Obama’s New Deputy Chief of Staff a Former Blogger

More than that, but it is a sign of changing times and the mainstreaming of blogging.

Mona Sutphen, a former diplomat, Clinton NSC aide and Rahm Emanuel’s Chief of Staff, has been named White House Deputy Chief of Staff – a powerful, albeit very “insider”, post. Until last February, Sutphen was also briefly a foreign policy blogger at The Next American Century , which was a short-lived vehicle to promote  The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise

 a book Sutphen co-authored with Nina Hachigian.

I have not read their book ( nor heard of it  before today, to be frank) but from listening to Sutphen and Hachigan opine on their infomercial video (see below) The Next American Century sounds more or less as a breezy and happy version of the themes in Thomas P. M. Barnett’s yet to be released Great Powers: America and the World After Bush that I’m reading, minus the sharp elbows thrown by Tom and the latter book’s deep dive into historical and strategic drivers for the 21st century. Otherwise, there’s a lot of big picture congruency going on – no wonder Tom’s so happy about the incoming Obama administration; it seems like it will have at least some personnel in high places who are predisposed toward his strategic views.

Be interesting if anyone out there has a copy of the Sutphen-Hachigan book to see if they cited PNM or BFA in the footnotes or index.

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