[Melissa Block:] From NPR News, this is All Things Considered. I'm Melissa Block.
[Michele Norris:] And I'm Michele Norris. If you thought the December after a presidential election would be quiet, think again. Today, the White House agreed to provide General Motors and Chrysler with $17.4 billion in aid. And in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama continues to announce his Cabinet choices at a rapid pace. And the Rod Blagojevich corruption scandal is not going away.
[Governor Rod Blagojevich:] I will fight. I will fight. I will fight until I take my last breath. I have done nothing wrong.
[Melissa Block:] Today, Blagojevich, the Democratic governor of Illinois, made his first official statement after his arrest last week. He's charged with, among many things, trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder.
[Governor Rod Blagojevich:] Now, I know there are some powerful forces arrayed against me. It's kind of lonely right now. But I have on my side the most powerful ally there is, and it's the truth.
[Melissa Block:] Just over a mile away in Chicago, Mr. Obama announced four more people he's chosen to help lead his administration. They are Congresswoman Hilda Solis of California for the Labor Department, Congressman Ray LaHood for Transportation, he's a Republican from Illinois. Also, the former Dallas mayor Ron Kirk as trade representative and to head the Small Business Administration, a venture capitalist, Karen Mills.
[Michele Norris:] Well, there's a lot to talk about on the political front and so we turn to our regular political commentators, E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and David Brooks of the New York Times. Good to talk to both of you. Mr. E.J. DIONNE, Jr. [Op-ed Columnist, Washington Post]: Good to be with you.
[Mr. David Brooks:] Good to be with you.
[Michele Norris:] We'll get to the transition in just a minute. But first, that piece of Chicago that seems to be sticking to the bottom of the president-elect's shoe as he tries to walk to Washington, the Blagojevich story. Has his team managed the story very well, David?
[Mr. David Brooks:] I'd say moderately well. One of the things they should have done is they should have been more open, or at least dropped broader hints about how broad the contacts were. As far as I can see, there's absolutely no evidence they did anything corrupt. But I think they by dribbling things out by not answering questions even, I think, as fully as they could have, they've dragged the story on, kept their involvement. It was perfectly obvious there was going to be some connection between Obama's Chicago crew and Blagojevich's Chicago crew. They could have been a little more open. I don't think they've made the transition from the campaign, where they can control the message, to the presidency, where they lack that control.
[Michele Norris:] E.J., was it a mistake to say that we don't think that any member of this team has had contact with the governor of Illinois?
[Mr. Dionne:] Well, I basically agree with what David said. I don't think they've made any catastrophic errors here. I think they got a handle on it when they came out and said we put together this report, we're not releasing it now because Patrick Fitzgerald, the prosecutor, asked us not to and Fitzgerald backed them up on that. So, I think they got a handle on it finally and I think the evidence is that from Blagojevich's own mouth that the Obama folks weren't playing ball with him the way he wanted them to play ball with him, but they could have handled the beginning better. But I don't think there's any thing fatal here.
[Michele Norris:] Well, you know, in saying, I'm confident that no representative of mine would have any part of any deals related to the seat, which is what the president-elect said, would it have been better to say, of course we speak to the governor about this, this is an important decision that he asked to make?
[Mr. Dionne:] Well, both of those are true at the same time. In other words, they can say they didn't make any deals because they apparently didn't. But yeah, I think they should have just been more open and said sure, we had conservations with the governor. There're also a lot of these politicians had to deal with Blagojevich, he was the governor. He was a Democratic governor.
[Michele Norris:] Let's get to the transition. President-elect Obama has nearly completed choosing the top level of his administration. What pictures are you getting so far in this administration and its priorities, David?
[Mr. David Brooks:] First of all, I have to give him A. I think it's just been an outstanding job from start to finish. The first group of people were experienced Clinton hands, people we knew. The second group of people, which he's really been announcing last week, are more his age, more local reformers Arne Duncan in Chicago, the housing guy from New York, Ron Kirk from Dallas so, sort of his age, his cohort, but local reformers from around the country, less Washington-centric, less Harvard Law-centric. And that's actually a decent balance of actual practitioners who've actually done reform at the local level.
