Glass Mansions

It seems there are some interesting ties between Michelle Obama's employer and the Barack Obama campaign. The Washington Post reports:

Michelle Obama, an executive at the medical center, launched an innovative program to steer the patients to existing neighborhood clinics to deal with their health needs.

That effort, in time, inspired a broader program the hospital now calls its Urban Health Initiative. To ensure community support, Michelle Obama and others in late 2006 recommended that the hospital hire the firm of David Axelrod, who a few months later became the chief strategist for Barack Obama's presidential campaign.

Axelrod's firm recommended an aggressive promotional effort modeled on a political campaign — appoint a campaign manager, conduct focus groups, target messages to specific constituencies, then recruit religious leaders and other third-party "validators." They, in turn, would write and submit opinion pieces to Chicago publications.

One key recommendation from Axelrod's firm: "Respond quickly to opposition activity."

The medical center's initiative provides a window into the close relationship between the Obamas, their associates at the University of Chicago and Axelrod, the strategist most central to Barack Obama's rise. It also illustrates how that circle, and particularly Michelle, dealt with an intractable social problem that confronts many urban areas: How much care should large, nonprofit hospitals offer the poor in return for tax-exempt status?

This is interesting on a couple of levels. In a way it is just typical Chicago politics, where contracts are routinely steered to political supporters. In another, it gives a lot of insight into how Axelrod thinks politically: Astroturfing beats grassroots. Neither Michelle Obama or Axelrod would comment about this article as it was being written. Also a hallmark of Chicago-style political business ties. Read the whole thing.

Where's the changey-hopeyness? It isn't apparent in this deal. It also isn't apparent that the netroots understand that they are being cynically manipulated as part of a (well) paid political consultant's expressed strategy.