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October 26, 2008

Getting A Jump

obama burnett.jpg

All too aware that, should he win, these cascading crises will leave Obama with no time to gain his sea legs and terrifyingly little margin for error, he and his people, to a degree few realize, have been planning their transition from campaigning to governing for months with characteristic care and rigor. Like so much about Obama’s historic bid for the presidency, the first few days and weeks and months will be like nothing we have seen before—and all of it grounded in the insight that, mind-boggling as it might sound, winning was the easy part.

from: The Next New Deal: The huge opportunities—and huge risks—of a possible Obama administration by By John Heilemann (NY Mag)

Win or lose, Obama had no choice but to launch himself early and aggressively into a thorough and accelerated transition process. It's just that, as is his style (which dean of political photography, David Burnett, articulates here with the long-range view), he has kept the ramp up mostly in the background.

Read Heilemann's piece. And then, there's this transition preview from yesterday's NYT describing how McCain, true to form, has hardly prepared at all.

(Photo: David Burnett/Contact Press Images. Omaha, Nebraska)

  • http://www.jaxxattaxx.com/ black dog barking

    …McCain, true to form, has hardly prepared at all.
    Keeping up the well established traditions of the Modern Republican Party. Battle cry: Now What?
    A perceptive paid political observer would have noted a fundamental difference in one of the major primary campaign organizations on Feb 6 — one of them still had a working plan. A perceptive paid political observer would have noticed the campaign infrastructure set up outside the control of the national parties with its own reliable source of revenue. In the coming weeks look for paid political pundit rumination on the incomprehensible mysteries of the Obama campaign success.
    Meanwhile, as punditry stumbles around trying to figure out what they’ve been looking at for over a year the campaign organization moves quietly up to the next level. Love that image.

  • http://www.radiatethedance.blogspot.com Marie

    He’s certainly not waiting for it to come to him. He’s moving forward to meet it.

  • http://www.landsedgephoto.com elfpix

    Yeah, but he looks cramped, and possibly for the first time in the entire campaign, in a hurry.
    For him to be in a hurry is so completely antithetical to his entire persona.

  • jtfromBC

    - shooting hoops or running up escalators, helps the body & bodyguards stay on their toes
    - I suspect given a choice he prefers walking stairs rather than using elevators

  • http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/2008/10/obama-race-and-moving-beyond-the-webb.html MonsieurGonzo

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