Vast Obama network becomes a political football

Now, as Obama turns from campaigning to governing, his advisors are struggling to harness this potent web of supporters to help him move his agenda over the next four years.

But it is no simple task to convert an insurgency into a standing army.

That challenge has sparked rare discord among Obama advisors who ran a highly disciplined operation with no public disagreements throughout the long campaign.

Traditionally, the new president would blend his campaign operation with his party's national committee. Some of Obama's closest advisors lean toward that pragmatic view.

But others, who built the grass-roots organization, worry that linking it too closely to the party could cause the unusual network to unravel -- and squander an extraordinary resource.

The Obama machinery relied heavily on idealistic political outsiders committed to breaking free from old ways of doing politics. The worry is that these enthusiastic activists might drift away if they are turned over to the Democratic National Committee, where the party might ask them to support Democrats and target Republicans.

Instead, Obama advisors involved in building the force think it should remain an independent entity -- organized around the "Obama brand."

The goal, they say, is to integrate Obama's political organization into his new role as president without damaging its zeal for a candidate who promised to change Washington.

"If it's in the party," said Marshall Ganz, a Harvard University lecturer who helped design the training curriculum for Obama's organizers, "that's a way to kill it."

Steve Hildebrand, Obama's deputy campaign manager and an architect of the grass-roots network, has been warning the president-elect's team that it risks turning off activists who were inspired by Obama but who never considered themselves a part of the Democratic Party.

These people, Hildebrand said, could be inspired to fight for Obama's proposals to overhaul healthcare or combat global warming, but would reject appeals that sounded like old-fashioned partisan politics.