Craig Crawford's Trail Mix

Now that Missouri is finally called, we have a winner -- Our own Trail Mix original regular, Chef Sheila. A former White House staffer turned culinary artist and contributor to The Back Channel, Sheila nailed the Electoral College results long before the election: 365 votes for Barack Obama.

How did she do it?

"OK, my friend, here is the method of my madness: My passion isn't strategy or the horse racing. Mine is the candidate. I get to know as much about a candidate as I can, so I can get a "feel" for how a race will shape up. As you know, I was an Obama supporter from the start (as in his 2004 speech). For the last two years I have watched the campaign's strategy building with each and every week. The last two months I began seeing a trend that cycled up and down on an average of 5 points until the last few weeks. My confidence in Obama's strategy, that people wanted honesty and transparency, and my weekly reading of Fivethirtyeight.com, gave me the confidence that Obama would win somewhere in that number group . . . Now, where's my cherry pie? Of course, what I really wanted was a 15-point spread!!!!  LOL." -- Chef Sheila

Sheila hereby wins permanent bragging rights as the Nostradamus of Trail Mix for Election 2008. Congratulations! . . . and thanks to Jamie for managing our predictions list.

President-elect Barack Obama used his first post-election meeting with President George W. Bush last week to urge a speedy bailout of the auto industry, but the incumbent's party is slowing things down.  

Top Senate Republicans said Tuesday that this year's $700 billion financial industry bailout program should not be the source of aid for struggling domestic automakers. Meanwhile, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer raised the possibility of calling members back in December to deal with the auto issue. More on this story.

Detroit auto makers might have to wait until Obama, along with new Democratic members of Congress, get in place next year. On Sunday, Obama discussed his thoughts for a bailout in a CBS "60 Minutes" interview, saying it should be "conditioned on labor, management, suppliers, lenders, all the stakeholders coming together with a plan" for "a sustainable U.S. auto industry. ... So that we are creating a bridge loan to somewhere as opposed to a bridge loan to nowhere."

More on CQ Politics

• U.S. Automaker Executives Plead for Aid as Hopes Fade for Speedy Action
• Poll Tracker: Americans Divided on Auto Bailout
• Frank Presses Treasury To Use Bailout Fund To Stave Off Foreclosures
• Madison Powers: Bailing Out Detroit

Call me dubious about Barack Obama's apparent enthusiasm for emulating Abraham Lincoln's choice to bring former political rivals into his Cabinet. It worked a century and a half ago when White House infighting was mostly private, but in today's world every squabble could become a public spectacle.

When Lincoln did not like what was written about him, he ordered the military to shut down a New York newspaper and arrest the editors. Presumably, those days are gone.

Scandal-crazed bloggers, out-of-control partisans and unmanageable leakers now lurk around new administrations like nothing before. Big egos, each with a unique political base and a personal agenda, could distract the nation and derail the new administration

Naïve presidents often first take office with grand promises about how, this time, the members of the Cabinet will be more than lap dogs. Jimmy Carter, for instance, vowed to run his administration with a strong Cabinet, holding weekly meetings that soon became bi-weekly, and then monthly, and, by his last year, quite seldom.

If Obama avoids the pattern of abandoning early promises of Cabinet-wide government in favor of an entrenched White House, it will be a first, almost since Lincoln's time.

Craig discusses buzz about Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann (11/14)

Craig on MSNBC Today (11/15)
Various Times 3:00-5:30 PM EST

In 1953, Charles Erwin Wilson, then president of General Motors, was named by President Dwight Eisenhower as Secretary of Defense and was asked during hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee if as a member of the Cabinet he could make a decision adverse to the interests of GM. Wilson said, "For years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa."

General Motors is now little more three dollars per share, and the experts say SELL.

That can't be good.

• Main Street's Engine (UAW Pres. Ron Gettelfinger)
• Automakers Don't Belong Under Bailout Plan, Paulson Says
• Democratic Call for Auto Industry Aid Comes With Conditions

Craig on "Countdown with Keith Olbermann"
Tonight (11/14) MSNBC 8:00 PM EST

Produced by CQ's Andrew Satter

In Video Trail Mix, Craig says it seems like John McCain and Sarah Palin are having more fun than the man who beat them.

Watching Barack Obama grapple with the grim realities of taking on the presidency in tough times brings to mind various White House transitions throughout history.

Perhaps one of the most dramatic was on April 12, 1945, the day when President Franklin D. Roosevelt passed away. FDR's vice president, Harry S. Truman, remarked to reporters, "Pray for me boys, the moon and the stars just fell on me."

Those in Truman's situation often provoked pity from those who really knew what he was in for. Also on that fateful day, Roosevelt's widow demonstrated that she felt even sorrier for what awaited the man who would succeed him.

Truman was a bit stunned by the reaction he got from First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt as he offered consolation. "Is there anything I can do for you?" Truman asked.

Without a pause, Mrs. Roosevelt brushed aside Truman's concern, saying, "Is there anything we can do for you? For you are the one in trouble now."

It wasn't so much that Mrs. Roosevelt felt the times were especially tough for the new president. World War II was winding down and the nation's economy was on the upswing. She was really referring to the pressures of a job that is overwhelming in the best of times.

Just a week or so after that initial exchange Mrs. Roosevelt sent a handwritten letter to Truman expanding upon her famous warning that "you are the one in trouble now."

Enclosing one her husband's favorite figurines, a comical-looking donkey, Mrs. Roosevelt wrote, "This little donkey has long been in my husband's possession and was on his desk. He looks a bit obstinate and Franklin said he needed a reminder sometimes that his decisions had to be final and taken with a sense that God would give guidance to a humble beast. Once having decided something, the obstinate little donkey kept his sense of humor and determination going against great pressure."

Here's what worries me about comparing the current economic downturn to the Great Depression of the 1930's: Despite what many think, it actually took a brutal world war to revive our economy.

The unprecedented jobs-producing role of World War II masked what was actually the tepid effects of Franklin Roosevelt's much-hyped New Deal, which was little more than a band aid compared to the economic healing of a biblical conflict on six continents. And yet, these days comparisons are being made to FDR's domestic programs as if they saved the day.

In other words, the real lesson of the Great Depression is that worldwide war is what saved us. Which would lead to the conclusion that a massive arms buildup is what would save us now.

The lesson of defeating the Great Depression ought to be that jobs-producing federal spending in a great national cause is what works - and, unless we want it to be done by sending more Americans to their deaths in foreign wars, there should be another way.

• Political Economy: Taking the Long View
• Bush and Obama Meet Amid Challenges at Home and Abroad
• Poll Tracker: A Most Popular Man Meets a Very Unpopular One 
• Obama's Transition Challenge: Hitting the Ground Running
• In Transition: Is Obama Cabinet in Granholm's Future?
• David Corn: Transition Fever: Holbrooke, Holder, and Gorelick, Oh My!

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ought to think about becoming chairman of the Republican National Committee. Although there are many others in the running, Schwarzenegger could instantly refresh the party's brand identification. This week the GOP governors meet in Florida, and no doubt the political future of their embattled party will be much on their minds.

Republicans should look to their governors for ways to emerge from the ashes of two elections in which Democrats delivered a beating. Socially moderate governors such as Schwarzenegger, Florida's Charlie Crist and Louisiana's Bobby Jindal offer a path out of the political wilderness.

Schwarzenegger's promise as a neutral party chairman is his inability to run for president, under the Constitution. But who knows, that could always be changed in this climate of political change.