2 on how they would use the money, and said they could return to session the week of Dec. 8 if they were satisfied with the plan."
Welcome to Nancy Pelosi's House: "Rep. Henry Waxman's (D-Calif.) defeat of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) for the Energy and Commerce Committee gavel represents a huge shift in the way the Democratic Caucus runs itself, and in the broader culture that has developed over decades around a few hard and fast rules governing the distribution of power on Capitol Hill," The Washington Post's Ben Pershing reports.
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