Washington Post national security columnist David Ignatius in an article a few years ago branded Cheney chief of staff and legal consiglieri David Addington as “Cheney’s Cheney.” New Yorker correspondent Jane Mayer both in this conversation today and in her new important book (now #6 on Amazon as I write) profiling the Cheney gang’s role in embracing torture and undermining America’s values and ideals fills out just how “dark” that kind of typecasting is.
But in a more pleasant direction, TWN wants to congratulate international energy policy expert and all round nice guy Peter Ogden for his appointment as “Podesta’s Podesta.”
Ogden has recently become Chief of Staff at the Center for American Progress. While all parties will probably deny this, John Podesta‘s move matches the outreach from a different direction that the Obama campaign has been doing after Hillary Clinton dropped out of the presidential race.
Obama has hired several HRC acolytes recently to his policy team. Peter Ogden is a known Obama supporter — but his boss at CAP is one of the key helmsman of the sprawling Clinton franchise. So, while Obama’s team reaches out to the Clintonistas, John Podesta has elevated an Obama mover and shaker who also happens to be just very smart. The drama here is all my own fanciful speculation.
The real truth is that Podesta has a shop full of supporters (previous and current) of John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama — but occasionally would stop in his staff members’ offices when he heard one of his key team was supporting someone other than Hillary. Urban legend has it that Podesta would put on a happy, wry grin and say something like, “So, I hear you are working for Obama. You sure that’s the way you want to go?” According to source, he’s sort of wink, smile, the pitch of his voice would go half an octave higher — and he’s say, “no problem, no problem. . .”
Podesta is a master of subtlety.
But back to Ogden. One person close to the CAP Chief of Staff told me today that while Ogden may look innocent and appear a pushover, he’s tough and laughs at folks who “think they can roll him.” This sounds like pretty much the same mold as Podesta.
— Steve Clemons
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