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The Obamas would (almost) blend in among Oak Bluffs’ black elite
If Barack Obama and his family decide to summer in Oak Bluffs, as the Boston Globe reports they are considering, they would enjoy not just pristine beaches, but a social scene that includes some of the nation’s most successful black artists, thinkers and entrepreneurs.
Obama’s longtime mentor, Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree, has a home in Oak Bluffs. So, too, do Washington power broker Vernon Jordan (the great uncle of Obama friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett), filmmaker Spike Lee and former HHS Secretary Dr. Louis Sullivan.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)Located seven miles off the Cape Cod coastline, on the northeastern tip of Martha’s Vineyard, the town of Oak Bluffs has drawn African-Americans since the Civil War, first as domestic help for wealthy white families, and later, as second-home owners.
Once a Methodist revival camp, it became known in the early 20th century as the only town on the Vineyard that welcomed black tourists. As a result, well-to-do African Americans from New York and Boston flocked there in search of a summer retreat by the ocean.
Early homeowners included the late New York Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West and U.S. Sen. Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, the first black senator elected in the post-Reconstruction era.
Among the town’s most prominent residences was Overton Mansion on Narragansett Avenue, a large Victorian house that became a salon of sorts, hosting actor Paul Robeson, singer Ethel Waters and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
”I can still see Martin Luther King sitting on the porch and writing,” a neighbor, Mildred Henderson, told the New York Times six years ago.
In more recent years, the community has become the summer home of journalist Charleyne Hunter Galt, scholar Henry Louis Gates and Harvard law professor Lani Guinier. Oprah Winfrey and Diana Ross are said to visit.
“There was a time when the Vineyard was the only spot for successful black people,” Jordan reminisced to journalist and neighbor Jill Nelson, for her history of the community, Finding Martha’s Vineyard: African Americans at Home on an Island.
While the White House has declined to confirm any vacation plans by the First Family, the Obamas’ friends say they stand ready to welcome them.
Ogletree, who has owned a place in Oak Bluffs for 15 years, told the Globe he first hosted Obama there in August 2004, after the then-Illinois senator gave a rousing speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
“I asked him to just drop by [the Vineyard] and say hi and then, when he showed up there were all these really excited people there to meet him,” he recalled.
Obama’s last visit, in August, 2007, was to attend a fund-raiser at the home of Ronald R. Davenport Sr., chairman of Sheridan Broadcasting Corporation, one of the nation’s largest African-American-owned communications companies.
Not surprisingly, he drew a big crowd then, too.
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This post is tagged with: , Adam Clayton Powell Jr., Barack Obama, Charles Ogletree, Charleyne Hunter Galt, Dorothy West, Henry Louis Gates, Louis Sullivan, Oak Bluffs, Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Ronald R. Davenport Sr. Lani Guinier, Spike Lee, Vernon JordanRead related stories: Obama · Recent Stories
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Fannie Mae chief Herb Allison in line to oversee TARPApril 14, 2009 at 2:29pm
Word is that Herb Allison, a longtime Wall Street executive with ties to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, will be tapped to head the government’s $700-billion financial rescue program.
Commerce Secy Gary Locke is longtime advocate of Boeing, Microsoft
From the outset of his political career, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was bullish about business.
In 1993, when he ran for King County (WA) executive, he told voters he would do everything in his power to ensure that Boeing continued building jets in the area. “We need those kinds of jobs,” he said.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)As governor a decade later, Locke could not dissuade Boeing from moving its corporate headquarters to Chicago. But he did push through an unprecedented package of tax breaks which convinced the aerospace maker to assemble its new 787 jetliner in Everett, WA.
Gary F. LockeThe $3.2 billion deal – the biggest public-private partnership in the state’s history – kept an estimated 800 to 1,200 Boeing jobs in Washington. Locke touts it as one of his proudest accomplishments, saying that without it, the company would have eventually moved out of state, taking 70,000 jobs and as many as 20,000 indirect jobs with it.
Not everyone thought it was so great for the taxpayers, though. “That’s $4 million per worker,” complained Seattle Weekly writer Rick Anderson.
Locke’s pro-business approach – whether promoting Boeing, or a publicly financed stadium for the Seattle Seahawks, owned by Microsoft co-founder and billionaire Paul Allen – earned him high marks from business. It’s the sort of background one has come to expect for a Commerce Secretary whose job, after all, is to promote U.S. business interests.
In Locke’s case, those ties are extensive. Fortune 500 companies and other businesses in Washington gave at least $800,000 to the Democrat’s two campaigns for governor, including at least $500,000 for his easy 2000 re-election, according to an Associated Press review of his campaign finance reports.
