Martin Eisenstadt’s Blog

I’ll keep this very brief, as I’m still recuperating from last night. It was a very emotional night for all of us who worked so hard for John McCain (and before that, for Rudy Giuliani during the primaries). It was a long road we all walked together. But as John said in his particularly elegant and gracious speech (I heard Steve Schmidt did the first draft on that himself), it’s time for the country to heal and come together behind Barack Obama. Obama also made that point in his moving speech.

With that in mind, I’ve got some assessing to do in trying to find a role for myself and the Harding Insitute to move forward into the Obama era of governance. I’ve worked some with John Podesta in the past (his Podesta Group and our Harding Institute are also in the same softball league, so we know him socially, too). Obama made a wise choice in John to head up the transition team, and also with Rahm Emmanuel as chief-of-staff. (though given Rahm’s brother’s position as a big Hollywood agent and the inspiration for Jeremy Piven, I hope this won’t mean that the Obama administration will resemble more Entourage than the West Wing…)

But I digress. It’s gratifying to hear chatter that Podesta and Emmanuel are going to be looking actively across the aisle to fill cabinet and sub-cabinet positions. It seems reasonable that like Clinton, Obama might find a moderate Republican to head up Defense in particular, and retiring Sen. Chuck Hagel’s name is clearly at the top of the list. Chuck I’ve known since he ran the USO, so I’ll be eager to see who he wants to bring into the Pentagon as the Obama administration’s versions of Paul Wolfowitz or Douglas Feith.