“Silent Change”: Obama Silent On Bipartisanship
From Politico.com:
CHICAGO — It was a standard applause line on the campaign trail: Barack Obama condemned the “perpetual campaign” that has consumed Washington, contending that the slash-and-burn politics practiced by the Bush White House had gotten in the way of governing.
But President-elect Obama has been virtually silent on bipartisan calls in recent months to eliminate the White House office that has been described as the nerve center of the sprawling political operations headed up by Bush adviser Karl Rove. And the fate of that office will be just one of the questions Obama will have to answer in explaining how his mammoth and skilled campaign operation can be transformed into an administration that traffics in a different kind of politics at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
John McCain pledged in September to abolish the White House Office of Political Affairs as president. House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) followed up with a report last month recommending its elimination. And Craig Holman, a lobbyist with the government watchdog group Public Citizen, said Wednesday that it “must be dismantled.”
“I would be startled if he kept it and I would be very critical of an Obama administration that kept a political office,” Holman said. “I could not imagine this office being structured in a way that would be in the public’s interest.”
Transition aides declined to comment Wednesday on Obama’s plans for the office.
But the president-elect has given no indication that he will eliminate the political shop, which has detractors and defenders in both parties. When McCain told CBS’s “60 Minutes” that he would move the political operations into the Republican National Committee, saying “we’ve gotta have a White House that is without politics,” the Obama campaign declined to agree with McCain’s suggestion.
Obama’s decision on the political office is an early test of how sharply the president-elect plans to turn away from the practices of his predecessor. The Republican National Committee has spent the last week counting the ways in which it sees Obama sending mixed messages on his commitment to end the so-called permanent campaign in Washington.