New York Headlines

Jason Horowitz reports that Democratic foreign policy experts think there's a simple reason Barack Obama might want Hillary Clinton as secretary of state: because she'd be good at it.

John Koblin tried to trace the story of the story of the offer, which has now been going on almost a week. “It has unspooled in a confusing way,” Ben Smith tells him.

Horowitz also visited the Manhattan Institute, which may find opportunity in the wreckage of the Republican Party.

Officially, Nancy Pelosi isn’t taking sides in the heated fight between John Dingell and Henry Waxman for the chairmanship of the mighty House Energy and Commerce Committee -- a panel that will play a pivotal role in shaping energy, climate change, and health care policy during the next administration.

Don’t believe her. Pelosi’s record suggests strongly that she won’t neutral in a critical fight like this, and furthermore, that she’ll take the occasion to help one of Congress’ most prominent liberals topple, once and for all, an entrenched nemesis.

Democrats on Capitol Hill still remember Pelosi’s avowed neutrality in a party leadership race three years ago – followed by her sudden, last-minute muscling on behalf of a candidate, Connecticut’s John Larson, who had been dismissed as a hopeless also-ran. Larson won that race for Caucus vice-chairman, an outcome that remains one of the biggest upsets in the history of leadership contests, and Pelosi never fessed up to her role. Not that it mattered – she made her point, and got her way.

Two years ago, almost immediately after Democrats won back the House for the first time in 12 years, Pelosi was far more open about her designs, loudly thrusting herself into John Murtha’s effort to unseat Steny Hoyer from the party’s No. 2 leadership slot. Hoyer had lost out to Pelosi for the top leadership slot earlier in the decade, and Pelosi’s move was seen as an act of revenge – and an effort to insulate herself from dissent. Pelosi publicly endorsed Murtha and she and her loyalists began making threats, in person and through the media, to backbenchers, a heavy-handed campaign that backfired and sent rank-and-file members flocking to Hoyer on the secret ballot.

Given that experience, no one is surprised that the Speaker has been so tight-lipped in the Waxman-Dingell contest, which should be settled by a vote of the full Democratic caucus this Thursday. But everything about Pelosi’s ideology, style, and history suggests she’s not squarely behind Waxman – and that, before it’s over, she will be heard from.

In fact, an event that may have been the impetus for Waxman’s challenge to Dingell, an 82-year-old icon who is set in February to become the House’s longest-serving member ever, probably tells you all you need to know.

Two Januarys ago, as the Democrats reclaimed the House, Dingell was handed the Energy and Commerce gavel, which he had previously held from 1981 to 1995. Waxman, who had used his perch as an Energy and Commerce subcommittee chairman in the ‘80s and ‘90s to push for AIDS funding and investigations of tobacco companies, was in line for the Oversight and Government Reform gavel. Even though they headed separate committees, the two men failed to co-exist.

That June, just five months into the new Congress, Dingell drafted an energy policy bill that seemed designed to protect the auto industry from onerous fuel economy standards – hardly a surprise, given Dingell’s Michigan roots and his status as the industry’s chief protector on Capitol Hill. He also took aim at efforts by individual states to impose CAFÉ standards of their own, arguing that the federal Department of Transportation had sole authority in the matter.

Environmentalists howled and Waxman, a committed liberal whose district includes Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and West Hollywood, rallied Democrats in opposition to Dingell’s plan, drafting his own rival bill, which came down much harder on the auto industry. Shortly thereafter, Dingell, Waxman and several other chairmen were called into Pelosi’s office. At first, Dingell tried to defend his plan. But Pelosi quickly cut him off, and she and Waxman then took turns ripping into his initiative.

It was a seminal moment in Pelosi’s reign. Earlier Democratic Speakers would have been powerless to deny Dingell his will. In the old days, when Democrats seemed to have a permanent House majority, Speakers would come and go while old bulls like Dingell clung to their gavels, accumulating more and more unchecked power. But Pelosi came to the job with much more centralized authority, having led a band of Democrats who hadn’t been around for the old days out of the wilderness and into the majority. In standing up to Dingell – and winning – she made a statement that policy would be set by her office, not by committee chairmen.

Not that her move reduced committee chairmen to figurehead status, mind you. They still have broad powers to shape legislation to their liking – and to disrupt it when they don’t like it. Fittingly, Waxman is making climate change, and Dingell’s supposed obeisance to Detroit, the cornerstone of his challenge. And with a Democratic president who seems eager to affect sweeping energy policy change taking office in January, his policy dispute with Dingell looms larger than ever. Pelosi, as she has made clear repeatedly, sees climate change and energy policy through the same lens as Waxman – if she has a chance to dump Dingell, why wouldn’t she take it?

She has other motives, too.

As she demonstrated with Hoyer, her old foe, two years ago, Pelosi has a long memory, and an endless willingness to act on her grudges. In this sense, she inherited the instincts of her father, Thomas D’Alesando, who would never have survived for 12 years as Baltimore’s mayor without watching his back.

Dingell has crossed Pelosi many times. In the late ‘90s and early part of this decade, he strongly backed Hoyer as Hoyer and Pelosi vied, through fits and starts, for the top job in the Democratic caucus. He also backed Hoyer two years ago, when Pelosi failed to take him out. In 2002, redistricting forced Dingell, who’d held his seat since 1955, into a primary race against Lynn Rivers, who’d been elected in 1994. Pelosi went to Michigan to campaign for Rivers, who nonetheless lost.

Simply put, Pelosi and Dingell see the world in a fundamentally different way. Ideologically, she embodies West Coast liberalism – stridently anti-war, far to the left on social and cultural issues, and disdainful of free-market purists. Dingell epitomizes what the Democratic Party once was: he’s ethnic Catholic from a working-class district who believes that his party should stand for full employment and a robust social safety net. Abortion, gay rights, gun control and the environmental movement have never meant much to him.

What has made Pelosi unique, both in her rise in the House and during her tenure as Speaker, has been her ability to combine the liberal idealism of her adult hometown, San Francisco, with the bare-knuckle politics she learned as a daughter of Baltimore. That’s why it’s hard to believe that she’s not behind Waxman’s challenge – or, at the very least, that she hasn’t been flexing her muscle behind the scene.

A clear answer could emerge today, when the 52-member Steering and Policy Committee of the Democratic Caucus meets to recommend a slate of committee chairmen for the next Congress. Steering and Policy won’t have the final word – a full vote of the entire caucus will probably come on Thursday – but it is packed with Pelosi’s loyalists. If Waxman is the panel’s choice, the Speaker’s fingerprints will be all over it. Then again, maybe she’ll just wait another day to show her hand.

