The Return of Debate?

Noting Obama's choice of economic advisers, David Cho and Alec MacGillis wrote in The Post on Thursday that "a central leadership challenge the president-elect will face: how to manage a stable packed with big brains and bigger personalities -- and how to make decisions when those high-powered experts disagree."

The caution: "Obama's favored approach as a senator -- bringing as many smart people as possible into the room and letting them hash out issues -- could prove less workable when urgent executive decisions must be made."

But they quote James P. Pfiffner, a George Mason University professor and author of "The Strategic Presidency," saying Obama might manage such a team more skillfully than Bush would have because he is a better listener. "It's important for the president to have a broad range of alternative perspectives, but he has to be strong enough not to be threatened by people that he doesn't agree with," Pfiffner said.

And here's another way the Obama White House will be a far sight different than Bush's: There will be no Cheney figure, squelching opposing views. Here's Vice President Cheney watcher and New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer yesterday on CBS's Face the Nation: "You're seeing very strong players divvying up this national security portfolio. So that won't -- it takes a president like Bush to have a vice president like Cheney. Obama so far seems to be so much more involved in the details and in kind of wanting to command the policies all the way up and down. Really, so, I don't see it repeating."

Roger Cohen writes in his New York Times opinion column: "President Bush had one overriding criterion in choosing his inner circle: loyalty. The result was nobody would pull the plug on stupidity. Obama wants the kind of competence and brainpower that challenge him. The God-gut decision-making of The Decider got us in this mess. Getting out of it will require an Oval Office where smart dissent is prized."

Jacob Weisberg writes for Newsweek: "I doubt President Obama will have much trouble with disloyalty in his administration, from Clinton or anyone else, for the same reason it wasn't a problem in his campaign: he doesn't spend a lot of time worrying about it. . . .

"Those who fixate on personal allegiance, like Johnson, Nixon and George W. Bush, tend to perform far worse in office than those, like FDR, Truman, JFK, Reagan and Clinton, who can tolerate strong, independent actors on their teams. . . .

"Bush made personal loyalty a threshold test, and even came to regard private challenge as an indication of untrustworthiness.

"The price was a surfeit of reliable hacks like Alberto Gonzales and outright incompetents like Heckofajob Brownie. . . .

"Team Obama understands that political devotion can no longer be cultivated principally through threats and rewards. Instead, it depends on aides feeling that they're advancing a shared set of goals. To put it a different way, a modern president can't command loyalty. He has to earn it."

As for the new national security team, David E. Sanger writes in the New York Times that Clinton, Jones and Gates "have embraced a sweeping shift of priorities and resources in the national security arena.

"The shift would create a greatly expanded corps of diplomats and aid workers that, in the vision of the incoming Obama administration, would be engaged in projects around the world aimed at preventing conflicts and rebuilding failed states."