the kicker

"Team" Coverage

December 1, 2008

Who made The Team? You know, The “Team of Rivals?” We’ll finally find out, at a press conference in a few minutes carried live by your preferred news source, who will play on President-Elect Obama’s much-speculated about national security team (a subset — varsity, for sure — of the larger Team Obama). After which, I suppose, CNN will retire (re-purpose?) its “National Security Team Announcement” logo. Although with all the competing team talk on CNN– “Senator Hillary Clinton expected to join Team Obama, a Team of Rivals, we’ll ask The Best Political Team whether the picks could blow up in his face” — perhaps such a logo is actually necessary.

UPDATE: Awaiting the announcement. Narrating the empty podium/blue curtain/row of flags shot on MSNBC: It will be “a team of heavyweights, a team of diverse views, and a very pragmatic team,” reports NBC News’s John Yang. Go, Team!

UPDATE: Ding! Ding! Ding! The third question into the Q&A part of the “Team of Rivals” press conference (from a reporter named “Karen”): How will Obama ensure this is a “team of rivals and not clash of rivals?” Fourth question, from ABC News’s Jake Tapper, also Team of Rivals-ish (How will you ensure they will carry out your vision when they have different visions…). Followed by another, Hillary-Clinton-specific rivalry question (What about the stuff you said about Hillary Clinton during the primary…) to which Obama replied that he “understand[s] that it’s fun for the press” to dig up quotes from the campaign…

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.