Ashley Dupre, whose much hyped Diane Sawyer interview airs Friday, told People magazine: "Everyone knows me as 'that girl,' but I'm not just 'that girl'...I have a lot of depth, a lot of layers." [People]

The Board of Elections, the head of which Tim Robbins called a "corrupt scumbag" after an Election Day snafu, has issued a statement inviting the actor to produce a public service announcement about voter participation. [TMZ]

A "very, very thin" and "stressed out" looking Gwenyth Paltrow traveled Miami last week as a guest of hotelier Jeff Soffer, instead of joining husband Chris Martin on tour. (Maybe she's just sick of Coldplay like everyone else?) [P6]

Britney Spears doesn't seem to be enjoying her new, less insane existence: "Even when you go to jail, you know there's the time when you're gonna get out," she says in an upcoming documentary. "But in this situation, it's never ending... It's just like [the movie] Groundhog Day every day." [US Weekly]

The infamous team behind the now defunct Socialiterank.com may be returning to the web with... an astrology website? [Cityfile]

Marquee's Noah Tepperberg will likely receive community board approval to open a new lounge/restaurant in the space formerly occupied by Earth. [Grub Street] 

Robert Trump, brother of Donald, is scheduled to do battle with soon-to-be ex-wife Blaine in court next month. [P6] 

 

Barring a state bailout, service cuts and fare hikes are a definite for MTA riders next year, with tolls rising to at least $2.50. [NY Times]

The State Health Department steps in to save the obstetric and pediatric departments at Cobble Hill’s Long Island College Hospital. [NY Times]

At a meeting, the Landmarks Preservation Commission strongly disapproved of General Growth’s redevelopment proposal for the South Street Seaport. [NY Times]

The Bronx’s Port Morris—one of the last industrial neighborhoods left in the city—is flourishing after decades of hard times. [NY Times]

Cuomo urges AIG and Citigroup to scrap bonuses for top executives. [DealBook]

MTA’s new budget proposal would significantly raise fares for disabled New Yorkers and express bus riders. [NYDN]

Nine people—including a Brooklyn court official and a sex tour operator—are indicted in a $1.4 million mortgage fraud conspiracy. [NYDN]

Sewage treatment union and the city continue to battle it out over wage increases. [NYDN]

Between the Bricks: Where there were once 20 bidders vying for the former Drake Hotel note, now there are only six suitors; Vornado still hasn’t closed on its 100,000 feet of 1540 Broadway retail space; Walgreen to unveil their new 17-story, 212-foot Times Square sign tomorrow. [NY Post]

New school zoning boundaries expected to be approved tonight would leave many parents who bought multi-millionaire dollar UWS condos to ensure their kids were enrolled at the highly-rated PS 199 stuck with lower-performing schools nearby. [NY Post]

Fifty-four nursing homes have been fined by the state for patient care violations, including Manhattan’s Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center. [NY Post]

Citigroup stocks fall to their lowest levels in 13 years. [NY Post]

Freddie and Fannie’s continued struggles spur debate over their future. [WSJ]

Among other things, the rules ban the rating agencies from advising the investment banks on how to package securities to secure favorable ratings.

J.P. Morgan analyst Alexia Quadrani said Arbitron's revenue will drop by $7 million next year on its loss of contracts with Cumulus Media and Clear Channel Radio.

Speakers at the renaming ceremony Wednesday are expected to include Former President Bill Clinton, Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Southwest's $7.5 million deal for bankrupt ATA Airlines' landing slots at LaGuardia Airport is dependent on approval by a U.S. bankruptcy court in Indianapolis.

Steve Levy’s speech last night about race and immigration the “first time he apologized directly to the family” of an Ecuadorian man killed by 7 high school kids recently.

The mayor in Toledo, Ohio is following Michael Bloomberg and eyeing a 5-cent tax on plastic bags.

“Council members, stop!” said Christine Quinn when Jimmy Oddo and Charles Barron were yelling at each other.

Thomas Friedman thinks that for Hillary Clinton to be an effective secretary of state, she would have to be seen as having a close relationship with Barack Obama.

David Geffen, an early Obama supporter, says Clinton would be great for the job.

Making things a little more complicated, the L.A. Times reports Ted Kennedy has offered Clinton the chance to head a Senate working group to reform health care.

“Brainless jellyfish would not have done worse,” says the Daily News editorial board about legislative leaders in Albany yesterday.

“How do these guys sleep at night?” asks the New York Post editorial board.

The Press and Sun Bulletin dubbed it an "ego-fest."

"A total waste of the taxpayer dollars it took to bring these reluctant representatives to Albany," says Fred Lebrun.

Schools dodged a bullet, at least for now.

But that doesn't mean they're not preparing for cuts.

In round two, Paterson really has a lot of power, according to Rick Karlin.

Michael Arcuri still leads in the official count.

State Senator-elect Roy McDonald will have two offices, somewhere.

A blog for billionaires notices Michael Bloomberg.

Can you find your newly elected congress member in this photo?

Helen Sears’ son got angry when asked about his mother dropping out of a re-election race late next year so he could take the seat without a primary.

A Rochester blogger was wooed by Andrew Cuomo.

Without a new chancellor, SUNY loses its interim one.

Eric Gioia wants Costco to accept food stamps.

And above is Steve Levy's speech on race, which aired on TV last night in the wake of a murder in Suffolk County.

"We're having a lot more fun than we did on Liberty Island!" said Tina Brown, the czarina of The Daily Beast, at her Web site's launch party last night in the Meatpacking District.

No, it didn't quite have the extravagance, say, of that 1999 Talk launch party on Liberty Island, where more than 800 movie stars and celebrities—invites went out to everyone from Henry Kissinger to Madonna—mingled and got drunk in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty.

Well, those were different times.

Ms. Brown's launch party last night was at... Pop Burger on Ninth Avenue. Maybe this is the New Media reality.

At this party, Harvey Weinstein didn't make the guest list, but "Fast Eddie" Felsenthal, the executive editor of The Daily Beast, sure did (and that was his nickname at The Wall Street Journal, we're told!). And instead of nearly a thousand arriving by ferry, this one had a few dozen people who had to take the ACE or the L. Everyone went home by a quarter to nine.

There were free sliders.

"I'm loving the party!" Ms. Brown said. "I'm loving all the kids who write for us. It's a time to celebrate."

She said The Daily Beast rented out the back end of this restaurant—and mind you, in the front, you could still order a burger and onion rings even if you weren't on this invite list—because it was so close to the Web site's home at the IAC/InterActive Corp Building.