Microsoft Corp. and Boeing Co. and their top executives were among his most loyal donors. Several top officials of those companies found their way onto his staff – and visa versa. For instance, Locke’s chief of staff Fred Kiga became a Boeing vice president.
Many of those relationships flourished even after Locke stepped down after his second term in 2005 to head the China Practice division of international law and consulting firm, Davis Wright Tremaine. There, he represented several major corporations doing business in China, including Microsoft.
(He is also a longtime Microsoft investor and reported owning up to $250,000 worth of stock in a financial disclosure statement. An administration spokesman said he planned to divest and step away from matters to which Microsoft is a party.)
Anderson, the Seattle Weekly writer, wondered in a recent column whether someone who had “at times opened the state’s pocketbook to corporations,” conformed to voters’ notion of the “change” Obama had promised during his campaign.
An administration spokesman responded that Locke was chosen Commerce Secretary because of his success in creating jobs in Washington, among other things, by opening up foreign markets to American products and encouraging innovation.
In fact, it is Locke’s experience working with China – one of the U.S. most important, but also difficult trading partners – that likely played the greatest role in Obama’s decision to tap him for the Commerce job.
The first Chinese-American to become a U.S. governor and the first to be commerce secretary, Locke is known for his ties to China, particularly President Hu Jintao.
In April, 2006, he helped arrange a trip by the Chinese president to the state of Washington – including a dinner stop at Bill Gates’ Medina mansion. The only other meetings occurred in the nation’s capitol.
At Davis Wright Tremaine, Locke specialized in China trade and investment.
In a 2006 interview with The Seattle Times, Locke said he flew to China five times a year for the law firm, helping U.S. companies make connections and develop strategies for the China market, as well as assisting Chinese clients establish themselves in the U.S.
He boasted of meeting with China’s top banking regulator to help a “large, multi-national company” skirt China regulations.
“I said we’d love to work with you in finding a creative way to achieve your objectives as well as help this company,” Locke said in the interview, adding, “If you just go to a mid-level bureaucrat, they’re just going to go by the letter of the law and say, ‘no, no, no.’ “
Locke is also a member of the Committee of 100, a national organization of Chinese-Americans, including I.M. Pei and Yo-Yo Ma, founded in 1990 to strengthen the relationship between the U.S. and mainland China, and to encourage the participation of Chinese-Americans in U.S. life.
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Commerce Secy Gary Locke is longtime advocate of Boeing, MicrosoftApril 10, 2009 at 8:49am
From the outset of his political career, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke was bullish about business.
Edward Montgomery is the new go-to guy for recovery
A Harley-riding economist has taken what may be the toughest job on President Obama’s auto task force – helping to rebuild the communities that will likely be devastated by the industry’s downsizing.
Obama likened the mission of Edward B. Montgomery, the new Director of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, to someone who helps towns recover after a hurricane or other natural disaster.
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MAP HINTS: Boxes with + signs can be expanded by doubleclicking. Solid lines are current relations. Dotted lines are former relations. For more options, right-click on a box or click on the map tools to the left. (Requires Flash)The former deputy labor secretary, who traveled to Michigan today to meet with Gov. Jennifer Granholm, has the broad mission of working with the cities hardest hit by the restructurings and possible bankruptcies of General Motors Corp. and Chrysler.
Edward MontgomeryThe challenge is huge. Since the economic downturn began, the auto industry has shed more than 400,000 jobs at automakers, suppliers and dealers, Obama said. And more cuts are inevitable.
Obama said that Montgomery would help “create new manufacturing jobs and new businesses where they’re needed most – in your communities. And he will also lead an effort to identify new initiatives we may need to help support your communities going forward.”
As a labor economist, Montgomery’s focus has been on people, rather than on systems. According to his profile on the Website of the University of Maryland, where he is dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences:
Dr. Montgomery has published numerous papers and articles on local economic development, youth unemployment, cross national comparisons of labor market performance, savings and pension policy, Medicaid and Social Security, labor unions and workplace smoking regulations.
“He’s not the sort of economist who views these as abstract problems,” Robert Schwab, associate dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, told the Washington Post. “This is a field that’s important because it plays such a key role in everyone’s life – not just an interesting abstraction. That permeates all of Ed’s research.”
With unemployment in Michigan already at 12 percent and rising, “to pull this off you’d need a lot of skills,” Schwab said. “You’d best be able to listen, you’d best be able to make hard choices.”
Schwab believes that Montgomery has those skills. “He’s a real problem solver, terrific at bringing people together who are at loggerheads, and working to get a solution.”
