Interesting article on how Obama goes about policy:
But, unlike many senators, Obama staffed his Senate office with a "policy director" as well as a legislative director. The aide, Karen Kornbluh, a veteran of the Clinton administration and a fellow at the New America Foundation, was hired in part to coordinate the seminars. Her role was a mark that Obama didn't intend to be limited by the congressional agenda or by his junior standing.
"The bigger issues that are being dealt with by the country are not necessarily being dealt with on a day-to-day basis by the Senate," said Robert Gibbs, Obama's communications director in the Senate and on his presidential campaign.
Obama has shown a willingness to lean on experts whose views are outside the Democratic Party's orthodoxy -- one of his economic advisers co-authored a proposal to privatize Social Security, something that Obama opposes and that has been criticized by his rivals' supporters. And Obama's Senate press secretary, Ben LaBolt, declined to give a full list of the experts with whom Obama had met, offering instead three who he said were representative.
Interviews with those, and with a handful of others who participated in the Obama seminars, suggest, unsurprisingly, that the senator's discursive, academic style -- which can come as a surprise to audiences who expect partisan red meat -- was catnip to policy wonks. Though Obama hasn't spent decades participating in the national domestic policy conversation to the extent that Bill Clinton had when he first sought the presidency, guests said they were struck by both Obama's immersion in the policy details and his interest in the politics of policy
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0607/4467.html
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