[Michele Norris:] Practitioners are you saying pragmatic choices here?
[Mr. Dionne:] I am. I think Arne Duncan, the education secretary, is particularly fascinating because on the one hand, he's somebody who is widely seen by reformers as a reformer, yet he gets along with the unions. He was able to deal with the unions. A lot of folks were trying to put Obama in the box, saying either you're going to be a reformer or and if you are, you've got to be anti-union. He turned that down. I agree with what David said and I also think in these later appointments, you're seeing, you know, a more progressive face. Hilda Solis at the Labor Department is a strong friend of unions, the environmental picks were definitely pro-environmental. And Ray LaHood, as a Republican, is fascinating. He was sort of the founder of this civility project. It didn't go very far because nobody wanted to be civil, but it's very much the kind of mood that Obama says he's trying to create.
[Michele Norris:] Which one of these picks to you most signals the fact that this is a brand new day in Washington?
[Mr. David Brooks:] Let's go with Duncan and let's stick with education.
[Michele Norris:] Mm hmm. Do you agree?
[Mr. David Brooks:] I don't agree with E.J. You know, I think there are choices to be made. There are choices to be Malcolm Gladwell had a piece in The New Yorker saying if you fire the bottom six percent of teachers, you make tremendous gains. So the question is, do we have an education secretary who believes you should fire those bottom six percent? In Washington, Michelle Rhee believes so. In New York, Joel Klein believes so. A lot of unions don't believe so and it actually is going to take some confrontation to get that kind of reform made and the reformers, like Klein, like Rhee, think Duncan's the kind of guy.
[Michele Norris:] So, you're saying that Duncan is important, but not for the same reasons that E.J. thinks he's important?
[Mr. David Brooks:] Right. I think, you know, I think he's much more politically savvy and more mellow than some of the other reformers, like Michelle Rhee, who's not a mellow person. So, stylistically, he's much more acceptable. But I think Obama chose him because he's a real reformer and he's going to be a little confrontational sometimes.
[Michele Norris:] Your thoughts both of you on the way he laid out this transition. We seem to see a press conference everyday. Is part of this just the rapid pace that they're making these picks or is there also an effort to help him look presidential on the public side before he actually assumes the office?
[Mr. Dionne:] Well, I think clearly the latter. I mean he has looked like someone in control, much, in the sense, more so than President Bush has been able to look in this period, partly because he's been able to sort of talk about one decision after another. And he's been able to make news at these press conferences, and not only with the people he made he named, but usually on some policy that he is going to promote and particularly on what he plans to do about the economy.
[Michele Norris:] You know, it's interesting, I think last time that we had a transition with a Democrat heading into the White House was Bill Clinton and so much of the narrative at that time revolved around his personal story, him coming from the South, him coming from Arkansas, the stories about his running and his appetites and his interests and policy seemed to take a back seat in that case.
[Mr. David Brooks:] Here, I think what we have is the Democratic establishment and really the smartest aspects of it. What strikes me most and most good and bad is the debate culture. The Bush White House was not exactly a debate culture. The Obama White House, it's a debate culture, it's an argument culture. You look at the economic team, he's got Larry Summers, he's got Christina Romer, Austin Goolsbee, Tim Geithner at Treasury, all people with exactly, basically, the same skills with the same credentials doing the same job. Franklin Roosevelt did this, he assigned three or four people to the same job. It's going to take a lot of discipline to keep them all together.
[Michele Norris:] Very, very quickly, E.J., because we don't have a lot of time. The criticism that Obama's facing for choosing Pastor Rick Warren to deliver his invocation, is that justified?
[Mr. Dionne:] I think that there are things that Rick Warren said about gays as people that Warren should apologize for. But I think the notion that Obama is reaching out to white evangelicals and including those who are against gay marriage Obama himself has said he's against gay marriage. So I think the idea of Rick Warren is good, but some of the more offensive things he said about gays he would do well to apologize for.
[Michele Norris:] It's E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post and David Brooks of the New York Times. Thanks to both of you.
[Mr. Dionne:] Thank you.
[Mr. David Brooks:] Thank you.