Path to Power
Donilon was born in Providence , R.I.
He was inspired to go into politics after reading Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail by Hunter S. Thompson in high school. He moved to Washington, D.C., for college, receiving his undergraduate degree from Catholic University in 1977.
He accepted an internship as an aide to President Jimmy Carter and quickly climbed the political ranks. In 1980, at the age of 24, he worked on the Democratic National Convention and helped thwart Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) last-minute bid for the presidential nomination.
Four years later, Donilon helped Carter transition back to private life after he lost the presidency to Ronald Reagan.
Four years after that, Donilon was back on the national stage as campaign coordinator for 1984 Democratic presidential candidate Walter F. Mondale.
He earned a law degree from the University of Virginia in 1985 and was a member of the school’s Law Review.
In 1988, Donilon served as one of then-Sen. Joseph R. Biden’s (D-Del.) closest advisers during his presidential campaign. Biden was fresh off a stint as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, where he presided over the most controversial Supreme Court nomination ever by considering Reagan’s nomination (ultimately unsuccessful) of Robert Bork.
As informal campaign adviser, Donilon played a key role in successfully convincing the Senate to defeat Bork’s nomination.
When Biden lost his presidential bid after being accused of plagiarism, Donilon became a senior adviser to Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis’ presidential campaign.
In 1991, Donilon joined O’Melveny & Meyers law firm as a partner. He was on the firm’s governing committee and heads its strategic counseling practice. Additionally, he led the firm’s effort to increase its pro-bono work.
He was a senior counsel to President Bill Clinton’s transition effort in 1992.
Clinton Administration
Donilon formally entered a presidential administration in 1993, when he was named chief of staff to secretary of State Warren Christopher. In 1996, he became assistant secretary of state for public affairs. He visited over 50 countries in those positions and worked on several major foreign policy initiatives, including the Balkans peace negotiation, the expansion of NATO and the relationship between the U.S. and China.
Fannie Mae
In 1999, Donilon accepted an executive vice president position at Fannie Mae. He has been accused of painting an unrealistically rosy picture of how the company was doing and of supervising an “aggressive backdoor lobbying campaign … to undermine the credibility of a probe into the firm's accounting irregularities,” according to ABC News.
Donilon left Fannie Mae in 2005 and returned to O’Melveny. At the same time, he was chosen as a member of the House and Senate Majority's National Security Advisory Group, which was designed to assess U.S. performance on national security issues and to propose ways to improve it.
Donilon could have worked for the 2008 presidential campaign of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), but instead signed on with Biden’s presidential effort, advising him on Iraq. When Biden dropped out of the 2008 race, Donilon endorsed Obama.
He and Wendy Sherman led the Obama transition team’s State Department efforts. Donilon's wife, Catherine Russell, was named Jill Biden’s chief of staff.
Donilon moved into the White House (his office "can charitably be described as a broom closet, according to Al Kamen of The Washington Post) on inauguration day. He has been a the "lynchpin of the interagency process," according to Foreign Policy's Laura Rozen. He runs the deputies meetings, where the real policies get drafted.
The Issues
Donilon and Obama share the same stances on key foreign policy questions. Donilon would like to end the war in Iraq, refocus resources on Afghanistan and keep Iran from building a nuclear weapon through diplomacy and stronger sanctions.
Military Readiness
As a member of the National Security Advisory Group, Donilon helped write a 2006 report that suggested the long Iraq deployment had depleted the Army and Marine Corps’ ability to defend the country. The commission found that not a single non-deployed Army brigade was prepared to fight.
Iran and North Korea
Donilon views a nuclear Iran and North Korea as the gravest national security threats facing the country. He has called on the president to pursue robust diplomacy along with stricter sanctions on these two states.
National Conventions
Donilon’s specialty, he says, are political conventions. He helped manage the Carter campaign activities at the 1980 Democratic convention,managed Democratic Party activities at the 1984 convention and was the top legal officer for the DNC’s convention selection committee in 1985.
Donilon admits an interest in the unusual minutia of conference planning. “You've got to be off just a few degrees to be interested in telephone systems at national conventions,” he told the New York Times.
