Podesta seeks points for Obama's
scoreboard before it's too late
By Amie Parnes - 04/12/14 10:10 AM EDT
White House senior adviser John Podesta is running against the clock.
Time is winding on Podesta’s objective,
which is to make sure President Obama put
points on the board in the final three years of his second term through either
legislation or executive action.
With Obama and the White House flailing in
late 2013, Podesta returned to the West Wing in January as part of an Obama
reboot.
A little more than three months later, the
former chief of staff for President Clinton gets good marks from Democrats and
fellow West Wingers for helping to improve the White House’s strategy and
communications.
They say Podesta has improved the White
House’s chances of moving meaningful regulatory actions through the government
while better coordinating with Democrats in Congress.
“Lawmakers feel more engaged now,” said
one former senior administration official, who called Podesta a “hell of a
supplement” to the White House legislative affairs office.
A senior Democratic aide who had grumbled
about relations with the White House in previous months, said it has been “a
lot better than before” under Podesta.
Podesta has been tasked by Obama to
oversee a 90-day review of big data and privacy on the heels of the National
Security Agency controversy. The review
continues to take up a chunk of his time as the deadline approaches in the
coming days.
He also has been labeled what one senior
administration official called “the implementer-in-chief” of Obama’s climate
and natural resource plan, tackling specifically how the administration can use
executive action to set climate policy.
Colleagues say Podesta takes a very
hands-on approach at the White House.
As part of his “implementer-in-chief”
task, each Wednesday morning, Podesta gathers a group of senior policy heads
from environmental agencies around a table at the White House to discuss what
they’re each accomplishing and how they get to the finish line.
“What he’s really aware of, because he
played a similar role back then, he understands the game clock,” said Mike
Boots, the acting chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
“He knows that we have three more years and a set of things that the president
has committed to doing.”
The opportunity for Obama to affect change
on his own is dwindling.
For all the White House emphasis on a
“year of action,” time is ticking on the administration’s effort to roll out
substantial new regulations.
And there’s been little hope of moving
forward on any action with Congress. The White House, congressional Republicans
and Senate Democrats have all been more focused this year on political
messaging ahead of the midterm election.
That’s put even more importance on the
administration’s regulatory work, which doesn’t require congressional approval.
Republicans say nothing has really changed
under Podesta.
“On all of the issues he was recruited to
help with, we’ve seen more of the same from the White House,” said Kirsten
Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. “They’re still
being squeezed from both sides, without progress on Keystone and environmental
issues, and a healthcare law that, while improved in terms of numbers is far
from fixed.”
Kukowski said that while the White House
has relied upon executive actions under Podesta, “has it really made a
difference in righting the White House?”
The White House disagrees with the
partisan assessment.
Officials say Podesta is an active participant
in strategy discussions along with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough.
Both try to see different angles to every
program and are “loathe a default to conventional wisdom,” one official said.
“John will challenge us to look at a
problem we have been wrestling with from a new angle and that pushes us to use
fresher thinking,” said Jennifer Palmieri,
the White House communications director who worked with Podesta at the Center for American Progress.
Podesta is a “quirky guy,” Palmieri acknowledged,
“and not all [his] ideas are good ones” but she said, “he challenges us all to
think more creatively and that makes everyone better.”
Recently, at the end of staff meetings,
senior officials say Podesta has taken to offering “life reflections.”
Palmieri explained that it’s “usually a
colorful observation on the absurdity of political problems White Houses face
in mid-term years.”
The reflections “leave us all in better
spirits and keeps us focused on the long-term,” said Palmieri, who refused to
offer an example.
In his previous White House life, Podesta
was known to lose his cool at times, and earned a reputation for having
two-personalities. The one prone to outbursts of fury was nicknamed
“Skippy.”
“Skippy” has “indeed made a couple of
appearances in the past month or so,” said Palmieri.
But she argued that the outbursts have
helped challenge White House thinking while keeping staff on their toes.
Environmentalists saw a glimpse of Podesta’s gruff side
after they wrote Obama a letter asking him to refuse the exporting of natural
gas to other countries.
“If you oppose all fossil fuels and you
want to turn fossil fuels off tomorrow, that’s a completely impractical way to
move toward a clean-energy future,” Podesta told reporters at a climate briefing, according to the Wall Street Journal.
John D. Podesta
John D.
Podesta is a counselor for the Barack Obama
administration, and the founder of the Center for
American Progress.
George Soros
is the founder & chairman for the Open Society Foundations,
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open
Society, and was a supporter for the Center for
American Progress.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Center for
American Progress, and the Climate Reality Project.
Denis McDonough
was a senior fellow at the Center for American
Progress, and is the chief of staff; former deputy national security
adviser for the Barack Obama administration.
Jennifer
M. Palmieri was the SVP for the Center for American
Progress, and is the communications director, assistant to the
president for the Barack Obama
administration.
Carol M.
Browner is a senior fellow, director for the Center for
American Progress, was the energy czar for the Barack Obama
administration, a director at the Climate
Reality Project, and an administrator for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
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