"We didn't have to go very far," she said.

Ms. Brown stressed her excitement for the Web. She said that she "would never go back to print."

Since we're curious about the changing nature of the web, particularly when it comes to this week's story on Hillary Clinton, we asked her what she thought about the prospective Madame Secretary—especially since she's completing a biography of her.

"I think they're trying to figure out legally, and in every possible way, the ways for Bill [Clinton] to divest," she said. "There's a need to nail down that there are no conflict of interests. I think Hillary will do the job if it can be nailed down, that's what I think."

She said that Senator Clinton will bring a "great deal of star power and she'll hit the ground running."

And does she think that Hillary actually wants the job?

"I think she does, yeah," Ms Brown said.

With that settled, we moved to President-Elect Obama and his family. Ms. Brown is responsible for transforming our image in the 1980s of the First Family. They're royalty too! Just like the British. Do the Obamas have the same star power as the Reagans?

"I think the President is always the most powerful person in the world," she said. "But I think the Obamas, as the first black family, are going to be extraordinarily historic and glamorous and iconic, and by being the first that will always make them exceptional."

And can we expect any famous photos from The Daily Beast like the Harry Benson shot of Nancy dancing with Ronnie in 1985 for Vanity Fair?

"We do do a lot of galleries now," she said. "There are already so many fantastic pictures out there."

Share the wealth!

Eventually, it was time to go and Ms. Brown went over to a bench with a pile of jackets toward the front of the restaurant. She started digging through the coats on the banquette and murmured, "I thought I left my husband's coat here... He's going to kill me."

Ms. Brown eventually went to the coat-check and returned with two coats in hand, along with her husband, Sir Harold Evans. They were out the door, very quietly, at 8:41 p.m.

The online restaurant guide's first redesign in six years comes amid heightened competition in the field; Citysearch will expand to cover more than 75,000 cities in the U.S.

It's Wednesday, and yet already this has been a long week for some people in the media business. Sure, it's not as bad as the last week of October, which saw the closure of Radar and 02138, a 10 percent cut in The Los Angeles Times' newsroom, across the board cuts at Condé Nast, and—oh, yeah—the announcement of 600 jobs being eliminated at Time, Inc., but it was pretty bad. (Warning: If you're the person who told The Atlantic's Megan McArdle that this paper needs to be renamed "The Daily Layoff," stop reading now...)

On Monday, The New York Times closed down Play, it's quarterly sports magazine. John Koblin talked to The Times Magazine's editorial director Gerry Marzorati who told him, “It was losing hundreds of thousands of dollars over several years and when you’re not going to see that turn around, that’s the problem."

Also on Monday, MinnPost.com's David Brauer brought news of imminent cuts at The Minnesota Star Tribune. The New York Post's Keith Kelly also reported a 3 percent staff cut at TV Guide. (No wonder Ad Age's Nat Ives felt compelled to write, For Thousands of Laid-Off Mag Employees, a Hard Road Ahead that day.)

Women's Wear Daily's Stephanie D. Smith had some details about restructuring at Forbes, which hit the magazine's sales and marketing departments. Ms. Smith warned "Though Monday’s consolidation focused on the business side, the edit side is soon to follow." (Last week various outlets reported forbesauto.com was closing. Valleywag's Owen Thomas had the memo from C.E.O. Steve Forbes; Paid Content's David Kaplan said its entire staff was let go.) Mediaweek's Lucia Moses put the number of laid off Forbes employees at 43.

On Tuesday, Portfolio's Mixed Media blogger Jeff Bercovici reported that Condé Nast's Lucky was laying off three editors. Gawker's Hamilton Nolan reported that Time, Inc.'s Cottage Living would be folding. "[T]he economy inhibited its ability to grow and therefore, sadly, we had to make the decision to close it," Mr. Nolan quoted an internal memo sent to staff. Mr. Nolan also had a report that American Lawyer was letting go of nine employees, some in editorial.

And then it became Wednesday.

What a year, eh? Arab money, Irish money, federal money, no money! This year was the annum when the party stopped and the hangover started, and New Yorkers slept little in between. Both the residential and commercial real estate markets stormed into Jan. 1 of this year happy and bloated, wafted along by hefty credit markets, an indifferent government and a can-do fervor.

And why not? Last year had marked record amounts of investment and apartment and building sales. And the possibilities appeared endless, as lenders poured capital in and buyers yanked it out to satiate markets where $5,000 for a square foot of condo space or $1 billion for an office building felt normal and never-ending.

So long to all that.

As 2008 closes, certain properties stand emblematic of the year’s triumphs and tribulations. Below comes a ranking of the 28 most representative—the towers, sites, stores, developments and complexes that captured a New York City in transition from thrill to chill, and that show the direction of the city property-wise in 2009 and beyond.

A couple of things about the list. One, it’s not all gloom and doom. Some properties made it because they succeeded, either by dumb luck, superior quality or savvy marketing (or a combination of the trio). Two, the properties that come in for critique suffer often because of circumstances: It was a bad year all around.

Just ask 383 Madison, which made the list at No. 8. It was Bear Stearns’ world headquarters.

 

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Andrea Mitchell started it.

It was she who told viewers of NBC’s The Nightly News With Brian Williams on Thursday, Nov. 13, that Hillary Clinton “is under consideration to be secretary of state.”

Since then, nobody seems to have known what to think. But that hasn’t ground the Madame Secretary boomlet to a halt—on the contrary, it only accelerated it! Over the past few days, we’ve heard: Hillary is under consideration for the job. She’s been offered the job! She hasn’t been offered the job (which was only news because someone else had said she had).

Last night, we read that she had been offered the job, and not only that, she was going to accept it! More recently, it’s been “unclear,” but her husband is being vetted—that’s the news of the day for Nov. 18—which must surely mean that someone has been right about something these last few days. Right? STOP PRESSES, SPECIAL PRESS-TIME UPDATE: She hasn’t been offered it. But she’s considering it! She’s “torn.”

“It has unspooled in a confusing way,” said Politico reporter Ben Smith.

On Nov. 13, Ms. Mitchell came on with Brian Williams and offered a very tight, succinct report. Few details, but “two advisers to Barack Obama” confirmed that, yes, Hillary was under consideration for the secretary of state post. It was at this point we knew she made a business trip to Chicago, but we didn’t know why. (Ms Mitchell reported that an “adviser says that [it] was on personal business.”)

It was legitimate news. It’s one of those stories that breaks ground, and then all the details and ticktocks and news breaks come piling in afterward, usually after they get some kind of independent confirmation.

