zenpundit.com

Shloky’s right. Obama’s “national security working group” is designed to be safe, graybeardish and reassuringly vetted to avoid some embarrassing time bomb going off in the media down the road. Madeleine Albright is the edgiest figure in the group! You can almost hear Senator Obama saying, much like a used-car salesman, ” this foreign policy team was owned by a liberal Southern governor of a small rural state who only drove it on Sundays…”. How many of the somewhat conservative Democrats on this list will actually be offered a job come January if Obama wins?  Nunn and Hamilton were too conservative for the Clinton administration and Barack Obama is quite a bit left of old Bill.

The Starbuck’s sipping radicals in Yglesias’ comment section appear to be unhappy but for different reasons; evidently they expected the Obama campaign to have named Leon Trotskii and Che Guevara as advisers…

Because Senator Barack Obama once taught Constitutional law at Chicago and he’s read section 4 of the 25th amendment to the Constitution.

A big thank you to blogfriend Pundita for sending Rezko Watch readers my way!

Generally, local poltics are not my primary interest but for Rezko Watch readers outside of Illinois who are interested in the background of Chicago’s unique brand of politics, they might want to check out the following sources:

American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley – His Battle for Chicago and the Nation by Adam Cohen, Elizabeth Taylor

An excellent, highly detailed, social and political history both of the city of Chicago as well as the rise to power of the first, legendary, Mayor Daley, and his iron fisted rule over the Democratic Machine. The Shakman Decrees have changed he rules of the game  in the city of Chicago but the current Mayor, Richard M. Daley has adapted and is, in some ways, even more powerful than his larger than life father.

Boss: Richard J. Daley of Chicago by Mike Royko

This book is a shorter but far more colorful and grittier read. Penned by the late Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko, it is filled with a cast of infamous Chicago characters such as Ed Kelly, Tony Accardo, Paddy Bauler, Cardinal Cody, William Dawson, John D’ Arco, Tom Keane, Charlie Swibel, Benjamin Adamowski and Saul Alinsky. Incidentally, Mayor Daley reportedly hated Royko for writing this book.

Chicago: City on the Make: 50th Anniversary Edition, Newly Annotated by Nelson Algren

One of Chicago’s great writers, as well as a friend of Royko’s, Algren painted a bitter picture of the Machine at the zenith of it’s power and corruption.

For contemporary coverage of the underworld of Chicago politics, I recommend former City Hall beat reporter turned columnist for The Chicago Tribune, John Kass. Kass is well versed in the current array of ward heelers, mobbed-up businessmen, buffoonish aldermen, ex-gangster disciples, crooked cops, shadowy fixers and Outfit soldiers under the latest Federal investigations (it’s a lot to keep track of).

” Chicago ain’t ready for reform!”  – Alderman Paddy Bauler, 1955.

Via John, I noted that James Fallows has some posts citing Chuck Spinney of DNI and generally injecting 4GW and John Boyd’s OODA Loop into his political analysis of the Democratic primary battle.

Sweet! Kinda wish I’d thought of that myself.

In politics, ambiguity, restraint and a lack of passionately held policy positions can be an advantage as the public wishfully projects their hopes and assumptions on to the candidate. Or it can simply mask the fact that the candidate has no well-thought out philosophy or basic command of the subject in question. This is great if it means the candidate is open to accepting well-considered “new thinking” but bad if the candidate simply picks up positions ad-hoc without really contemplating the downstream implications.

Senator Barack Obama’s recent sojurns in to trade policy on the campaign trail, which seem to be raw political appeals to rentier interests of the moment, are alarming economists generally associated with the Democratic Party ( Senator John McCain, the inevitable GOP nominee, isn’t any better informed on basic economics theory than is Obama – making 2008 a worrisome choice if the economy goes into the tank).