CNN’s Roberts tries loosening up. No, not this much.

The Atlantic.com increases traffic post-election.

Obama transition team gets leaky. But is that such a problem?

AP lifts ban on Pentagon photos.

NPR kills "Infinite Mind" show after Sen Grassley investigation.

And NYT reports (on A1!) about People’s pro-Angelina deal. People editor responds.

During a conference on the 2008 election hosted by Politico and the University of Southern California, Obama-Biden deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand said choosing the renegade senator as his running mate would have helped McCain undermine Obama’s claim to represent a new kind of politics.

“I think if he would’ve picked Lieberman or another Democrat he would’ve taken away an important trademark of Barack’s,” Hildebrand said, explaining that he believed the Republican base would have accepted a Lieberman nomination. “I think the convention would’ve been just fine.”

Andre Pineda, an Obama campaign pollster who focused on Latino outreach, agreed that conservative opposition to Lieberman would have melted away, much as Hillary Clinton’s supporters came around to support Barack Obama.

“For all of the frustration I knew the Clinton people were feeling about her not getting the nomination, did I ever think that they would not come around?” Pineda asked rhetorically. “The same, to me, with Lieberman and the Republican base.”

He added: “It did have the potential to be a game-changer.”

Republican panelists defended the nomination of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, though they acknowledged that she had not accomplished all the goals the McCain camp hoped she would.

“Certainly our hope with Gov. Palin, going forward, was that there would be a connection to more moderate voters,” said Mike DuHaime, who served as the McCain campaign’s political director.

Greg Strimple, a Republican political consultant, said the Obama campaign’s financial advantage allowed Democrats to portray Palin as an extreme conservative.

“We allowed the Obama people to define her as somewhere far, far, far right,” he said.

Though panelists agreed that Democrats were able to overcome the advantages Palin brought to the Republican ticket, Obama campaign veterans acknowledged that there was a moment, following the end of the Republican convention in early September, when the Alaska governor seemed to have helped McCain establish a small lead.

“The reaction from women in the country made me nervous,” said Obama’s former traveling press secretary, Linda Douglass.

“It was suburban women we were losing,” Hildebrand said, though he continued: “I think after the first interview she did, and the Couric interview, my own sense was that this was going to be a candidate that just was not going to wear well over that eight-week period.”

Reflections on the veepstakes, however, only made up part of the discussion at the conference’s morning events. While panelists of both parties agreed that Obama had run a strong race, in general, they also highlighted a few key decisions that helped him win, including his determination to hew close to his original message even in the more contentious moments of the race.

During the Democratic primaries, Hildebrand said, Obama had narrowly avoided damaging his reputation for taking a unifying approach to politics by engaging in acrimonious exchanges with the Clinton campaign.

“Every single day, there was this tit-for-tat,” he said. “My concern was that we were damaging Barack’s trademark, which was a different kind of politics, and that we were playing a kind of politics that the Clintons are really good at.”

“Going into Indiana,” he continued, “We really changed our strategy.”

According to both Republican and Democratic operatives, Obama’s consistent message was only one ingredient in an electoral win that depended heavily on a powerful voter registration and turnout operation.

“It was stunning. It really was. It was a beautiful campaign,” said veteran GOP advance man Greg Jenkins. “The McCain ground game wasn’t as good as their ground game was.”

“Their turnout universe was enormous,” DuHaime agreed.

Hildebrand said the Democratic nominee might not have pulled out a win without focusing so heavily on voter turnout.

“In nine states,” he said, “we registered more voters than our margin of victory.”

As impressive as the Obama ground operation may have been, though, Republicans also emphasized that McCain and Palin were campaigning in a national environment that was deeply hostile to GOP candidates, and resistant to any contender who could be linked to President George W. Bush.

“This country’s got a pretty steady history of the cyclical nature of, just, fatigue,” Jenkins said. “It happened in 2000 after eight years of President Clinton. It happened in 1992 after twelve years of Reagan-Bush.”

Bush’s low approval ratings, and the September economic crisis that deepened voters’ concerns about the state of the nation, didn’t help.

“The only thing that we didn’t want to own, throughout, was the Bush economy,” Strimple said. “We were constantly in a fourth and 27 position, trying to throw long.”

Politico: Live from L.A.

Carmouche faces Republican John Fleming in the state’s Dec. 6 run-off to decide who will replace retiring GOP Rep. Jim McCrery. In a letter to colleagues on Friday, Van Hollen casts the run-off as the Republicans "last stand" in what should be the final race of the 2008 election cycle.

"They want to stop our momentum in the South," Van Hollen wrote. "We need to rebouble our efforts to make sure Paul has the resources to win."