But what if they can’t, and the story keeps moving along without them?

The next day, reports confirmed that the two had met in Chicago and that they had even talked about the position of secretary of state.

It took real reporting. Ms. Mitchell said this wasn’t a “trial balloon” that the Obama or Clinton people wanted out there. This wasn’t a story that both camps were planting to see how it played out.

“There are several people who have said, ‘This is a campaign that hadn’t leaked for 22 months and now they’re leaking like a sieve!’” she said in an interview with Off the Record. “I want to make this clear. This is something I picked up 10 days earlier and had really worked on.”

And then late Friday afternoon, the Huffington Post—the Huffington Post!—printed a story that seemed positioned to be the biggest, cleanest break (no Mayhill Fowler questions of ethical journalism here!) of its lifetime.

“President-elect Barack Obama offered Sen. Hillary Clinton the position of Secretary of State during their meeting Thursday in Chicago, according to two senior Democratic officials,” wrote Nico Pitney, a little-known reporter to the mainstream political media but not likely a Washington outsider: Before coming to the Huffington Post, he was the deputy research director at the Center for American Progress, of which John Podesta, the head of the Obama transition team, is founder, president and chief executive. Could Mr. Pitney know something—even if his sources were ones The Times and NBC would not consider “pay dirt”—that mainstream media outlets weren’t hearing from their sources at the top?

Ms. Mitchell, in preparing a follow-up on her initial report for Friday evening’s broadcast, made a few calls to make sure her story hadn’t changed.

“[The Huffington Post story] possibly advanced it!” she said. “It said that the job had been offered. I was writing a story for Friday night. So I had to quickly circle back to my sources to make sure it had not been ‘offered.’ And they insisted it hadn’t been. I was working all day. I just had to make sure we should not update our piece. They were denying it and I didn’t change my piece.”

O.K., so did The New York Times race to get a story up confirming, or disproving, the Huffington Post report?

“The best defense against that kind of thing is having your own reporting in hand when a report like that [the Huffington Post report] comes along and you can make a news judgment without having to scramble everyone to match it or knock it down,” said Dick Stevenson, the political editor at The Times. “Obviously, we were asking that question—did he make the offer?—all day long and we were pretty comfortable with what the reality was. It didn’t give us any heartburn.”

“I’m not saying we’re always ahead of the curve. But an obvious question like that—has he offered the job—was something we were trying to make sure all day long and over the weekend, and we knew exactly the state of play to the degree you can ever know and we had a pretty clear handle how far this had gone.”

Later that night, Jackie Calmes and Helene Cooper, sourcing “associates” to both Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton, wrote that the two former rivals did discuss the position, but they also discussed other positions, too, and “that no job was offered.”

Well, there’s that.

Open and shut, right? The New York Times contradicted the Huffington Post. They’re on opposite sides of the fence on this one.

“It may be a distinction without a difference,” said Mr. Pitney, the Huffington Post writer, in an interview. “If Obama and Hillary both believed the position was hers if she wanted it, which was reported by us and CNN and ABC, but she wasn’t made a formal offer, whatever that means, that may in fact be true.”

He added: “I think the gist of those scenarios is pretty similar.”

But doesn’t saying “President-elect Barack Obama offered Sen. Hillary Clinton the position of Secretary of State during their meeting Thursday in Chicago” pretend to offer a little more than the “gist of the scenario”?

“I think it’s clear that both [Obama and Clinton] camps consider this the current deliberation and that they’re very serious,” he said. “Even the outlets that said that no formal offer was made, they said Obama is serious about it and this wasn’t a symbolic gesture. Obama is seriously considering offering her this spot. There’s not a ton of information out there. The only people in the meeting were Obama and Clinton, and people are trying to make do with what they have.”

Sure! But … what if Mr. Pitney is making do with something that happens to be the truth, and everyone else is making do with … something else? Could everyone be as sure as Mr. Stevenson that they knew more than anyone else?

The entire news cycle was now on overdrive with Hillary-mania. Once the Sunday morning shows were done talking about GM and the auto industry, it was on to Hillary!

Why is Mr. Obama seriously considering his former rival? Will Bill Clinton get in the way? What about Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama’s foreign policy differences—the decision to go into Iraq and the talking directly with Iran, for starters? What about Mrs. Clinton’s own foreign policy embarrassments on the trail? (Remember her and Sinbad dodging sniper fire in Bosnia? The peace she brought to Northern Ireland?) And whether Mr. Obama was considering Mrs. Clinton to keep his enemy close and out of the Senate, where she can potentially cause havoc? (Secretary of state doesn’t seem like the sort of place you would stash a nuisance—“Obama should remember the rule that you never hire anybody you can’t fire, especially as secretary of state,” John Bolton told The New York Times.)

And then the whole Hillary’s Choice story line! What does it mean that Hillary would want this job (if she does)? Is she just so power-hungry that she’s eager to get her hands on a high-profile job like secretary of state, even if it means working for Mr. Obama?

Of course by this time, all we knew was that President-elect Obama probably—probably!—was considering Ms. Clinton for the job. Had anyone denied it? Not really! We were told to “respect Mr. Obama’s process.” O.K.! But what are we supposed to think is true? The Huffington Post story? It could be right! Or not. Anyway, if it’s the gist that counts …

“There are a couple things,” said Mr. Stevenson at The Times. “One is that you’re coming off this incredibly amazing story of the campaign, and then you hit the transition where there is a bit of a news vacuum. [Mr. Obama] has been relatively quiet and out of sight and yet you have this media apparatus waiting to scoop anything up and then consider it big news. In any transition, every rumor and every report and every little nugget about a deputy commerce secretary and deputy assistant to the president suddenly takes on an outsized importance. And here you throw into this story line something that is, again, amazing and a little hard to believe in terms of drama and personalities and egos, and it’s like gasoline on a fire.

“So you get everyone getting to run to that side of that boat,” he continued. “You’ve got reporting that probably overshot reality somewhat. And while that thing has always kind of happened, now you have the combination of the nature of the news cycle now and the ubiquity of blogs and the ability and apparent desire of campaigns to feed news nuggets to keep shaping the news cycles and the competitive nature of journalists, and it all combines in this case to create an extraordinary moment. It’s not terribly surprising to me you would have some reporting that probably was a bit beyond what the facts would support.”

The Times and NBC News—our traditional media outlets, the ones that count for less now that we’ve got Mayhill Fowlers in the world—have been the primary outlets to show restraint and produce incremental breaks, however small, that haven’t been disputed throughout this story line. 

