Everything's Cool--And Quiet

Marc Ambinder has a post up on the interaction between the Obama team's "No Drama" mantra and the message control that will become less and less possible as the team expands dramatically. I think he's on the money that stuff will leak, but it probably won't leak in damaging, discontented ways: people won't grumble, but stuff will get out.

I also think that the agency policy review teams were a brilliant political move. Whether they turn up major ideas for agency-level innovation remains to be seen, of course. But throwing out the long list of names of folks who are overseeing the teams threw a lot of chum into the water. Those names are great fodder for reporters who want to speculate endlessly on who will end up with presidential appointments. They allow for all sorts of conjectures about who Obama is trying to reward, and what policy changes he is trying to signal. In other words, they provide the press corps with something to focus on while Obama and Biden hold private meetings with a whole range of other potential nominees and discuss other policies. The policy review teams may prove substantive and substantial; I'm certainly not ruling that out. But right now, they're mostly a very effective smoke screen.