Transition Predictions

Author’s Note: This post was written October 31st, before the election happened and any appointments were made. Already, I’m looking partly stupid and partly prophetic: I did not predict Rahm Emanuel as CoS, but I did predict Robert Gibbs as Press Secretary. Anyway, consider this an open thread on transition predictions.

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We’re currently working on putting together a spreadsheet complete with our predictions for election night (swing states, Senate races, etc.), which we will likely have up after the weekend, but I wanted to throw up some post-election predictions for the transition. This forces me to give away one of my election night predictions: Obama will win. Shocking, I know. There’s been a decent amount of chatter about who he will appoint to key positions in the White House and the Cabinet, and I’m gonna lay down my predictions for a few of them right now. Because I know absolutely nothing about what I’m talking about, where there doesn’t seem to be a clear consensus, I’m pretty much just picking the person I’d like to see. This can also serve as an open thread for everybody’s post-election predictions, and if you’re not contributing to the election predictions, feel free to discuss that as well.

Chief of Staff: Tom Daschle

This seemed to be the easiest call of them all for a while, until the last couple days, when some reports came out of Rahm Emanuel being approached for the job. My hunch is that Emanuel’s got a pretty good job as is, and could some day be Speaker, and his reputed personality seems somewhat at odds with Obama’s, so I find this an unlikely pick. I’m sticking with the conventional wisdom that it’ll be Daschle, and I hope I’m right – I’ve always liked him, and even moreso since he started helping out Obama as much as he has.

Press Secretary: Robert Gibbs

He could also potentially be Communications Director, but he’s quite good on TV answering questions, so I’m guessing they’re going to put him behind the podium.

Secretary of State: Greg Craig

I really have no idea on this one. John Kerry’s been getting a lot of talk for this position, but I just can’t seem to get myself behind that. I would be happy if former National Security Adviser Anthony Lake got appointed for this position, but I’ve read he’s not particularly interested in getting back into government, and if he is it might be as Director of National Intelligence. So I’m going with this guy, Craig, who I’ve read is in contention but know next to nothing about except that he’s a lawyer who has represented some high profile clients and worked under Madeleine Albright for a while. This will be an interesting one to see how it turns out.

Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates

This is not really what I’d like to see, but there seems to be a general consensus that Gates will stay on to oversee the transition out of Iraq. That’s okay, I guess, as long as he gets outta there fairly soon.

Deputy Secretary of Defense: Richard Danzig

This is the only deputy I’ll predict, because it’s the only one that really matters if in fact Robert Gates is only going to be SecDef for a transitional period. If so, whoever is named deputy will likely be whoever Obama ultimately wants to be SecDef after Gates. Danzig has been Obama’s senior national security adviser. Don’t know much about him, but seems like a smart, capable guy, and Obama has been quite good on national security over the course of the campaign, so I’m pulling for him.

Attorney General: Janet Napolitano

This is a tough one. Napolitano has been discussed, as has Rep. Artur Davis, as has former deputy AG and 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick, as have several others. I’ve heard Obama likes Napolitano a lot, but she could be appointed to a bunch of different positions, including Homeland Security and Education. Also, Obama may want to appoint the first black AG in history, which would point toward Davis (another possibility for this is Eric Holder). I think Napolitano deserves one of the bigger positions, though, and feel like it would be sort of a waste to give somebody a less important cabinet position who could end up picking up a seat for the Democrats in the Senate if she ran in 2010. So I’m hoping she gets this spot or nothing.

Treasury Secretary: Tim Geithner

There had been some talk of Paulson staying on for a transition, but nobody (including Republicans) seems to be very happy with him, so that’s looking less likely. Instead, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton Lawrence Summers and President of the New York’s Federal Reserve Tim Geithner seem to be the two names that keep coming up for this position. The smart money is probably on Summers, but I’m going to go with the dark horse on this one for no particular reason. [UPDATE: See the profile of Geithner and Summers linked to in the "We're Reading" section in the sidebar.]

National Security Adviser: Susan Rice

I love Susan Rice. She’s Obama’s foreign policy adviser, and she’s very sharp. I’d kind of like to see her get the nod for Secretary of State, but she might not be quite at that level just yet. Thus, I think she will be put on the same track as another black female Rice you may have heard of by the name of Condoleezza. Condi was National Security Adviser for Bush’s first term, then replaced Colin Powell at State, and I’m thinking that could be the same path this time around.

US Trade Representative: Daniel Tarullo

I have no reason to put this prediction up except that Tarullo was my Transnational Law professor last year and he was fantastic, and I’ve read in more than one place that he might get the nod for USTR. This would be personally exciting to me, but probably nobody else cares.