November 24, 2008

11/24: What Kind Of Change Is This?

Last Thursday we noted that most of Pres.-elect Barack Obama's rumored cabinet picks (with the exception of Larry Summers) had met little resistance from the netroots. However, it appears that our observation was premature. Several lefty bloggers have grown increasingly frustrated by what they perceive to be the lack of progressives in Obama's cabinet. Chris Bowers complains:

"I know everyone is obsessed with the 'team of rivals' idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans?"

The netroots are particularly concerned about the people whom Obama wants to conduct his foreign policy. Many liberal bloggers remain wary of NY Sen. Hillary Clinton's hawkishness, and they're particularly concerned about the types of people whom she will choose to staff the State Dep't. Lefty bloggers are also less than thrilled about reports that Obama wants to keep Robert Gates as his Def. Sec. and appoint ex-Gen. James Jones as his Nat'l Security Adviser.

Conservative bloggers, on the other hand, are surprised and pleased by Obama's cabinet picks thus far. Michael Goldfarb notes that "there is not a progressive in sight" on Obama's nat'l security team, while Ed Morrissey declares, "I'll take Brent Scowcroft any day of the week over the [Jimmy] Carter/[Zbigniew] Brzezinski model." Jennifer Rubin writes:

"Little did we know that 'Change we can believe in' really meant 'Change that will delight the Right and freak out the Left.' But if the rumors and hints about President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet picks are any clue, it may be that both conservatives and liberals had Barack Obama pegged wrong."

OBAMA: Where Are All The Progressives?

Several liberal bloggers are frustrated by what they perceive to be the lack of progressives in Obama's cabinet:

• Open Left's Bowers: "Let's say that all of the leading contenders for Obama's national security team end up in his administration. This would give him a core foreign policy team of [VP-elect] Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, [AZ Gov.] Janet Napolitano, Jim Jones, and Robert Gates. That is, overall, a center-right foreign policy team lacking any clear progressives (at least, foreign policy and national security progressives). All of them, with the possible exception of Jones, supported the Iraq war from the outset. At least two of them, Gates and Napolitano, opposed withdrawing troops as recently as 2007 (although the new agreement with Iraq has rendered that debate moot). [...] I know everyone is obsessed with the 'team of rivals' idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Also, why isn't there a single member of Obama's cabinet who will be advising him from the left? It seems to me as though there is a team of rivals, except for the left, which is left off the team entirely."
• The Nation's Christopher Hayes: "Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don't just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. [...] And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?"
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Obama never pretended to be some kind of Noam Chomsky acolyte. He's a mainstream liberal American president. Still -- and keep in mind that I'm speaking as someone who's only modestly left of center on foreign affairs -- this is a disturbingly hawkish team taken as a whole, isn't it? I get the whole 'water's edge' thing, as well as Obama's desire to bring back some kind of consensus in the national security arena, but it would be nice to see at least one or two really serious progressives getting some high profile national security positions that have the president's ear, wouldn't it? I mean, that is why most of us voted for him, right?"

OBAMA II: What Did You Expect, People?

Other liberal bloggers are arguing that the apparent lack of progressives in Obama's cabinet shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone:

• Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher: "Look, for people who convinced themselves that Obama was the second coming of Saul Alinsky -- wake up. He never was. He may, however, be the most progressive person we could have possibly hoped to elect as President of the United States. Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to help keep the obstructionists off his back and push him to fulfill his campaign promises to end the war, pass health care legislation and the Employee Free Choice Act, clean up the environment, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, repair our infrastructure, create good jobs and restore the middle class. That's what he promised us, and while I'm obviously not wild about the dearth of progressives in his administration (while anti-choicers like [NE Sen. Chuck] Hagel and [IN Sen. Richard] Lugar are evidently a-okay), I'm less concerned with who he chooses to implement his policies than with his ability to ultimately do so."
• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "Barack Obama is a centrist, establishment politician. That is what he has been since he's been in the Senate, and more importantly, it's what he made clear -- both explicitly and through his actions -- that he intended to be as President. Even in the primary, he paid no price whatsoever for that in terms of progressive support. As is true for the national Democratic Party generally, he has no good reason to believe he needs to accommodate liberal objections to what he is doing. The Joe Lieberman fiasco should have made that as conclusively clear as it gets."
• MyDD's Jerome Armstrong: "My expecations of Obama are pretty much just what he is delivering. If Clinton had been the nominee, she would have chosen Obama as her VP, and we'd probably be seeing Biden as the SoS choice. Despite campaign projection from a lot of progressives that Obama was different in regards to foreign policy, these are centrist Democrats on such matters that are going to be in the White House. Anyone that didn't realize that was deceiving themselves."