By Monday, The Times and NBC kicked the ball forward a bit, again. Ms. Cooper and Peter Baker reported, as did Andrea Mitchell on the Today show that morning, that the Obama team was looking into vetting Bill Clinton’s financial and international associations. 

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic—one of the leading political reporters during the campaign, who also showed restraint in his coverage over the past week—went back and gave us a little ticktock from the Obama-Hillary meeting. He wrote that Mr. Obama called Mrs. Clinton on Wednesday and asked that they meet. “According to Democratic sources, Clinton disclosed the information to only three people and swore them to secrecy. Clinton’s team went to extreme lengths to keep the trip a secret. When Clinton arrived at LaGuardia airport in New York for the Delta flight, she was the last person to board the plane. In Chicago, she was the first person to disembark.”

Small news breaks, some clarification. Reporting, and reporting on the reporting.

And by time Monday night rolled around, it looked like the break everyone had finally been waiting for arrived.

The Guardian—The Guardian!—reported, “Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.”

The sourcing was curious—“has learned”—but still: news!!! The break we’ve been waiting for.

Within minutes … no one followed up on it. Within hours, Matthew Drudge, accustomed to assigning most of the American media via a giant assignment memo above the flag of his home page, began to demote it. And by morning, even a virulent reader of political news blogs or an obsessed watcher of daytime cable news could be forgiven for never having known the story had finally, kind of, broken.

Ewen MacAskill, the Washington bureau chief for The Guardian, said in an interview that he stood by his story. His source said he could use the information as long as he didn’t source it. So he went with that.

But perhaps curiously, he argued that it wasn’t a news break anyway. 

“I didn’t think it was such a big deal,” he said. “The big story was that she was under consideration in the first place. That was the story I would have liked to have broken. That was completely unexpected. I just wrote a wrinkle in the story. Andrea Mitchell is the one that deserves the praise.

“The basic scoops are the ones that come out of the blue,” he continued. “They surprise people. They make them stop. And Andrea Mitchell’s had done that. [The Guardian story] is just a development on another story. It’s just on the back of another one.”

But didn’t his story come out of the blue since—forget Hillary even accepting the job—we’re not even clear that Mr. Obama offered one in the first place? Wasn’t this the real break that was far ahead of everyone?

By the time this article reaches many of its print readers, the story will either have been retroactively falsified or … truthified? In the meantime, veteran political reporters—never mind the hapless consumer well outside the Media Elite—are left wondering what major news sources to believe, and when.

“I feel like an idiot for not believing it was an offer on Friday,” said Ben Smith in an interview, referring to the Huffington Post report. “And by Sunday it was a fait accompli. By this point, the fact that they let it hang out there this long means it would be a catastrophe to pull it. In a weird way, we have a confirmation by the way the story unspooled.”

Or do we? At about 15 minutes before 4 p.m. on Nov. 18, Mr. Smith’s colleague Glenn Thrush, the Washington veteran lately of Newsday, seemed to have some people who were willing to break the tie among his competitors.

“Hillary Rodham Clinton isn’t certain she would accept the Secretary of State post even if Barack Obama offers it to her, several people close to the former first lady say,” Mr. Thrush wrote.

“Clinton is conflicted and the deal far from done, despite screaming headlines in outlets including the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper claiming the offer was made and accepted,” he wrote.

“We’ve gotten rid of all the other idiots” besides her husband, Bill Clinton, and one or two very close advisers, a source joked to Mr. Thrush.

So, what have we learned this week, kids? Hillary Clinton will be the next secretary of state, unless she’s not.

That, we think, is pretty much airtight. Run with that.

jkoblin@observer.com

Why, if you’re Barack Obama, would you choose Hillary Clinton to be your secretary of state?

Yes, since it was first reported last week that the two had met to discuss the possibility, there has been no shortage of theories in the press: He wants her out of the Senate and into a pliant administration post; he’s paying her back for conceding graciously and then campaigning for him; he wants to score points with women voters.

But if you ask some of the most prominent members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment, the consensus about her appeal as a potential secretary of state is much simpler: She’ll deliver.

“She is tough,” said Will Marshall, president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, a Democratic think tank that advocates a muscular foreign policy. “Lingering doubts about Democratic resolve on national security questions are put to rest with Hillary in the job. She has a demonstrable quotient of backbone.”

More dovish experts are also excited about the prospect of Secretary Clinton, albeit for slightly different reasons.

“Her top, top, top advisers told me, ‘Steve, she will animate things in the Middle East—she will deliver a Palestinian state. Gold-plated,’” said Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington. Mr. Clemons also noted the irony that Mrs. Clinton potentially would be tasked with preparing the road for the direct negotiations with antagonistic foreign leaders that she excoriated Mr. Obama over during the primary. “She criticized him so much for going to meet foreign leaders without preconditions; now she is the one who is going to have to go and get all the preconditions sorted out.”

The idea, essentially, is that Mrs. Clinton, by virtue of her worldview and independent public profile, would be able to expand the purview of the office and become an unusually powerful surrogate for Mr. Obama’s foreign policy ideas. 

“He’s got to concentrate the first couple of years on the economy, and he needs a very high-profile secretary of state to handle the stuff abroad,” said Les Gelb, the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

If her rhetoric on the campaign trail this year was anything to go by, her strong views about the rest of the world would almost certainly precede her. (Obviously exaggerated claims about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia and bringing peace to Northern Ireland notwithstanding.)

On the Middle East, for example, she criticized the Bush administration for allowing peace negotiations to falter. On Iran, though, she excoriated Mr. Obama as “naïve” for declaring that he would meet unconditionally with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. And on the administration’s dealings with Russia, she said, “This is the president that looked in the soul of Putin, and I could have told him, he was a K.G.B. agent. By definition, he doesn’t have a soul.”

“I think she combines new security and old security, by which I mean she is not afraid of the use of force, and she understands great-power politics and will be plenty prepared to be tough where necessary, either on nonstate issues or on states like Russia if need be,” said Anne-Marie Slaughter, the dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and an often-mentioned candidate for secretary of state during the primaries. “But at the same time, she really gets the transnational issues. I think she is much less about democracy per se than she is about human rights. In that sense she was influenced by the Clinton Global Initiative.

“The promise of her being secretary of state,” added Ms. Slaughter, “would be to unite those two worlds.”

Or as Representative Pete King, a Republican hawk, admiringly put it: “She is from the very realistic wing of the Democratic Party. I don’t think she is going to have any delusions about trusting her enemies.”

The question now is whether it will actually happen and, if a firm offer was made, whether Mrs. Clinton would give up her unassailable hold on a U.S. Senate seat to take the post.