But others were less impressed by Montgomery’s credentials.
“I’m sure they didn’t mean this announcement to sound as condescending as it does: that the federal government is going to send an academic to help us poor provincials devise approaches” for recovery, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told the Wall Street Journal.
Daniels, a Republican, said Indiana already “has a very clearly articulated economic strategy.”
An administration official said the intention was simply “to have a high-level advocate who can really push and coordinate people to assure that things are being used as aggressively as possible.”
Montgomery, who drives a 2000 Lincoln Town Car, received a doctorate in economics from Harvard University in 1982. He began his career as a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and worked for the Labor Department during the Clinton administration, rising to second in command before returning to academia at Maryland. Months after joining the department, he took part in negotiations that helped end the 10-day Teamsters strike.
He became dean of the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, the university’s largest college, in 2003. After Obama’s election, he headed his Labor Department transition team, and joined the Treasury Department’s auto task force last month.
Because of Montgomery’s ties to the Obama administration and his broad mandate as director of recovery, some are already speculating that he will be a de facto car czar.
Charles Craver, a labor relations expert at George Washington University, told the Baltimore Sun that he expects Montgomery to wield considerable influence.
“I have the sense he’s going to have to oversee the restructuring of the companies,” Craver said.
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We are all Keynesians now – but especially Paul KrugmanApril 3, 2009 at 11:20am
Economist Paul Krugman, who describes John Maynard Keynes as his “economic idol,” may be the right man at the right time. But supporters of Barack Obama certainly hope not.
Harvard Law ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
To save on travel expenses, the Harvard Law School Class of 1991 might as well have its reunion this year at the White House.
The best-known graduate of the class, President Barack Obama, is both working and living there, and he’s shown no reluctance to hire his classmates.
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Their classmate Michael B.G. Froman is a deputy assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for international economic security affairs.
David Kris, also ‘91, has been picked to head the National Security Division at the Department of Justice. And Thomas J. Perrelli, ‘91, has been nominated to be associate attorney general.
The 1991 graduates are just part of what the Harvard Law Record has called the “avalanche” of Harvard law alumni who have joined or are soon to join the Obama administration.
The best-known member of this group is Michelle Obama, the First Lady, and a 1988 Harvard Law graduate.
Daniel J. Meltzer, ‘75, and a professor at the law school during Obama’s time there, is the president’s principal deputy counsel.
Michael J. Gottlieb and Danielle Gray, 2003 graduates, are associate counsels to the president. Blake Roberts, Class of 2006, will be a deputy associate counsel.
Samantha Power, ‘99, is serving on the National Security Council. She won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction in 2003 for A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide.
Power had been a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, as well as an adviser (sometimes controversial) to the Obama presidential campaign.
Todd Stern, ‘75, is the special envoy for climate change.
And Jocelyn Frye, ‘88, a law school classmate and friend of Michelle Obama, is serving as director of policy and projects for the First Lady and as a deputy assistant to the president for domestic policy.
Obama has nominated Elena Kagan, Harvard Law ‘86, to be the U.S. solicitor general. Kagan was dean of the law school. David W. Ogden, ‘81, has been nominated to be deputy attorney general.
One Harvard Law School graduate and 1991 alum not working at the White House is Bradford A. Berenson, a Republican and a former associate White House Council in the George W. Bush administration.
While at Harvard, Obama and Berenson worked together at the Harvard Law Review, Obama serving as president, Berenson as Supreme Court Editor.
According to Berenson, Obama may have learned how to mediate competing factions while running a Law Review staff that was divided not only by politics but also by legal philosophies.
“You know who the people are who, despite their politics, can reach across and be friendly to and make friends with folks who have different views,” Berenson told Frontline on PBS last year. “And Barack very much fell into the latter category.”
Obama will probably feel right at home at cabinet meetings, as the room will be full of lawyers:
There’s Vice President Joe Biden (Syracuse Law), Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. (Columbia University), Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack (Albany), Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano (University of Virginia), Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (Michigan) and Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton (Yale University).
Gary Locke, the nominee to be secretary of commerce, graduated from Boston University Law School.
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Edward Liddy caught in the eye of AIG stormMarch 15, 2009 at 9:42am
AIG has been described as the company where federal dollars go to die. It may also be a career killer for Edward M. Liddy.
Gene B. Sperling may return to familiar turf
Gene B. Sperling, a man familiar with the real and the fictional West Wing, may be signing on with the Obama administration.
The New York Times reported Monday that if Timothy F. Geithner is confirmed as the next Treasury secretary, Sperling will become his adviser on fiscal policy.
