In a New Administration, Some Brand-New Jobs?

Great Expectations

"Thank you, thank you," Tony Lake and Susan Rice, Obama campaign national security policy chiefs, said Friday in an e-mail to the hundreds of foreign policy experts who helped out, without pay, for countless hours in the preelection darkness. "We will remain extremely grateful for your incredibly hard work," they added.

Hmmm. This doesn't sound promising.

But the transition will be "comparatively lean," they wrote, and can have "only a limited number of people." Don't worry, being in the transition team is "in no way a prerequisite to, nor an assurance of" that administration job you want. So if you want a job, "you can (and, in fact, must)" fill out a form and send a résumé. Just go to http://www.change.govand follow the instructions. "There will be no other channel" for applications, they cautioned.

"Finally, and importantly," they wrote, "we ask each of you please do not under any circumstances speak to the press, any foreign officials, or embassies on behalf of the transition or President-elect Obama. . . . We cannot emphasize enough the importance of this request. It would be highly damaging for foreign governments or media to receive information that they believe falsely to represent the views of the President-Elect."

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Putting out information that doesn't "represent the views" of the incoming administration would be bad indeed. Maybe that's why the transition team deleted from its Web site, http://www.change.gov, lengthy policy statements about how Obama would handle some two dozen issues, including foreign policy, taxes and energy.

The policy statements, which had come from Obama's campaign, were replaced by a paragraph saying the next administration "has a comprehensive and detailed agenda to carry out its policies.

"The principal priorities of the Obama Administration include: a plan to revive the economy, to fix our health care, education, and social security systems, to define a clear path to energy independence, to end the war in Iraq responsibly and finish our mission in Afghanistan, and to work with our allies to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon, among many other domestic and foreign policy objectives."

And a chicken in every pot.

Asked why the policy statements were pulled down, Obama spokesman Nick Shapiro said: "We are retooling the Web site."

Score One for Holbrooke's Detractors

It appeared for the past week or so that opponents of former United Nations ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the broker of the Dayton peace accords that ended the fighting in Bosnia, had successfully killed any chance of his becoming secretary of state. His name seemed to have receded from The List.

Holbrooke had been scheduled to give a speech Thursday at Ohio State University titled "A Foreign Policy Agenda for the Next President." But then this e-mail announcement from Ohio State floated into our mailbox, via a Loop Fan in England.

"Richard Holbrooke has canceled his visit to The Ohio State University on November 13. He has been called to Washington to help with the transition of President-elect Barack Obama's team into presidential office. This event will not be rescheduled."