In the letter, Van Hollen makes the case that Carmouche fits a mold that has been particularly successful for Democrats this cycle - Southern moderates from districts President Bush and John McCain won.

"Moderate and conservative Democrats are winning in districts that George Bush carried in 2004 and John McCain carried this cycle because our candidates reflect the values and priorities of their districts," Van Hollen said.

It was a fantastic ride, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed covering the primary and general election. I’m indebted to my editors for providing me this space and offering only their encouragement and constructive guidance. Thanks also to you, dear reader, for coming back each day and sending along your many ideas, tips, insights, restaurant recommendations and the occasional personal attack.

It was an historic race, and a true privilege to watch up close.

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’m now shifting over to cover the transition and eventually President Obama’s administration. You can find me at our nifty new page, Politico44. When I get the blog jones, I’ll make a cameo over in Ben Smith country.

Also, keep a close eye on our homepage as we continue to aggressively cover the story of Republican rebuilding.

Thanks again for reading and stay in touch.

–Jonathan

Some answers floating in the ether: A foreign policy type to be named later? Wolfson? Reines? And here’s a dark horse: Rep. Anthony Weiner.

Until about three weeks ago, signs in the windows of Clinton’s suburban Washington campaign headquarters advertised a moving sale and offered all kinds of office equipment for purchase, and some equipment is still listed for sale online. From the time she conceded the Democratic presidential nomination to Barack Obama through the end of October, Clinton’s campaign reaped $373,000 through nearly 400 separate “asset sales,” according to reports her campaign filed with the Federal Election Commission.

That won’t put much of a dent in her vendor debt, which stood at $7.5 million at the end of October, according to an FEC report filed Thursday night.

But every penny counts for Clinton, who’s had a tough time raising cash since dropping out of the race. Thursday’s report shows that in October she raised $774,000 and brought in another $42,000 through asset sales, allowing her to pay down $507,000 of her vendor debt.

That debt could be an issue if, as expected, she is tapped to be Obama’s secretary of state, a position that would bar her raising cash to pay off her unpaid bills, possibly prompting her to appeal to her creditors and the FEC to forgive the debt.

It would be unprecedented for the FEC to allow a candidate to write off such a large debt. But it’s quite common for losing candidates to sell off their assets, particularly to their former staffers and sympathetic political committees.

Campaigns are like start-up businesses that have to rent, equip and staff offices around the country on the fly, then quickly go out of business, leaving them with all sorts of things they no longer need.

After former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani lost his bid for the Republican presidential nomination this year, he offered steep discounts to former aides willing to purchase the BlackBerries and laptops he bought for them to use on the campaign, said his campaign lawyer Jason Torchinsky.

He worked as a lawyer on President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection bid and said that afterwards, he bought a TiVo from the campaign.

“It’s a little unusual to open it up to the general public,” Torchinsky said of Clinton’s asset sales. “It’s not illegal or prohibited at all, as long as you’re getting a reasonable market price for what you’re selling,” he said, explaining that fetching too high a price could be seen as “getting an impermissible contribution.”

“I also find it interesting that she would sell to charity instead of just making a donation,” he added.

Clinton spokesman Philippe Reines pointed out that the campaign also donated many items to charities and foundations, and he said “it was very common” for the campaign to give away free stuff to people who purchased some items.

“Generally speaking, the campaign has endeavored to be creative and cost effective in its efforts to pay down the debt, and many in the community have benefited,” Reines said. “So it’s win-win, always the best kind of deal.”

In Chicago, an aide to President-elect Obama said the campaign was donating much of its office equipment to charity.

Clinton reported sales of more than $14,000 to eight charities, including the National Student Partnerships, a student-led volunteer service organization. It bought 18 computers – sans monitors, which had already been sold – for $2,700 from the campaign, which originally had paid $11,300 for the hardware, according to Reines.

The campaign also reported reaping $7,900 from the Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless for some desks, an LCD projector, 23 computers and two servers, which Reines said originally cost the campaign $29,000.

“We sent them a letter saying we’re a local non-profit and if they had some stuff they wanted to donate, they could do that, but they said they couldn’t,” said John Woodard, program developer for the homeless coalition, which is located about a mile from Clinton’s campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va. “They couldn’t give it away, but they could sell it to us. They also couldn’t make a profit from it.”

And Woodard said “we got a good deal on it. It was unique in that it was used, but it wasn’t used that much. It wasn’t like it was 10 years old or anything like that.”

Clinton’s best customers by far, though, were political committees, to which she sold $55,000-worth of unidentified assets. That included $28,000 to the Virginia’s Democratic Party, $18,000 to committees controlled by Virginia Democratic Sen.-elect Mark Warner and $10,000 to New Hampshire’s Democratic Party.

