Meet John Podesta. He is President-elect Barack Obama’s Transition Team Chief. You might also remember that he was President Clinton’s fourth and final Chief of Staff. Read his biography below, see photos and watch a video.
John Podesta
John Podesta, co-chair of The One’s transition team, has spent the last five years attempting to build up a liberal counterweight to powerhouse conservative think-tank, The Heritage Foundation. Podesta had the good sense to note that a leading source of Republican success is our superior intellectual infrastructure: institutions outside government that helped develop and communicate pragmatic conservative ideas - even when our party is not in power.
That liberal counterweight he developed is uber-liberal ‘The Center for American Progress.’
In just five years, the center has grown into a 180-employee, $25-million-a-year organization filled with former liberal policy wonks: from Tom Dashle and Elizabeth Edwards to PJ Crowley and Gene Sperling. And of course its public knowledge that rabid liberal George Soros has reportedly been a major funder of this group.
Interestingly, the center does not disclose all who finance its activities. This is a policy its declining to change even as its very leader, John Podesta, announced this week the enforcing of what he calls “the strictest, the most far-reaching ethics rules of any transition team in history.�
John David Podesta was born on January 15, 1949 in Chicago, Illinois so his age is 59. He grew up in the neighborhood of Jefferson Park on Chicago’s Northwest Side. In 1971, Podesta graduated from Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois and then attended and graduated from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.
John Podesta has held a number of positions on Capitol Hill including: Counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas Daschle from 1995-1996; Chief Counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee from 1987-1988; Chief Minority Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and Counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee from 1979-1981.
John worked for President Clinton all eight years of his Presidency in a variety of trusted positions. He is best known however to the general public as President Bill Clinton’s 4th and final Chief of Staff. He served in this position during Monicagate. He also oversaw Clinton’s pardons in the last days of his administration - I’m sure you remember those!
John is President of the Center for American Progress, a very liberal think tank in Washington, D.C currently on leave of absence. He is also a Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Hehas been named as a co-chairman of Obama-Biden Transition Project.
John Podesta is married to Mary S. Podesta, a Washington, D.C. attorney and they have three children.
John Podesta Photos
John Podesta Video
November 12th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
how scary looking is this guy?
i’m going to have to go with 1.0, even if the french judge says 6.8.
November 13th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Does Obama know how to bring about change or what?
Maybe I am not the sharpest knife in the lamp, but when you talk about CHANGE AND HOPE and CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN, would you not think that would mean you as the new president would bring to Washington a whole new bunch of people that are not leftovers from the Clintons and former members of congress that were defeated? I am really what change is that?
He is doing the same thing that all president do which is fine, but when CHANGE is you whole campaign and then you do this, is that change?
November 13th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
[...] But The One seems to have elevated the vetting of applicants to a whole new level - reportedly a reflection of his campaign promises against rabid lobbying and the back-scratching, self-serving ways of [...]