This morning I head Sam Nunn's name. I thought, "You know what, after Prop 8, I'm really not in the mood for THIS."

Then, as I was thinking about what it means that Nunn was picked for the Pentagon "transition team," I remembered an email I got from one of my mentors a while back with advice on how to be a successful administrator. It was fabulous advice, but what really struck me was this part of it:

"Seek out your enemies and hug them close to you. Give them responsibilities. Praise them when they do well."

The idea behind this is that since you cannot eject your enemies from the organization, the best thing you can do is co-opt them; and the way to do that is to a)give them a stake in your administration and b) make them feel important and appreciated. Of course, you don't want to give them TOO much responsibility in case this doesn't work and they remain your enemies even after all your praise and whatnot. But find them something meaningful to do and make a big deal out of them when they do it right, and they will eventually cease to be functional enemies.

Obama got where he is partly by knowing a lot more about how people work than, say, McCain apparently does. I imagine that the "transition team" would be a good place for him to execute this strategy, since if you're on the "transition team" this means that your role in the post-transition may not be too central.

I do not expect Obama to ever at any point reveal to the Jedi that he is really a fire-breathing progressive. Because he's not. BUT, I do think it makes sense to look at his transition team picks as being at least as much about internal politics and getting party power players on his side (and indebted to/invested in him) as they are about his overall agenda.

For what it's worth,

The Plaid Adder