Like Hamsher, Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias doesn't care if Obama doesn't appoint many liberals as long as he follows through on his campaign promises: "Honestly, I'd like to see some more hard-core liberals in the cabinet -- and maybe we'll get 'em at Energy, Interior, etc. But in some respects this is the genius of picking a relatively moderate cabinet. We've got [IL Rep.] Rahm Emannuel promising to 'throw long and deep' on health care and energy, [ex-SD Sen.] Tom Daschle spearheading the charge for universal health care, the president-elect talking about hundreds of billions in new stimulus spending, and endless reiteration of the idea that there will be no retreat from the campaign's ambitious goals on carbon curbs. Putting reassuring faces on an agenda of ambitious policy change strikes me as dramatically preferable to appointing a lot of liberals whose job is to sell the progressive base on the need to trim and abandon campaign commitments."

BooMan agrees: "Obama's agenda is farther to the left than anything we've seen since at least Lyndon Johnson, and Congress has never in its history seen a Democratic Party so united in its leftward tilt. It doesn't matter whether Obama has centrists and moderate Republicans as part of his coalition. What matters is if he can unite (enough of) this country behind a common purpose to get things done."

OBAMA III: He's Not As Bad As We Thought

Conservative bloggers are less critical of Obama's cabinet picks (particularly in the foreign policy realm) than they expected to be:

• The Weekly Standard's Goldfarb: "It will be some time before we know the full extent of Obama's ambitions on domestic policy, but progressives are sure to feature prominently in any debate over health care, energy, banking, etc. In the realm of foreign policy, however, progressives seem already to have been marginalized, or dismissed entirely. Barack Obama's national security team is beginning to take shape and there is not a progressive in sight. [...] What is clear is that the split between realists and neoconservatives has been resolved, for the time being, in favor of the realists, whose titular leader, Colin Powell, endorsed Obama at the end of the campaign. [...] But the real losers here seem to be progressives. If progressives can't get their foot in the door on national security in an Obama administration, it's difficult to imagine precisely what conditions would bring them to power, since we are unlikely to see a more liberal president for decades."
• Hot Air's Morrissey: "When Barack Obama ran for president, especially in the primaries, he relied on a group of foreign-policy advisers that included radical leftist thinkers like Robert Malley, Susan Rice, and Samantha Power. The rise of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State gave political watchers the first indication that Obama would not follow that direction after winning office by gaining the trust of the Left. [...] I'm not particularly enamored of [Brent] Scowcroft's foreign policy. [...] However, I see Scowcroft as a huge improvement over Susan Rice, Robert Malley, and Samantha Power."
• Commentary's Rubin: "Little did we know that 'Change we can believe in' really meant 'Change that will delight the Right and freak out the Left.' But if the rumors and hints about President-elect Barack Obama's cabinet picks are any clue, it may be that both conservatives and liberals had Barack Obama pegged wrong. If several months ago someone had said that the Obama administration would be chocked full of Clinton administration retreads and have a national security team featuring the woman who advocated bombing Iran to smithereens in the event it launched a nuclear attack on Israel, few would have believed it. But that's what seems to be in the offing."

CLINTON: Hooray For A Team Of Rivals!

Several liberal bloggers are supportive of Clinton serving as Obama's Sec/State:

• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "While there is a sense that Clinton is more hawkish than Barack Obama, that she is to the right of him on some foreign policy issues, I agree with Jerome [Armstrong] that the differences during the primaries were overstated by both sides to make electoral cases. More to the point, though, the Israel-Palestine situation is one in which Clinton, like her husband, could try to stake her legacy. Indeed, if she were able to move the process significantly forward, thus improving not only the situation in the immediate area but also throughout the region, not only would she be able to cement her own place in history she would also be able to fulfill the effort upon which her husband hoped to stake his term in office."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "I've been open about my support for President-elect Obama's selection of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state but that's not to say I don't see the downsides. There have been some compelling arguments against the pick but after reading up on the various pros and cons, I've come to the conclusion that, in fact, it will prove to be an excellent decision on Barack Obama's part. How do I know? Well, cuz [David Broder and Thomas Friedman] think it's a horrible decision. [...] What else can I conclude from their opposition to the pick than the extreme likelihood that Hillary Clinton's stint as secretary of state is going to be a very successful one? I mean, when was the last time these guys were right about anything?"

