Linda Douglass Joins The Obama Campaign

http://marcambinder.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/linda_douglass_joins_the_obama.php

Linda Douglass Joins The Obama Campaign

21 May 2008 11:50 am


Linda Douglass, an award-winning television and print journalist who currently serves as a contributing editor to National Journal, will join Barack Obama's presidential campaign as a senior strategist and as a senior campaign spokesperson on the roadshow, a newly created position.

Douglass confirmed her new position when I walked up to the ninth floor, knocked on her door, and asked her about it. She informed National Journal President Suzanne Clark this morning of her impending departure.

"I see this as a moment of transformational change in the country and I have spent my lifetime sitting on the sidelines watching people attempt to make change. I just decided that I can't sit on the sidelines anymore."

Over 34 years in journalism, Douglass said, she grew disillusioned with the partisanship she saw first-hand. She came to specialize in campaign finance investigations, including a segment for CBS entitled "Follow The Dollar." When she interviewed donors, she would always ask them, "Why should your vote matter any more than my mother's?"

After serving as Justice Department correspondent for CBS News, DougIass moved to ABC News, where she covered Capitol Hill. A few years ago, she met Barack Obama and the two became friendly. Douglass retired from ABC News in 2006 to work on a project at New York University that was looking into how partisanship had paralyzed Congress. She joined the National Journal group as a contributing editor in 2007, writing for the magazine and hosting a weekly radio show on XM Satellite radio.

Douglass declined to discuss the terms of her new job or how the offer was broached. An Obama spokesman had no comment.

As his campaign has shown, Obama knows how to put an effective team together.