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Sperling, 50, was an economic power in the Bill Clinton administration, serving as the president’s national economic adviser and then as the chairman of the National Economic Council.
He then put his eight years at the White House to good use, signing on with “The West Wing,” the NBC series that chronicled the ups and downs of a fictional Democratic administration.
According to the Internet Movie Database, Sperling served as a consultant or writer on 18 episodes between 2001 and 2003. Sperling’s wife, Allison Abner, was also a writer on the show.
After leaving government in 2001, Sperling kept his ties with Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, later serving as an economic adviser on her presidential campaign.
Even though he was on the other team during the presidential primary, Sperling seemed a likely candidate for a post in the Obama administration, given his many links to Obama insiders.
He and John Podesta, the head of Obama’s transition team, worked side by side at the Clinton White House, Podesta as an assistant to the president who went on to become chief of staff.
The Sperling-Podesta connection continued after Clinton’s second term, as Sperling is now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the Washington think tank that Podesta heads.
Rahm Emanuel, who will be Obama’s chief of staff, was also an adviser to Clinton, working at the White House with Sperling.
And Lawrence Summers, who will head Obama’s National Economic Council, was part of the Bill Clinton administration, as well, serving as Treasury secretary.
Finally, there’s the Robert E. Rubin connection, a vital asset for any Obama appointee. Rubin was Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1995, roughly the same time that Sperling headed the National Economic Council. And Sperling is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank that includes Rubin on its board of directors.
The author of The Pro-Growth Progressive, published in 2005, Sperling also writes for Bloomberg News.
He has taken a special interest in the issues of global education, hunger and debt relief, a concern that has linked him with the singer Bono.
During the Clinton administration, Sperling was Bono’s go-to-guy at the White House, lobbying Clinton on Bono’s behalf.
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Former rivals consider Hillary Rodham Clinton for State
You could call it a field of dashed dreams.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which convened this morning to consider Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, is an object lesson on the soaring ambitions of America’s top politicians – and the often deflated realities of their achievements.
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Acknowledging that one former committee member is president-elect, while its former chairman Joe Biden is vice-president-elect, Kerry cautioned younger committee members not to get “too far ahead of themselves” as “myself, Chris Dodd, Dick Lugar and perhaps Senator Clinton can … attest.”
Sitting directly across from him, of course, was Clinton, who came closest of any of those present to realizing her presidential ambitions before she became her former rival’s choice for secretary of state.
But if Kerry harbors any jealousy of the woman who displaced him as the nation’s top diplomat, he betrayed no hint of it. He invited Chelsea Clinton to sit behind him on the dais (offering her a temporary committee internship like that held years ago by her father), so that her mother could look at her while she testified.
And then he launched into a lovefest about Clinton, praising her as a diplomatic veteran on “first-name basis” with world leaders, declaring, “America is back.”
Not to be outmaneuvered in the graceful acknowledgements department, Clinton herself paid tribute to Ann Dunham, president-elect Barack Obama’s late mother, as she pledged to advance the cause of women and girls around the world, calling Dunham “a pioneer in microfinance in Indonesia.”
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Gay bishop joins evangelical pastor in inaugural line-up
President-elect Barack Obama has invited V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and a symbol of the gay rights movement, to deliver the prayer at the opening inaugural event at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday.
The invitation is viewed as an effort to placate gay rights activists who were furious at his decision to have the Rev. Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor who opposes same-sex marriage, deliver the high-profile invocation at the inauguration itself.
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But just as Warren’s choice infuriated the left, Robinson’s is likely to antagonize the right. As the first openly gay man to be consecrated a bishop in the Anglican Communion, his ordination in 2003 touched off a worldwide rift about homosexuality within the Anglican Communion, spurring a schism within that denomination.
In an interview with the New York Times, Robinson said he believed his inclusion in the inaugural events had been under consideration before the Warren controversy erupted, but that Obama was also seeking to heal any rifts that Warren’s selection had caused among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates.
“They called up and said this has actually been in the works for a long time,” he said, “and at the same time, we understand that people in the L.G.B.T. community have been somewhat wounded by this choice, and it’s our hope that your selection will go a long way to heal those divides.
“In many ways,” he added, “it just proves that Barack Obama is exactly who he says he was and would be as president, which is someone who is casting a wide net that will include all Americans.”
Robinson said that his partner of more than 20 years, Mark Andrews, would accompany him to the inauguration. The two had a civil union ceremony last summer in a New Hampshire church.
The event Robinson will participate in is a concert featuring Beyoncé, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Joe the Plumber was the real winner?
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