The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan, a fierce critic of Clinton, also likes the choice: "I do think that the Clinton appointment will utlimately come down to the Israel-Palestine question. And Clinton enables Obama to overcome unnecessary resistance and paranoia from the Israeli right. She credentializes him with Israelis and American Jews -- which will help build support for a sustainable compromise before it is too late for the Jewish state. I remain a fan of the pick..."

CLINTON II: Still Not Sure About This...

Other liberal bloggers remain wary of Clinton's foreign policy views, which they believe to be more hawkish than Obama's:

• Yglesias: "This idea that a relatively small disagreement about diplomacy with Iran was their only disagreement during the primaries is widespread, but strikes me as something of a mutually convenient myth. [...] They had a related, and more clear-cut, disagreement about Cuba policy with Obama indicating a desire to soften the hard line that prevailed through the Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush administrations while Clinton indicated a desire to stick with the status quo. Obama wholeheartedly embraced the Shultz/Perry/Kissinger/Nunn nuclear disarmament agenda while Clinton was more equivocal. Obama implicitly criticized the Clinton administration for waiting until its waning days to really buckle down on the Arab-Israeli conflict. They disagreed about whether the US should join the international treaty to ban cluster bombs. None of it is earth-shattering stuff, but there was a consistent trajectory to these disagreements, and Obama was on the right side of them. People who supported Obama in the primary -- or who voted for the Democratic candidate in November -- are going to be looking for assurance that adding Clinton to his team, or having a Republican run the Pentagon, doesn't indicate a desire to move away from the course he outlined."
• Ezra Klein: "People have been thinking about this cabinet appointment too much on the level of symbolism. But this is a real job with real responsibilities. And one of those responsibilities is stocking, and managing, the government's foreign policy apparatus. Which is why I continue to consider this a basically weird choice. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama did not have many policy disagreements during the primary. Most of their disagreements, including the fight over health care mandates, were minor. They were technical fights or political disputes rather than collisions of principle. The exception was foreign policy. Iraq was a real disagreement on the level of principle. The heated argument over negotiations with autocrats was similarly fundamental."

Several liberal bloggers are also concerned about the people whom Clinton will choose to staff the State Dep't:

• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "Clinton, assuming she gets the job, would bring more than her own considerable skills and background to the State Department; she would also be responsible for hiring officials to fill key posts throughout Foggy Bottom. [...] And that, to my mind, is the most credible cause for some concern with Clinton's nomination. As a presidential candidate, Clinton surrounded herself with some capable people, but they and their vision was largely out of step with Obama's more progressive approach to foreign policy and diplomacy. And it would likely be they, not career officials who backed Obama, who Clinton would bring on to do most of the heavy lifting at the cabinet agency."
• TPM's Greg Sargent: "Here's another thing that's got some people worried about Secretary of State Hillary: Would she bring her old-guard foreign policy adviser types with her to the State Department, a cadre who are in some ways out of step with the more progressive crew that steered the foreign policy of the Obama campaign? [...] The question is whether Hillary people at State will muddle what is arguably Obama's overarching foreign policy ambition: Fundamental change in the way national security is discussed in this country and a true and enduring transformation of our own views of what constitutes just and practical uses of our military power abroad."

GEITHNER: A Mixed Reaction From The Netroots

Several liberal bloggers are critical of Obama's decision to tap NY Fed Bank Pres. Timothy Geithner as his Treasury Sec.:

• Firedoglake's Hugh: "Like so many others in positions of power and trust, Geithner was eminently well placed to see the developing crisis and avoid or mitigate its worst effects. He should have known, but he didn't. His view was much more conventional. He saw no shocks that the financial system couldn't handle. He could not have been more wrong, but this is the guy that Obama wants for his Treasury Secretary."
• Bowers: "Really? Obama is going with someone who is currently executing the bailout? While Geithner isn't Larry Summers, that still strikes me as less than change-y. Policy by Dow people seem to like it, but such metrics have proven their worthlessness in the recent past, as the stock market continues to tumble several weeks after the Wall Street bailout was signed into law."
• Open Left's Matt Stoller: "Geitner is embroiled in the last twenty years of monetary mismanagement without the tarnish of being in the private sector (and thus profiting from it). He helped construct the bailout and he was part of the decision to let Lehman fail, [Treasury Sec. Henry] Paulson and/or [Fed Chair Ben] Bernanke's single worst decision so far. I'm slightly more positive towards Geithner since he's younger and more technocratic than ideologically oriented, but not that much."