Certainly, to the extent that she still aspires to the presidency, secretary of state hasn’t exactly been a good way to get there for a while. (The last secretary of state to be elected president was James Buchanan.)

At press time, things were still in the air.

A source familiar with Mrs. Clinton’s thinking said that Mr. Obama did indeed offer the job to her and that she was weighing the decision with her husband, who returned home on Nov. 17 from a speaking engagement in Kuwait. But, the source said, reports that she had decided to accept the position were premature and wrong. (The Obama transition would not comment as to whether any position was or was not offered. Mrs. Clinton’s referred questions, once again, to the Obama transition team.)

According to the Democratic source with knowledge of the Clinton’s thinking, the Obama transition team and Clinton team were, as of the afternoon of Nov. 18, still “working through” the parameters of Bill Clinton’s charitable activities to check for real or perceived conflicts of interest, and that the process was going “smoothly.” 

“She is still weighing it,” said another source, a close associate of Hillary Clinton, who added that the sticking point of the negotiations was not Mr. Clinton’s willingness to be vetted, which the source said had been overblown in importance, but rather “a question of whether she wants to give up her Senate seat.”

The associate said that at this point, there was some concern among Clinton’s supporters that all the talk about the job has forced her hand, because declining it would create suspicion about her husband’s finances. But “that is no reason to take the job,” the associate said.

One Obama foreign policy adviser on the transition team, who is not involved in the negotiations, said on background: “Obviously, she has tremendous skills and it would be up to Senator Obama to make that decision in the end on how he feels comfortable with integrating her in. I’m totally confident that he is going to be able to manage his team to get done what he thinks needs to be accomplished.”

Ms. Slaughter said that if Mrs. Clinton did end up becoming secretary of state, it would be only natural that Mr. Clinton give up some of his activities.

“He’s going to operate within more constraints,” she said. “They will find a solution, but there is no question he will be less free to do the kinds of things ex-presidents can do in terms of boards and speeches and businesses deals. It’s a fair exchange.” 

For Mr. King, who, though a Republican, is fond of telling people about his good personal relationship with the Clintons, it would make sense for the former first lady to move back into the executive branch.

“From where is she is sitting right now, it looks like Obama is going to be there for at least the next four years, maybe the next eight,” he said. “He is going to be the dominant force in the political scene for the next eight years. She in the Senate is not the chair of any committee or any major subcommittee. She will be less of a political force in a day-to-day sense, but she will be much more of a national force in an international sense. I think she is making the decision to go for history. Also waking up in the morning as secretary of state in the world in which we live is more exciting than being the junior senator from New York.”

Ms. Slaughter said that plucking a secretary of state from among the ranks of elected officials was a tradition that went back almost to the founding of the republic. 

“But honestly,” said Ms. Slaughter, “if ever there were a time to do it, that time is now.”

jhorowitz@observer.com

On the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 12, Style.com’s executive fashion director, Candy Pratts Price, was standing in the bar of Bergdorf Goodman’s seventh-floor restaurant wearing a black Calvin Klein minidress and black bejeweled Edmundo Castillo ankle boots, surrounded by 200 of her nearest and dearest, there to celebrate her new book, American Fashion Accessories.

“I’m so happy that people came out,” said Ms. Pratts Price in her trademark throaty voice as dermatologist and socialite Lisa Airan waited expectantly to greet her. “It’s not all doom and gloom. We got what we wanted—a new regime!”

She was speaking of the president-elect, for whom she’d shilled in several of her popular animated stream-of-consciousness video-blogs, or CandyCasts.

Designer Zac Posen arrived in a black suit and lined up for a scream and hug before stepping aside to chat with Vogue editor Anna Wintour and her son Charlie Shaffer.

“It’s serious, my love for Candy,” said Mr. Posen. “There’s exuberance, and joy … it’s fierce. The moment I met her she was in my life, and a joy and a good friend and supporter.”

“She’s an icon,” said Calvin Klein designer Francisco Costa, fighting to the back of the restaurant for a copy of Accessories, which was commissioned by the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). “She has this love of fashion and that’s so apropos, it’s so right for right now, to have Candy be celebrated. Because we really need excitement that’s genuine and loving for fashion! Especially now with the whole economy and everybody being so shaky.

“And her blog is amazing!” he said. “I love it.”

CFDA president Diane von Furstenberg was perched on a nearby table with legs folded under her in vaguely pinup fashion, running her hands through her hair. “Well, first of all I have known Candy for 30 years,” she said. “And she’s always on the cutting edge. And she’s very … how can I say? She’s very much hip and this, and then you have the other Candy, who’s a great cook, who has a wonderful husband. She’s a real mensch.”

Ms. Pratts Price, 58, was born Candida Rosa Theresa Pratts to Puerto Rican parents in Washington Heights; she attended Catholic school and then the Fashion Institute of Technology. A well-known accessories editor at Vogue early in Ms. Wintour’s tenure at the magazine and a onetime creative director at Ralph Lauren, she was rehired by Ms. Wintour in 2001 to head Style.com’s fashion coverage. “She embraces talent, she disciplines talent,” Ms. Pratts Price enthused, speaking by phone the morning after her book party from her 58th Street apartment, which she shares with her husband of 28 years, artist Chuck Price, and their white-haired fox terrier (the couple also have a home in Watermill). “You can run in there with an idea and she allows it to grow or she can just tell you how to corral it.”

The site is one of CondéNet’s few success stories, with 2,152,092 unique visitors and 140,978,531 page views in October. Over the summer, Ms. Pratts Price was awarded the CFDA’s Eugenia Sheppard Award for excellence in journalism; the presentation featured a video of Kate Moss doing a throaty Candy impression, enthusing about Hermès.

Of course, these are hardly boom times in media. “I think there’s a major panic over what’s going on,” said Ms. Pratts Price. “And it’s not going to be easy to fix. But you can’t stop doing what you’re doing, because when it comes back, you’ll be gone. You gotta keep your brand awareness, and try to make it work during this doom and gloom.”

Ms. Pratts Price has some ideas of how her site can stay relevant in the changing advertising and consumer climate. “I’m a big fan of a crawl—you know what a crawl is?” she said. “On television? I’ve been trying to put a crawl in at Style, to break things like ‘10 miniskirts down Fifth Avenue; could this be a trend?’ I would love to have a crawl. ‘Breaking news: Hats are back!’

“Of course, that’s technology, that costs money to build,” she conceded. “So I have to ask Mr. Newhouse to expand the budget, and I don’t think it’s a good time to do that.”

