"I am a huge bull on this country," Buffett said today via telecast at the Montana Economic Development Summit, Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus' regional dog-and-pony show. He also said that business is healthy at his Berkshire Hathaway company. Berkshire operates insurance, transportation and a host of other businesses. Previous notable Buffett prognostications include his Oct. 16, 2008 "Buy American" op-ed in The New York Times. Investors who bought the S&P 500 on that day would currently be up around 25 percent today, although first they would've had to endure a 24 percent drop in the months following Buffett's opinion piece. Buffett's letters to shareholders are widely read across the finance industry.

Buffett's bullishness stands somewhat in contrast to the attitude of new Council of Economic Advisors head Austan Goolsbee, who on Sunday said that he expects unemployment to remain high in the short term.

Goolsbee declined to predict a specific unemployment rate for the end of 2010, saying only that he didn't expect a decline in joblessness to happen anytime soon, and "The labor market is significantly weakened and has been for some time. We have to do everything we can to try to create jobs."

Goolsbee's predecessor, Christina Romer, had predicted that thanks to the Obama administration's stimulus package, the unemployment rate would remain below 8 percent in 2010, and without stimulus the jobless rate would hit 9 percent. Clearly, those estimates proved overly rosy. Romer has since returned to her old job, teaching economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

On Election Day, the last day of work, essentially, economic adviser Austan Goolsbee chatted with regional finance director Jordan Kaplan and his fiancee, New York finance director Jenny Yeager, who flew into Chicago a few hours earlier.

Campaign adviser Stephanie Cutter talked with two reporters at table before running to meet Michelle Obama.

The Obama people didn't look especially nervous, though Goolsbee said the office had a weird feeling because "it was all emptied out up there."

Kaplan said people were "anxious all day."

They stocked up on sodas and snacks on the way back up to headquarters, which had been inundated by volunteers working the phone banks and calling undecided voters in swing states. ("All those racists who pretend to be undecided," said volunteer Susan Obler, 70, a consultant from Chicago.)

Yeager, who wore an Obama shirt, told a couple from Seattle she didn't know how they could get tickets for tonight's big party but thanked them for their support.

When asked directly how he felt about the day, (Excited? Nervous? Nostalgic?) Goolsbee, a former debate champion, said he needed permission from Obama press team before he could comment. Then he went back up to the emptied-out office.

“To describe McCain’s position as ‘do-nothing’ and ‘stand back and watch,’” former Hewlett-Packard C.E.O. Fiorina said, “is politics of the worst sort.”

She went on (while speeding down the highway in a car, she told reporters listening in) to describe the economic plans of both Democratic candidates as “vague” and to describe the position of both “John McCain and the Republican Party” as one that aimed to “put money and power and choice into the hands of people” and holds to the position that “the government should be the actor of last resort, not the actor of first resort.” Then her cell phone cut out.

Holtz-Eakin, one of McCain’s senior policy advisers, echoed the Clinton campaign criticism of Obama when he said of Obama’s economic speech, “I think these are wonderful words,” with a touch of condescension. He went on to say that McCain and Obama have a similar “bottom line” on the economy: transparency and accountability.

“That’s very nice,” Holtz-Eakin said, “but the devil will be in the details.”

"This point about vetting and electablility does raise some questions about Senator Clinton," said Plouffe, responding to the Clinton campaign's assertion that Obama had not been sufficiently vetted. He added, "Hillary Clinton is one of the most secretive politicians in America today."

When the call was opened up to questions, reporters wanted to know about the resignation of foreign policy adviser Samantha Power and the enduring controversy surrounding economic adviser (and Power's college buddy) Austan Goolsbee's conversation with Canadian government officials about NAFTA.

"On the Samantha Power issue," Plouffe began. "We think she made the right decision today. Senator Obama believes that those comments weren't appropriate and while she is a very brilliant person and has been a valuable part of our campaign, we cannot condone those types of comments."

When asked about Power's contention in a BBC interview that Obama would not necessarily stick to the plan he has outlined for Iraq as a senator and presidential candidate if realities on the ground dictated a different approach, Plouffe said, "No, he obviously believes going to Iraq was a mistake in the first place," said Plouffe. "He has been and will continue to be crystal clear with the American people that if and when he is elected president, we will be out of Iraq, as he said the time frame would be about 16 months at the most."

Plouffe also said he regretted the way the Goolsbee controversy was handled, but it wasn't clear if he meant by Goolsbee or the campaign.

"It was a request [by the Canadian official] that came to him, and he went over there, and obviously we regret how it was handled and wish all the information had been provided on the first run, at the first moment," he said.

At least according to Al From, the founder and CEO of the resolutely centrist—Clintonian, even—Democratic Leadership Council.

“What he has done is he has certainly taken a good part of the strategy we have articulated over the years,” Mr. From said. “Which is to not polarize, but try to unite and build a coalition that understands that a Democratic victory is a coalition.”

Mr. From said Mr. Obama had an intellectual, and not just tactical, connection to the D.L.C.

“I mean his chief economist, Austan Goolsbee, is a fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute, which is our think tank,” he said.

