Who Runs Gov

Senior White House advisers are quietly beginning to put a system in place to ensure coordination between the White House and outside liberal groups and unions that are ramping up to push the Obama administration’s agenda and target its foes, a senior Dem operative who regularly advises the White House and is involved in these discussions tells me.

The operation, which is in its early stages, is expected to be overseen by senior Obama hand Valerie Jarrett, the senior Dem says, and Jarrett is playing a key role in assembling it, though other senior Obama advisers will also play a role.

The performance of this effort could have a major impact on how successful these groups are in driving the White House message on a host of big issues — and, by extension, on how successful the initiatives themselves prove. Failure to adequately coordinate messages could prove counter-productive or confusing to the public and could even open the White House up to an attack from the GOP if the groups diverge too sharply from the Obama message.

According to the operative, the White House was quietly informed in advance about the new ad campaign that several major unions are running with the pro-stimulus group Americans United for Change that pressures Republican Senators to back Obama’s stimulus package. As Ben Smith reports, the size of the ad campaign was just dramatically expanded to target Republican Senators in around 10 states. Obama aides were okay with the ad campaign’s message.

Obama advisers want to ensure that they avoid message confusion with the groups and to make sure that neither the White House nor the outside groups are surprised by what the other does, the operative explains.

The Obama team “wants to make sure they don’t come out with a position on an issue that surprises these groups and pisses everyone off,” the operative says. “Conversely, they want to make sure that the groups don’t run an ad that makes the White House crazy.”

“The danger is that the groups will go off in an unhelpful direction,” the operative says. “The discussions are designed to keep the lines of communication absolutely open with a maximum of key groups so that people aren’t surprising each other.”

Again, the efforts to set up a system for communication and coordination between the White House and these groups is just getting underway — another reminder of how much of a work in progress a new administration inevitably is. But pressure to get this right will only intensify as more groups join the fray on other issues such as health care and the environment.

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