Word: lawing
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...seemed the logical choice. An Ivy League-trained lawyer and former top staffer for Ted Kennedy, he had taken on politically unpopular causes over the years, including representing Elián González's father in his effort to return his son to Cuba. Craig helped defend his law-school classmate Bill Clinton against impeachment, but he broke from the Clintons in 2007 to back Obama and became a key player in his meteoric rise to the presidency...
...Instead, he was named Obama's top lawyer. Craig lost no time creating one of the largest White House counsel's offices ever, with dozens of high-powered lawyers, compared with only a handful who served under Bush in early 2001. Staffed with brainy graduates of Yale and Harvard law schools, Craig's office was an instant power center in the White House, able to produce answers, memos and ideas seemingly overnight while other parts of the Administration were still getting up and running...
...Obama, a onetime constitutional-law professor, told Craig he needed more time and asked for an extension. But when Michael Hayden, Bush's CIA director who had stayed on in Obama's first month, learned that the memos might be released, he went ballistic. (See pictures...
...then convened an impromptu debate, selecting Craig and McDonough to argue opposing sides. Craig deployed one of Obama's own moral arguments: that releasing the memos "was consistent with taking a high road" and was "sensitive to our values and our traditions as well as the rule of law." Obama paused, then decided in favor of Craig, dictating a detailed statement explaining his position that would be released the next...
...Obama announced his intention Nov. 13 to replace Craig with Bob Bauer, whose specialty is election law. In his resignation letter to Obama, Craig wrote, "I want to tell you how proud I am of all that your legal team has accomplished on your behalf and in support of your agenda since your Inauguration." For Craig, however, the agenda had changed...