Mr. Obama is not the most obvious candidate to be the group’s standard-bearer. Mrs. Clinton has more history with the Council, which enjoyed its high-point in influence and profile when she and her husband were in the White House. And while Mr. Obama has presented himself as a great unifier, Mr. From has, for all of his third-way ideas about cross-aisle cooperation, proven himself a vicious party in-fighter, fairly reveling in the opprobrium of left-leaning bloggers and progressive think-tanks.

Mr. From said that he would not be so presumptuous as to call Mr. Obama the purest D.L.C. politician out there. But he nevertheless believes Mr. Obama has adopted whole-cloth the approach to winning elections that he and his cohorts had long advocated. He said Mr. Obama belonged to the group that had, despite “all the screaming and yelling and the blogs,” chosen the D.L.C. approach to the more partisan beat-‘em-in-50-states philosophy advocated by Howard Dean.

“There has sort of been a choice in the Democratic Party politics, particularly in the last four or five years,” said Mr. From. “A lot of people think that the way the Democrats ought to operate is to mirror Karl Rove. Go off to the other side and hammer him. Just talk to the Democratic voters because there are more of them out there and they will put you over the top.

“The other is what I call a D.L.C.-Clinton strategy which says we have to offer solutions and big ideas and approaches and reach out and not only appeal to Democrats but have a broader appeal to independent and some Republicans because in the end there aren't enough Democrats to win,” he said.

This, Mr. From said, was Mr. Obama’s approach.

“A D.L.C.-Bill Clinton strategy prevailed in 2006,” he said. “We won the Congress not because the electorate became that much more Democratic or liberal but because we were able to capture voters in the center of the electorate. I think Obama has carried that on.”

Mr. From made it clear that he thought Hillary Clinton was also a candidate in the tradition of her husband and the D.L.C.

“She is for a lot of the ideas,” said Mr. From, adding that Mrs. Clinton had been a consistent supporter of the group’s thinking. “The D.L.C. is about many things. One part’s about political strategy but fundamentally it's about ideas.”

Before the presidential campaign and the demands of anti-war constituencies pulled Mrs. Clinton left, she had a somewhat hawkish reputation, and like the D.L.C., she initially supported the war in Iraq. In 2006, Clinton also worked with the D.L.C. on something called the American Dream Initiative, a project that preached more fiscal and individual responsibility in the Democratic Party.

“If you look at that and look at a lot of the policies she has recommended in the campaign,” said Mr. From, “a lot of the policies came from that. But the truth is that a lot of Obama's ideas have come from that and a lot of other D.L.C. work too.”

Of course, groups committed to steering the party in another direction aren’t about to allow Mr. From to lay claim to Mr. Obama. At least, not yet.

Steven Clemons, a senior fellow at the rival, more liberal New America Foundation, finds any connection between Mr. Obama and the ideas of the D.L.C. tenuous at best.</p.

“I think Obama’s political franchise is a very, very big tent,” said Mr. Clemons. “And I think a lot of institutions organizations and parts of the political spectrum are going to try and lay claim to him. But one only has to spend about 30 seconds on the Internet before finding Obama positions that run completely antithetical to the things that the D.L.C. and P.P.I. have put out.”

Mr. Clemons cited Mr. Obama’s positions on NAFTA and globalization, economic liberalization and human rights in China as places where he diverged with the generally trade-friendly D.L.C. He said that Mr. Obama’s repeated insistence that he would meet personally and unconditionally with leaders antagonistic to the United States was much different that the thinking of Will Marshall, the president and founder of the Progressive Policy Institute, and Peter Beinart, another foreign policy expert in the D.L.C. vein who wrote a book called “The Good Fight: Why Liberal—and Only Liberals—Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again.”

“I think Obama is in a completely different place,” Mr. Clemons said.

He suggested that the D.L.C. felt able to attach itself to Mr. Obama because of the candidate’s own lack of definition when it came to the policies in which he believed.

“Obama has created a new doubt in the media and some circles about what he is really about because he has tried to embrace so many people and he can't deliver to all of them,” said Mr. Clemons. “I really see Al From trying to shoot a cannon across the bow early and say ‘he is ours,’ when in reality, the Economic Policy Institute will try and say ‘he is ours.’ The A.F.L. will say ‘he is ours.’ And lots of other groups will say ‘he is ours.’”

That’s what Howard Wolfson just called the controversy about Barack Obama’s senior economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, allegedly telling Canadian officials that Mr. Obama’s sharp attacks on NAFTA were only “political positioning.”

The AP today obtained a memo which suggests Goolsbee did meet with Canadian officials, prompting Wolfson to read a series of denials from the Obama campaign and from Goolsbee.

“This is of course a major story in Ohio, where for days Senator Obama has been attacking Senator Clinton on trade,” said Wolfson, adding, “Major story out of Canada.”

“It is a totally inaccurate story,” he said. “I did not call these people and I direct you to the press office.”

The Obama campaign, and Obama himself, have also said the story isn't accurate, but have mostly avoided specifics about the call itself.

The Clinton campaign, correctly sensing an opportunity to make hay of this in labor-centric Ohio, is apparently unsatisfied with those denials, and will have a conference call on the CTV report at noon.