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Thursday reading: The Chicago three
Jonathan Martin's Blog —     Mr. Axelrod comes to Washington. TNR makes a comprehensive list of the 30 biggest players in Obama's Washington. Michael Crowley explains the underappreciated influence of John Podesta -- a good friend of Rahm -- and the Center for American Progress on Washington. Wolfson empathizes with the McCainiacs. Helene Cooper makes a really smart point: Most of the top foreign policy experts have  been silent or vague for the past few months because they didn't want ...

Rahm Was the Only Choice, Not Just the Right Choice
The Stump — ... Some time last week, as we were putting together our Obama power list, it occurred to me that Obama had a problem: He didn't have anybody around him who had the combination of policy chops, Hill knowledge, and the understanding of how to mobilize voters that he'll need to pass major initiatives like healthcare reform. Some people, like Obama's Senate chief of staff Pete Rouse, know the Hill backwards and forwards. Some, like policy advisers Jason Furman, Heather Higginbottom, and Austan Goolsbee, know ...

The Sunday Word: Setting the Table
The Caucus — ... prospects — almost certainly including Sarah Palin — will make high-profile appearances next week at the Republican Governors Association (RGA) meeting, and Newt Gingrich’s name has already been floated in a Bob Novak column. For a party anxious to move past a brutal election up and down the ballot, and especially a presidential campaign it would just as soon forget, it’s not too soon to start thinking about “next time,” as the pros call it. The ‘O-List’ for Some: The New Republic runs through quite a number of people near and dear to Mr. Obama who may join his ...

Sending a Message With Rahm and Summers
The Stump — ... As Heilemann points out, the beauty of the way Obama got elected--that is, by circumventing the Democratic estabishment--is that it makes him much, much less beholden to the groups inclined to raise hell about people like Summers and Rahm. ...

The mask slips a bit at The New Republic
TigerHawk — The November 19 issue of The New Republic is given over the " O-List ," a who's who of the "thirty people who will rule [ there's that word again - ed. ] Obama's Washington. It is not as terrifying as it might be, although any list with David Axelrod at the very top and John Kerry at number 17 is any arresting reminder that elections do indeed matter. Anyway, the paragraph on ...

What Does Obama Do With His Machine?
The Stump — ... For what it's worth, I tend to share the view of Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager, that the infrastructure will be most effective if it's not folded into the party apparatus: ...