Other liberal bloggers view Geithner a bit more favorably:

• Yglesias: "Geithner seems like a win-win -- better-regarded by liberals than Larry Summers, but about equally well-regarded by centrists."
• Klein: "[Geithner]'s been heavily on the side of the interventionists -- word was that he opposed Paulson's catastrophic decision to let Lehman Brothers fail -- and he understand the crisis better than virtually anyone else in the country."
• Firedoglake's Ian Welsh: "It's a reasonable pick, far better than Larry Summers would have been. [...] As with all Obama's picks so far this isn't an inspired pick, but it's decent..."

Conservative blogger John Hinderaker also likes the choice: "[This is] an excellent appointment. The stock market jumped 5 percent on the news. That's terrific, but it also makes you wonder: given that response to Geithner's nomination, how credible is the Obama camp's insistence that the 20 percent drop we've seen since his election has nothing to do with businessmen's concern about the impact of Obama's policies on the economy?"

BRENNAN: No Way. No How. No Brennan.

Many liberal bloggers are upset that John Brennan "remains the favorite" to be nominated as CIA Director:

• Bowers: "Brennan is a Gitmo apologist and actually executed the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping campaign."
• Open Left's Paul Rosenberg: "[Brennan] was not, like Gates, a fourth quarter BushCO replacement, but a BushCo cheerleader for its most noxious policies."

Sullivan is particularly upset: "It's fine not to uproot the entire agency and to have some continuity. But for Obama to appoint a Bush-Cheney apologist to the CIA? How on earth did this idea get this far? [...] We didn't work our butts off to elect Obama only to get Bush another four years at CIA. If Brennan emerges as the pick, those of us against the continuation of war crimes and the prosecution of war criminals will have to oppose him strenuously in the nomination process. We will, in fact, have to go to war with Obama before he even takes office."

HOLDER: Unpopular On The Right

Conservative bloggers remain extremely critical of Obama's apparent choice for AG, ex-Deputy AG Eric Holder:

• AmSpec Blog's John Tabin: "Holder [is] awful. Hostile to both the Second Amendment and the First, and horrible in lots of other ways."
• NRO's Jim Geraghty: "Danny Glover notes that in the aftermath of the Columbine killings, one of then-Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder's responses was to seek government restrictions of speech on the Internet. [...] I guess when you've decided the Second Amendment is optional, I guess it's easier to conclude the one right next to it is optional, too."
• RedState's Pejman Yousefzadeh: "Contrary to past statements, Holder was a lot more involved in the decision to pardon than he claimed to be, stating as early as 1999 that when it came to the charges against [financier] Marc Rich, '"the equities" were on Mr. Rich's side' and blaming U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White for refusing to have a meeting on the issue. [...] Remember: The appointment of Eric Holder as Attorney General is supposed to be part and parcel of Change We Can Believe In."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Getting Back In The Game

The Atlantic's Ross Douthat:

"On too many issues, conservatives have simply avoided the most important emerging debates, changing the subject whenever possible and leaving liberals to argue against liberals when it isn't. This is true, too often, in transportation and infrastructure policy; it's been true for some time in the climate change debate (though I'm hopeful that this changing); and it's often true in education, where the most interesting arguments are between liberal reformers and liberal interest groups, with conservatives sitting on the sideline talking about vouchers and occasionally praising the Michelle Rhees and Corey Bookers of the world.

This problem is not, repeat not, a matter of conservatives needing to abandon their core convictions in order to win elections, as right-of-center reformers are often accused of doing. Rather, it's a matter of conservatives needing to apply their core convictions to questions like 'how do we mitigate the worst effects of climate change?' and 'how do we modernize our infrastructure?' and 'how do we encourage excellence and competition within our public school bureaucracy?' instead of just letting liberals completely monopolize these debates, while the Right talks about porkbusting and not much else."

LEST WE FORGET: Obama Names Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston To 'Team of Rivals'

The Huffington Post's Andy Borowitz:

"Continuing in his quest to assemble a so-called 'team of rivals,' President-elect Barack Obama today announced that he would name Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Aniston to key Cabinet positions. The two actresses, who have been perennial tabloid fodder as a result of their longstanding feud over actor Brad Pitt, were surprise choices for Mr. Obama's Cabinet, since neither of them has been a government official or even portrayed one in a movie.

But in his weekly Internet address, the President-elect explained his rationale for choosing the sworn enemies to his Cabinet: 'I chose Jennifer and Angelina for the same reason I have chosen every other Cabinet member: they clearly despise each other with a passion.'[...]

Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian and author of the book Team of Rivals, said that she was 'thrilled' by the selection of the two actresses to Mr. Obama's Cabinet.

'Every time someone says "team of rivals," I sell another book on Amazon,' she said. 'Team of rivals, team of rivals, team of rivals.'"

Posted by Ian Faerstein at November 24, 2008 01:33 PM