Patti Solis Doyle is Going to be the VP COS for the Campaign, Not Necessarily in the White House

inditer I think it's an excellent appointment. Seems like the McCain people have assigned posters to this site to trash everything Barack does. The so-called race-baiting came post-Ohio. The opportunistic 'bitter' comment was made after the Ohio primary. Besides, Ohio voters (republican or democrat) don't need race-baiting...it's endemic to the population. The turning point in Ohio was Hillary's lies about opposing NAFTA in a state that has lost a ton of jobs to Mexico. Solis probably lost her Clinton job because she wasn't willing to take the campaign into the gutter - as were Penn and amazingly, Williams. She'll do a fine job as COS for whomever the VP nominee might be.

Appointing Doyle demostrates at least two important factors: Obama will be the boss of the campaign 2: the campaign is already planned and ready to go. So, even if it's Hillary, the selected one will do as they are told. Kranky Canuck

Senator Obama's choice of Hillary campaign insider Patti Solis Doyle to be a senior campaign manager - Chief of Staff to his VP nominee - is looking to be a second big mistake of the Obama campaign. In going with a prominent, visible INSIDER who is carrying some baggage (not to mention participation in a losing, off-note campaign), Obama is signalling "there are only so many qualified people in America."

By way of comparison I always like to point to WWII, where the US miltiary rushed to _train_ tens of thousands of previously inexperienced young men to fulfill jobs of great sophistication and responsibility. The air forces, in particular (whether Army, Navy, or Marines), would see young but successful pilots _still in their early twenties_ commanding entire air wings!
That - challenging America's young to master the material and step up to big responsibility - is how America won WWII, but in peacetime, we revert to a experience and hierarchy based society. (The PC/internet boom was a notable exception.)

Just to remind, Clinton-Gore won the 1992 election with an almost _entirely_ OUTSIDE-of-DC campaign team, the famed "WAR ROOM", including then nationally _unknowns_ James Carville, George Stephanopolous, and Paul Begala. Even Clinton's VP nominee, Senator Al Gore, was something of an "outsider" pick, Gore went against the dreaded (but oh-so-pompous) Washington "Conventional Wisdowm" when after the murderous, poison-gas tactics of Saddam's "Anfal" repression of Iraqi Kurds, Gore __"cosponsored the Prevention of Genocide Act of 1988, which would have cut all assistance to Iraq. The bill was defeated in part due to intense lobbying of Congress by the Reagan-Bush White House and a veto threat from President Reagan"__
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Gore
- All making Gore quite the renegade Senator, not exactly loved by his peers in Washington, from 1988 to 1992.

Obama's first big mistake was not KNOCKING Hillary Clinton OUT OF THE RACE more forcefully, especially before Ohio and Pennsylvania. Obama should have publicized Senator Clinton's clear mistatements she made about "opposing NAFTA," when dozens of videos were available showing her speaking in SUPPORT of approval for the NAFTA "free trade bill" in 1993.

This was a legitmate policy issue, that still has huge ramifications for millions of American working families even today, and as a primary opponent, Senator Obama had every right to challenge Senator Clinton's credibility (not to mention long term foresight/competence) on this vital issue.

The other knockout issue Senator Obama refused to use was Senator Clinton claiming she was _opposed_ to CAFTA - the Columbia Free Trade Agreement - even as the top two men in her campaign, her husband (former President Bill Clinton) and her senior campaign manager Mark Penn, were making $2 million lobbying _for_ CAFTA! (President Clinton made slightly less than a million dollars from Columbia to lobby for the trade agreement, Hillary campaign manager Mark Penn made slightly more than a million from Columbia in CAFTA lobbying fees.)

Either,
#1. Senator Clinton was completely oblivious of what the top two men in her campaign were doing; or
#2. she was lying about being opposed to CAFTA, and would support it once she had the "working states" Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc. locked up; or
#3. she really was opposed to CAFTA, but was willing to let the men closest to her make a few million dollars in lobbying fees, out of greed or a sense of financial desperation to be part of the "millionaire's club."

The failure of the Obama campaign to forcefully rope in Senator Clinton's race-baiting campaing in Ohio (and Pennsylvania, Texas, West Virginia, and Kentucky), means that Ohio is now a "leaning McCain" state - despite the Bush2 economy hitting Ohio as hard as any other state in America!

(Also, in retrospect of Senator Clinton's blatant race-baiting media tactics, Senator Obama should have counseled Rev. Wright in person, in private, not to over-react. Rev. Wright had EVERY RIGHT to be OUTRAGED at Hillary's race-baiting - he had lived and suffered through the humiliating and violent SEGREGATION ERA, when America failed to make good on its promise that "all men are created equal," and when all of American government made a piece of waste paper garbage of the 15th Amendment to the US Constitution, the "right to vote shall NOT be abridged" certainly WAS "abridged" in segregated states.)

"Good leadership" means "heading off the enemy at the pass", before they break out into the open and can form themselves as a cohesive, organized force. The Obama campaign has done an amazing, masterful job thus far, but there is always room for improvement, and the facts that Ohio and Penn. are in play, demonstrates that the Hillary campaign did some damage then, and the Solis-Doyle pick reminds of that shortcoming. __

It could also be that there's a limited pool of talent for these types of jobs to draw on, and Ms. Solis-Doyle was judged the best of what was available that wasn't tainted with Hillary's disastrous, divisive "Kitchen Sink Strategy"....

The basis for judgement by Axelrod & Obama sounds reasonable but the timing...questionable. Why roil the bloggers and readers before a VP candidate is chosen? Were they afraid their selected VP nominee wouldn't agree to Doyle as Chief of Staff? As a longtime, stone Obama supporter, I'm concerned about anything like the timing of this appt. that causes a distraction from the message of his campaign,

Judgment is the issue here; good intentions do not work in a national campaign. Conversely, questionable judgments cause these types of conflicts. Pati Solis Doyle comes with Clinton-related baggage as it did last week's with Jim Johnson (former chief VP veter who was on the recent Bilderberg attendee list www.infowars.com/?p=2564). Such appointments, also including the "Wall Street" favorable economic adviser appointment, moves Obama towards being a Clinton clone insider rather than the 'Great Change Agent' he and the campaign are promoting him to be. People at these levels become known by their influential associates.

This is inside baseball. Its probably Solis connection to Axelrod more than anything else, plus all those former Clinton staffers now need jobs. I don't think it signals anything more than that. And Hillary had almost no chance of being on the ticket anyway, so this is not a signal in that regard either. a news hound