She pointed out that Style.com has weathered hard times before in its short life: “After 9/11”—which happened in the middle of Fashion Week—“we were there for the industry, because we were able to deliver the pictures. We also saved a lot of the designers when they couldn’t show.”

And now? “We’re not making a concerted effort to like say get a rose-colored Rolex for $64,000,” she said. “But we still believe that somewhere, somehow, you have to keep the enchantment of desire and want and luxury, you know? You just can’t say ‘Stop shopping.’”

mbryan@observer.com

ALBANY—Fred Dicker, the combative state editor of the New York Post, caught David Paterson off guard.

“Governor, have you ever been accused of being a child of the Enlightenment?” Dicker said toward the end of a 20-minute radio interview with Paterson on the morning of Nov. 18. “Because children of the Enlightenment believe that rational persuasion can actually make a difference. That somehow, if you explain a case to somebody and you really have right on your side, they act accordingly. Because you are dealing with the State Legislature, you know.”

Paterson paused, then finally responded, “This is more like children of the damned.”

About two hours later, he would find out how right he was. With the media looking on at a meeting with legislative leaders in the Red Room of the Capitol, the governor held his hands in the air as two Republicans—the Assembly minority leader, Jim Tedisco, and the Senate majority leader, Dean Skelos—staged an exercise in mockery, going back and forth with suggestions of spending cuts they knew would not be implemented anytime soon.

It was supposed to be a grand denouement for Paterson, who has enthusiastically been playing the role of Chicken Little in New York’s storybook fiscal crisis for months. Legislators were supposed to enact some compromise package—based on the governor’s leadership—that would bridge the state’s fiscal gap for this year of $1.5 billion, and lock in some savings for next year’s budget. There would be pain, but Paterson would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with his legislative counterparts, all of them having dutifully absorbed a political hit for the good of the state.

Instead, he was handed his first major defeat. (Whether it could actually be called a victory for anyone is another story.) And the special session of the Legislature he had so dramatically announced had amounted to nothing.

There were no floor votes— Paterson never even introduced a bill to vote on. He was backed into a corner when Skelos vowed to take him up on his charge and bring his draft bill to a floor vote, a vote he knew would fail, and one that would force quite an awkward situation for Democratic lawmakers caught between party loyalty and screaming interest groups. So Paterson blasted Skelos for “playing politics” and called for a public session.

It went downhill from there.

Reporters tried, with varying success, to stifle their snickering. Tedisco—whose enthusiastic presentation belies his minimal sway—pounded the table and held up a blank sheet of paper for dramatic effect. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver sat with characteristic staidness. Skelos, Paterson, and the leader of the Democratic Senate minority, Malcolm Smith, joked about the size of Smith’s almost-majority conference. Smith yelled at Mr. Tedisco to “grow up!” Paterson finally cooled things down when he told the cameras, “This is the closest that I’ve ever seen in public to an actual leaders meeting.”

“It is a horrible situation that our state has been put in,” Paterson said. “This will not yield the result that we want today.”

But Skelos was all smiles. “Moving forward, the governor now has agreed with my position, and the position of our conference that, give us your budget, and then we can start the hearing process, we can start reviewing your budget jointly as a legislature, and get a conclusion.”

Senator Tom Duane, a Manhattan Democrat who served under Paterson during the governor’s days as Senate minority leader, said afterward that he thought the outcome was a draw, with only the fiscal health of the state coming out with a loss. “It’s hard for anyone to look good with things so bad,” he said. “I could sort of understand where everybody was coming from, even the Republicans, but I think that public service required that additional effort to step up, and that didn’t happen.”

But that was the point. Paterson was betting on being able to coax—or force—cooperation that never actually materialized. His case was made soundly on fiscal grounds—cut now or we’ll run up a greater debt that could hurt our bond rating; we might run out of money and need to borrow; if action is taken now, we’ll accrue greater savings over a longer period—but it was always doomed to fall into the Albany trap.

“There’s no incentive for the Republicans to participate,” said Gerald Benjamin, a dean at SUNY New Paltz. “They’re almost certainly not going to be in the majority in January, so what incentive do they have to collaborate.”

Assemblyman Jeffrion Aubry, a Queens Democrat, agreed. “I think that he looks to a changing political landscape in January. And the question of whether or not, under these circumstances, the Senate was going to be helpful or hinder him in his effort has been shown,” he said. Republicans, in turn, argue that the Democrats, who control the Assembly and, barring defections, will soon control the Senate, were the ones who had let their leader down.

“I would say that the fact that he had to regroup shows that he’s vulnerable and maybe he won’t be listening to some of his comrades as much as he had in the past,” said State Senator Tom Libous, the deputy majority leader, of Paterson. “I think in many cases he was looking out for Smith and maybe Shelly, and I think the governor needs to look out for the governor.”

Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, was saddened by the defeat. But he saw a silver lining in the remarkable spectacle of Paterson being sabotaged by the Legislature in plain view of the public.

“At least we saw the can getting kicked instead of just hearing it,” Horner said.

On a recent weekday afternoon, a handful of policy wonks sat in a corner office adorned with maps and books in the Vanderbilt Street headquarters of the Manhattan Institute discussing a political opportunity presented by the current financial crisis.

“We feel that the moment is here,” said Steve Malanga, an economic policy expert at the Institute.

After losing the presidency and both houses of Congress for the first time in 15 years, Republicans are scrambling to find something different. Different is the Manhattan Institute’s specialty.

Socially eclectic, fiscally conservative and proudly contrarian, the institute is home to people like Myron Magnet, who wears mutton chops and capes and carries gold-knobbed canes, and fellow sartorial pioneer Tom Wolfe, who, while not a member, considers himself the institute’s biggest fan and unofficial biographer.

The Manhattan Institute is most well known for its work on the “broken windows” theory of policing—which argues for the strict enforcement of laws involving small crimes to prevent more serious ones down the road—welfare-to-work and charter schools. Recent headlines in the institute’s City Journal include Mr. Malanga’s “We Don’t Need Another War on Poverty”—“Nothing could be more misguided than to renew this ‘tin-cup urbanism,’ as some have called it”; Curing Diversity,” about how biochemical regulation threatens natural inequality; and “Storm-Proofing the Economy: We Can’t Prevent Wall Street Turmoil, but We Can Make It Less Destructive.”

For a time, it looked like the institute’s star disciple, Rudy Giuliani—who, during his Broken Windows mayoralty, proudly expressed a desire to blow up the city’s Board of Education—would bring their ideas to unprecedented national prominence. But he flamed out in the Republican primaries. Now the lack of a coherent Republican economic philosophy in a time when free markets are under siege offers this group of distinctly urban conservatives another shot at having a national impact. 

