The Emerging Obama Administration

By Cernig

As my colleague Libby Spencer wrote yesterday, you were maybe expecting a Kuchinich Cabinet? If so, you weren't paying attention to shifts in what comprises the "center" of the Democratic Party and of America as a whole, or were listening too much to the Rightwing's noise machine.

Obama's economic team, announced today, includes Timothy Geithner as Secretary of the Treasury; Lawrence Summers as the Director of our National Economic Council; Christina Romer as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisors; and Melody Barnes as Director of the Domestic Policy Council. Only the last of those is a truly, madly, deeply progressive by any stretch of the imagination. His foreign policy and national security picks are still just informed (leaked) speculation, but Hillary Clinton as SecState seems fairly certain by now and most of the rest of the big names mooted come from that the same mold of neoliberal hawkishness too. That suggests progressives won't be finding any happy landings at State and that the NSC will become the home of choice for proggie FP types.

Such an administration won't be unproblematic- there will doubtless be tensions and turf-fights - but it will be streets better than a McCain administration. What rightwing pundits will never get, and perhaps the mainstream has forgotten in the last eight years, is that marching into the jackbooted future in lockstep is a conservative trait. Democratic internal politics always has been more akin to herding cats and the Obama administration is looking good to reflect that internal dynamic. I'd argue that such an administration should be preferred by advocates of checks and balances in government. Bush's first administration, with neocon warmongering unfettered, was an object lesson in what can go wrong when everyone reads from the same extremist page. That his second administration was more split and thus more moderate in its aims is probably the only reason the US isn't involved in more wars than it is now. A McCain cabinet would have been Bush's first term on steroids. In the foreign policy sphere, then, I'm hoping that Obama's progressives keep the hawks from getting into more wars, but that the hawks keep the progressives from getting too insular and unengaged with the world.

So far, as an admitted socialist, I could be happier with Obama's choices on a one-for-one basis, but I'm generally - well, let's not say comfortable but certainly not entirely un-comfortable - with the way his administration is shaping up.

Comments

[geoff]

I'm holding off judgement on Obama 'til he actually gets into the WH and has his 100 days but I have an awful feeling in my gut that even though he's not McCain he maybe a dud. Oh well, I guess, even if he is just ordinary, he will have broken the colour barrier which can only be good and he speaks like an adult and in complete sentences.

[Steve Hynd]

Geoff, I think you're right.

He's a Tony Blair; that is to say predominantly conservative-lite (by my standards) and particularly so in foreign policy, with a leavening of populist leftie policies which helped get him elected in the aftermath of such a heavily rightwing predecessor and which he'll try to carry through on for appearances sakes.

Regards, C

[Sydney]

Yeah that's Right! I am holding off judgement on Obama 'til he actually gets into the WH and has his 100 days but I have an awful feeling in my gut that even though he's not McCain he maybe a dud. Oh well, I guess, even if he is just ordinary, he will have broken the colour barrier which can only be good and he speaks like an adult and in complete sentences.
Sydney
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