As the Obama campaign has been hit by adversity for the first time in recent weeks, the question of whether or not the candidate is "ready for prime time" is resurfacing. There's no doubt of Obama's skill at campaigning, but a President has to be able to assemble a team able to administer and defend his policies.

First, the man long touted as Obama's "chief economic adviser," Austan Goolsbee, told Canadian officials not to pay too much attention to the tough campaign rhetoric in the Rust Belt, where Obama was threatening to pull out of NAFTA if his preferred changes were not "renegotiated." The campaign's response(s) were amateurish, at first even denying the meeting had taken place.

Then, foreign policy adviser Samantha Powers told European media that Obama's plan to withdraw troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office was "a best-case scenario" not to be taken too seriously. Fortunately for the campaign, Powers had also described Hillary Clinton as "a monster" in another interview in Europe (where she was on a book tour), which attracted most of the attention back home. The Clinton campaign demanded her resignation over the remark, and it was delivered in short order (no doubt to the great relief of the Obama campaign).

Now, Obama foreign policy and terrorism adviser John Brennan, Chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance and former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, has also directly opposed his boss. He was interviewed by Shane Harris for National Journal:

Brennan: There is this great debate over whether or not the telecom companies should in fact be given immunity for their agreement to provide support and cooperate with the government after 9/11. I do believe strongly that they should be granted that immunity, because they were told to do so by the appropriate authorities that were operating in a legal context, and so I think that's important. And I know people are concerned about that, but I do believe that's the right thing to do. I do believe the Senate version of the FISA bill addresses the issues appropriately.

The full article is at the above link (the interview is excerpted from the print edition). Obama OPPOSED the bill Brennan supports above, which passed the Senate 68 - 29 (neither Obama nor Clinton managed to make the final vote on February 12th, even though that day's only primaries were Virginia, Maryland, and DC).

The funny part is each of these advisers advocates a more sensible policy than their candidate. He's either not listening to them, or they aren't listening to him, or both.

Must be that "new kind of politics" I keep hearing about . . .