In what was perhaps an early indication of its place in the post-meltdown world, on Nov. 13, President George Bush chose to make a major financial address defending capitalism and his bailout of financial institutions at an institute-sponsored event at Federal Hall National Memorial.

“I thank the Manhattan Institute for all you have done,” said Mr. Bush, before adding, “We are faced with the prospect of a global meltdown. And so we’ve responded with bold measures. I’m a market-oriented guy, but not when I’m faced with the prospect of a global meltdown.”

The fellows at the Manhattan Institute say that they are in no rush to claim an intellectual leadership role on one side of the coming civil war over the identity of the Republican Party. They portray themselves as unassuming wonks and point out that they work with anyone interested in tackling tough problems, including Democrats, like Newark mayor Cory Booker, who supports vouchers and charter schools.

But in the corner office of Brian Anderson—decorated with posters of the institute’s City Journal magazine, which he edits; an antique map of Europe showing how the continent’s political borders changed between the two World Wars; and books including Niall Ferguson’s Empire, about the rise and fall of the British Empire—the fellows did articulate what might be considered a sort of manifesto for the role of conservative thinkers in promoting free-market ideas in the 21st century.

Mr. Anderson sat grimly behind his desk in a pin-striped blazer, clicking a computer mouse. New economic ideas, he said, are “important to any vital conservative political movement.”

His colleague, Nicole Gelinas, sat in a straight-backed chair against the wall with perfect posture, wearing a blouse and gray skirt, and explained in complete professorial paragraphs why the failure of financial institutions required a bailout and innovative regulation that would allow banks to fail in the future without endangering the entire economy.

“It’s hard to say with a straight face that this was not a failure of free markets. But this is true,” Ms. Gelinas said with a straight face.

“Something that allows for failure but doesn’t create systematic failure,” chimed in Mr. Malanga, a gregarious and cheerful former editor of Crain’s New York Business, who sat on a leather couch. He was wearing four shades of green. (Socks, pants, shirt and tie, but brown shoes.) 

Expressing the general consensus of the room, he said that the Republican Party needed to focus more on the economy, which he said John McCain did a bad job of during the campaign. Strong religious beliefs were important, he said, but voters showed themselves to care more about the economy and non-ideological policies geared toward improving society. He said that’s what the institute did best.

“Moderate independents and moderate conservatives,” said Mr. Malanga, “I think there is a home for them here because they agree with most of our ideas.”

“Economically,” Ms. Gelinas added later in the conversation, “the room for ideas is wide open to help Republicans stay relevant.”

The fellows all said they prefer to keep their heads down in their drab, green-cabinet-lined headquarters near the Yale Club, but that they would be ready to speak up when the time came.

But in the wake of the Election Day drubbing, the academically inclined, fiscally conservative, culturally agnostic wing of the party quickly began declaring itself loudly.

Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, two young conservatives (and former housemates) at The Atlantic, have written a book called Grand New Party. Mr. Salam’s old boss, moderate Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks, has taken on the theme of a coming battle between conservative “Traditionalists” and “Reformers.” Even Bill Kristol, a party-line promoter of Palinism and cheerleading optimist about the G.O.P.’s prospects even in the late stages of the campaign, seemed to feel obliged to write in a more recent New York Times column that “if Republicans and conservatives don’t come to grips with what’s happened—and can’t develop an economic agenda moving forward that seems to incorporate lessons learned from what’s happened—then they could be back, politically, in 1933.”

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum encountered the wrath of readers at the National Review’s Corner blog after criticizing the Palin. This week, he resigned.

He said in an interview he hoped that a Web site he started, newmajority.com, would provide a “bigger tent” for ideas dissenting from the Republican orthodoxy.

“I think conservatism and Republicans need to face up to this, that the Nixon-Reagan majority was a response to social conditions that do not exist anymore,” Mr. Frum said. He said that to a certain degree, conservatives were the victims of their success in bringing down crime. “Voters don’t use the franchise to say thank you.”

As he sees it, the party needs to now address problems economic in nature, especially the stagnation in middle-class income since the year 2000. Then there is the problem of the Republican electorate.

“Today’s Republican Party, we’re the party of non-poor white people without a college degree,” he said. “That is not a growing demographic. We have to make a really fateful strategic decision.” Hispanics and blacks probably weren’t coming back because of the party’s immigration policies and positions on spending, he said, so “the alternative is that we are going to college-educated voters.”

He said the way to do that was “modulating the social message, being serious about the environment—the drill-baby-drill adventure traded the long-term identity of the party for the short-term flutter—and developing an ethic of governmental competence.”

Basically, he said, “make sure that the Republican Party is less obnoxious to them.”

Representative Pete King, one of the two or three (depending on how a recount goes) House Republicans from New York to have survived this year’s election, agreed. “We have to realize it’s a big country,” said Mr. King. “I can talk to East Side of Manhattan Republicans and they can’t understand how anyone is pro-life, how anyone is anti-gay-marriage. So they have a narrow view, but so do the people out West who can’t understand why we’d even consider a guy like Joe Lieberman for vice president or why we need a guy like Chris Shays in the Congress.” 

He said that the best way a local group like the Manhattan Institute can make its influence felt was to win over state officials.

“Their best bet, I think, they should try and reach out to different governors, showing how you can apply conservative principles in the 21st century,” said Mr. King. “If they can get one or two governors to adopt some of their proposals, then that gives that national base to go forward on.”

And that’s just what the Manhattan Institute claims to be doing now. They say their experience with Mr. Giuliani, who applied Manhattan Institute ideas about fighting crime, welfare and lowering taxes to New York, taught them that any idea, no matter how meritorious, needs a forceful leader to translate it to the real world. Also convinced that good bipartisan, non-ideological ideas bubble up from city and state governments, they already have trained their eye on talents around the country.

Despite the heavily Christian component of his political identity, for example, Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana—he’s a social conservative, but also an intellectual Indian-American who has positioned himself at the forefront of the party’s next generation—has become a repository of the institute’s hopes of finding an elected champion for its ideas.

“Jindal is receptive to the types of things we do here,” said Mr. Malanga.

“Jindal has shown himself to be publicly open to a lot of what we’ve said,” agreed Ms. Gelinas, who approved of his efforts to modernize the state’s health care program, fight crime and repair New Orleans after Katrina.

She added that a think tank in Louisiana had also started advocating their ideas. “The Pelican Institute says openly that they have modeled themselves on us,” she said, very seriously.

jhorowitz@observer.com