On foreign policy alone, some 200 experts are providing the Obama campaign with assistance of some sort, arranged into 20 subgroups. On the domestic front, more than 500 policy experts are contributing ideas, campaign aides said. Veterans of previous election campaigns say the scale of the policy operation resembles the full-blown effort candidates typically undertake for a general election campaign rather than the more stripped-down versions common for the primary season.
Senior advisers include heavy hitters from the administration of President Bill Clinton, husband of Obama's primary rival.
Anthony Lake, Clinton's original national security adviser, is helping coordinate foreign policy. So is Susan Rice, a Clinton assistant secretary of state and protege of former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Eric Holder, a former deputy attorney general, is among those providing expertise on legal policy.
"These are not outsiders trying to tear down the temple," said Philip Zelikow, a former senior Bush administration foreign policy official and executive director of the Sept. 11 commission.
"If you guess that he's surrounded himself with people who are highly ideological, left-wing or dovish, you would guess wrong," added Zelikow, now a history professor at the University of Virginia. "These folks cannot easily be typecast by ideology."
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