Policy Veterans Provide Steadying Hand for Obama

Supplementing a team of outsiders with some key veterans on domestic policy appears to have been a shrewd move by Barack Obama’s campaign, Jonathan Cohn writes in the New Republic. A case in point is Jason Furman, a star of the later (righter) stages of the Clinton administration who is adept at finding the “magical sweet spot where good politics meets good policy.”

Many feared Furman, brought aboard earlier this summer, might drag Obama toward the right, but he’s proven an asset—refining Obama’s stance on health care and sounding out economists from his Clinton days. “It was the outsiders … who got Obama this far, and it will be the outsiders who carry him to a victory,” Cohn notes. “Picking up a few insiders like Furman just makes that outcome a little more likely.” (More Barack Obama stories.)