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SCHEDULERS ROCK!
It's a minor point, but Ann Friedman notes that Hillary Clinton's campaign has more women staffers because she "promotes lower-level staffers." She quotes Garance: "No other candidate can say, for example, that their campaign is being managed by their female former scheduler."
I don't know a lot about campaigns, but I know one thing: the scheduler is not, or should not be, a "low-level staffer." The scheduler is key. He or (usually) she controls the campaign's most important and finite asset: the candidate's time. Media buyers, "strategists," pollsters are a dime a dozen, and they all come with big egos and big price tags. A great scheduler, however, one who can balance all the political and personal obligations, and use the candidate's time in a savvy way that positively reinforces the message, is a brilliant and rare thing.
It is because schedulers are often women that it is considered a lower-level job, I think. There is a terrible disparity in political work, in which the pollsters and media buyers (usually men) make real money and own houses in Georgetown (sometimes more than one) and horse farms in Virginia, while others (researchers and schedulers, for example) work twice as hard for one tenth the pay. And are invisible.
I would modify Ann's point a bit to suggest that Clinton's strength is not just that she promotes people up from the "women's jobs," but understanding the importance of those jobs in the first place. As evidence, I would note that in 1992 she appointed an extremely high-powered and politically experienced friend -- Susan Thomases -- her scheduler, and that became one of the key positions in the whole Clinton operation. I suspect it's one reason why her campaign operation seems to run so effectively.
-- Mark Schmitt
COMMENTS (4)
Schedulers need to have very sharp, capable minds. In addition to managing time, they manage the campaign's other most important resource, which is relationships. Without asking, and on short notice, they have to understand who can get bumped, whose calls need to be answered right away, and what meetings are dispensable. That's a crucial job and one that requires an enormous amount of trust.
Posted by: SDM | October 30, 2007 1:15 PM
"That's a crucial job and one that requires an enormous amount of trust."
Yes, and the way they extort that trust out of administrators all over America is by keeping them one paycheck away from the street.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 30, 2007 1:27 PM
There is a moral to this story: one particularly relevant to Blogistania.
There are far more talented people out there than there are offices for them to fill. And there is no reason to assume that the incumbents are the best qualified for their offices. We've seen this in the blog world--thousands of new pundits, hundreds of whom were far better than most of the incumbents. We saw this in WWII--dozens of new generals, most of them far better than the incumbents pushed aside by Marshall. We saw this in Silicon Valley, with the new industrialists. And we see this with Hillary Clinton, who favors young women over incumbent men.
I don't know the public policy implications of this, although it is surely yet another argument in favor of the estate tax. It is also likely an argument in favor of affirmative action.
I am reminded of Alexander Hamilton, a believer in economic dynamism and social stasis. Sort of like Reagan's Republican Party. Bush does not even believe in economic dynamism: the perfect proponent of structural constipation.
Posted by: Joe S. | October 30, 2007 2:00 PM
"And we see this with Hillary Clinton, who favors young women over incumbent men."
Well, I would like to know what she is paying them. Women, like men, taking advantage of other women is a pretty familiar phenomenon.
It's not like she didn't rake in the big bucks.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 30, 2007 2:21 PM