Raiding the inarticulate since 2010

accelerated academy acceleration agency AI Algorithmic Authoritarianism and Digital Repression archer Archive Archiving artificial intelligence automation Becoming Who We Are Between Post-Capitalism and Techno-Fascism big data blogging capitalism ChatGPT claude Cognitive Triage: Practice, Culture and Strategies Communicative Escalation and Cultural Abundance: How Do We Cope? Corporate Culture, Elites and Their Self-Understandings craft creativity critical realism data science Defensive Elites Digital Capitalism and Digital Social Science Digital Distraction, Personal Agency and The Reflexive Imperative Digital Elections, Party Politics and Diplomacy digital elites Digital Inequalities Digital Social Science Digital Sociology digital sociology Digital Universities elites Fragile Movements and Their Politics Cultures generative AI higher education Interested labour Lacan Listening LLMs margaret archer Organising personal morphogenesis Philosophy of Technology platform capitalism platforms populism Post-Democracy, Depoliticisation and Technocracy post-truth psychoanalysis public engagement public sociology publishing Reading realism reflexivity scholarship sexuality Shadow Mobilization, Astroturfing and Manipulation Social Media Social Media for Academics social media for academics social ontology social theory sociology technology The Content Ecosystem The Intensification of Work The Political Economy of Digital Capitalism The Technological History of Digital Capitalism Thinking trump twitter Uncategorized work writing zizek

The emergence of the ‘informal advisor’ in Washington politics 

From This Town, by Mark Leibovich, pg 284. This is another example of a key theme of the book, albeit one explored in an exclusively gossipy way: the money to be made through working at the boundaries between institutional  spheres, occasionally crossing them strategically and playing off this connection.

It’s a nice arrangement, though, the “informal adviser” gig. It helps both candidate and Usual Suspect. Being publicly linked to Romney can impress Black’s clients—an important currency in This Town (informal advisers are almost never paid real currency by the campaigns, and usually don’t need the money anyway). In return, they can vouch for the candidate within the embattled but still potent Republican establishment in Washington, providing a link to donors, endorsers, and various useful eggheads.

, , , , ,