The campaign also sold $600-worth of unidentified stuff to its direct mail firm, which was owed $830,000 in unpaid bills at the end of October, and $5,000-worth to strategist Minyon Moore, whose firm was paid $236,000 in October to settle all outstanding debts owed to it.

There were also some curious transactions, like the $65 paid to the campaign by Washington’s Metropolitan Plastic Surgery and the $230 paid by the 9:30 Club, a hip concert venue in Washington.

Clinton’s Thursday report showed her campaign was still very much operational last month; she paid $37,000 in rent and $40,000 in staff salaries.

Plus, she continued charging her campaign interest for the $13 million she loaned the campaign, even though legally she can only pay herself back $250,000. The campaign now owes Clinton $78,000 interest, according to the report.

[Avi no longer actually works here, but contributed this final post from New York.]

The Brooks-o-Meter is Politico’s tool for tracking center-right conventional wisdom about the senator from Illinois the President-elect.

About a month ago, I said the meter probably had maxed out after David Brooks’ Oct. 17 column, where he wrote, "it is easy to sketch out a scenario in which he could be a great president."

I was wrong. Today, in a column titled "O-phoria," Brooks gets so excited that Ben drafted me for a one-night-only return.

Channeling his past as a chronicler of Ivy League overachievers, he kicks off the column by gushing over the fancy degrees dotting the resumes of the Obamas and their advisers.

He writes:

Obama seems to have dispensed with the romantic and failed notion that you need inexperienced “fresh faces” to change things. After all, it was L.B.J. who passed the Civil Rights Act. Moreover, because he is so young, Obama is not bringing along an insular coterie of lifelong aides who depend upon him for their well-being.

As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.

He proceeds to list a few uniformly positive things about the creativity and intelligence of Obama’s team. Then he lights the fuse:

Believe me, I’m trying not to join in the vast, heaving O-phoria now sweeping the coastal haute bourgeoisie. But the personnel decisions have been superb. The events of the past two weeks should be reassuring to anybody who feared that Obama would veer to the left or would suffer self-inflicted wounds because of his inexperience. He’s off to a start that nearly justifies the hype.

And that’s it for the Brooks-o-meter.

“We’re still in discussions, which are very much on track. Any reports beyond that are premature.”

A question now: Who does she bring with her?

*Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia having a grand ole time at that lobbyist infested joint, Charlie Palmer’s last night. "I felt like I saw a unicorn," gushes one lucky observer. "I’ve never seen a Supreme Court Justice in person before!" See, D.C. does have its perks if you like that sort of thing.

*Sen. Sam Brownback — do you remember when he ran for president? Yeah, we didn’t either — eating a chocolate bar on the Senate rail yesterday. "It looked like he was going for the golden ticket," laughed a spy.

*Former famous man Alberto Gonzales, a bit heftier of late, walking into a downtown office building, seen taking one of the Reese’s peanut butter cups offered, realizing he was in the wrong building, and wandering out, Reese’s in hand. (Of which, our spy questioned whether or not he really needed that Reese’s. The answer is always "yes.")

*Another former-former famous man, Dick Gephardt “slumming it” on Air Tran, at BWI this afternoon.

*And, a giant Shred-X truck — a document shredding service — backing up to the loading dock of the Rayburn Building this morning. Clearly transition time is shredding time for the election losers who have only a few days to clear out.

Democratic circles had been buzzing for at least a week that the other front-runner for the post, Lawrence Summers, who had headed Treasury for a time under President Bill Clinton, had been crossed off the list.

Obama is also expected to announce other members of his economic team, sources say. A source close to the transition said that the Obama team knows it has to get its top economic advisers in place quickly to reassure Wall Street. The team was already moving, but Thursday’s market losses sped things up more, according to the source.

The Geithner pick should be cheered on Wall Street. A confidant of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Geithner has been at the center of the government’s fast-evolving response to the financial crisis, chairing meetings at his New York office.

Years before the current crisis, he began sounding the alarm about risks associated with a lack of federal oversight over complex financial products. In 2005, at his urging, financial services companies established a national registry to help process and track their trades of credit derivatives, an insurance-like product bought by financial services companies to cover risky subprime mortgage investments.

A career civil servant, Geithner has a reputation for nonpartisan work. At Treasury, he worked under Summers on international issues, taking a front seat during the Asian financial market meltdown in the late 1990s. And his international expertise could be an asset as the current economic crisis grows increasingly global.

“Geithner is excellent,” said Gary Hufbauer, a former Treasury official in the Carter administration who’s now an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

While he personally was pulling for Summers, Hufbauer said, “In every position he’s been in, Geithner has performed just superlatively, so there’s every reason to be optimistic about the choice.”