Reaction to President-elect Barack Obama’s national security team has been mostly positive. The Politico Web site’s “five things the war Cabinet says about Obama”: He is an intellectual, who is more impressed by academic and governing credentials than familiarity and loyalty. He is willing to take big risks. He is very focused on governing – and prefers persuasion to force. He isn’t so disdainful of the “Washington insiders” after all. He is willing to jettison campaign promises to suit the political landscape. In an editorial headlined “Team of centrists,” the Washington Post characterizes Obama’s picks – Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, James L. Jones as national security adviser, Susan Rice as U.N. ambassador – as “proven pragmatists and team players.” The New York Times’ editorial said Obama “showed that he wants advisers with real authority who will not be afraid to disagree with him – two traits disastrously lacking in President Bush’s team.” The Wall Street Journal editorial board, though, foresees trouble in Obama’s choice of Clinton, calling it “either a political master stroke, or a classic illustration of the signature self-confidence that will come back to haunt him. We’re inclined toward the latter view, but then Mr. Obama is the one who has to live with her – and her husband.”
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20 Comments
Leave it to Murdoch’s WSJ to take a swipe.
The day of the visceral thinker is coming to an end. Thank God.
I would much rather see an impressive PEACE CABINET.
Looks like Gov. Bill Richardson to head Commerce Dept., another good pick.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081202/pl_nm/us_usa_obama_richardson_2
Can’t help but wonder how Obama’s cabinet will look four years from now?
#
RP_McMurphy
Posted December 2, 2008 at 1:03 pm | Permalink
I would much rather see an impressive PEACE CABINET.
——————
Yeah, far far away in a distant land there are lollipop trees and gumdrop bushes.
Perhaps we can go there an lay down in the marshmallow tornadoes and flood of chocolate syrup in our cherry boats
The wording here IS unfortunate.
This is not his “war” team. This is his foreign relations/ security team.
Looks like McSame plus Hillary, who, after all, helped put us in Iraq. As The One told us during the primary, back when she was a bad choice for high office (according to BO)
Ron Paul’s cabinet would have been quite different. Sigh.
Too bad he was pro-life, it kept the anti-war crowd and pro-aborts far away from him.
Single issue candidates they are. Narrow minded and single issued.
How sad, bombing arabs and killing babies as a first principal.
typical that the WSJ would rather see a rubber-stamp group – just like what they cheer-leaded so much for with Bush. They are clearly not the types who like to see free thinking and open discussion.
Obama’s cabinet is looking better and better. A group of people who tell theis president when they think he is wrong. This is infinitely superior than a coterie of brown-nose yes people that has infected both Wall Street and the White House.
Yep Obama is wrapping himself up in more of the same.
Traditional politic’s is politics as usual.
Actually roaCH, it is getting the best from the past on which to build a future. If Obama picked only rookies you would then be lambasting him for doing that.
“Single issue candidates they are. Narrow minded and single issued.”
Omg.
Pot, meet kettle…
Ben!!!
AHAHAH!
You kill me, sir. You call the WJS brownnosers and then write this: “Obama’s cabinet is looking better and better. A group of people who tell theis president when they think he is wrong.”
Boy is that rich! So I guess if BO puts Joe Lieberman on tomorrow you will really stand and shout THE ONE, THE ONE!
This much we can agree upon….anyone who is brave enough to tell THE ONE that he is wrong will have plenty of opportunity.
farmgirl,
My blog demonstrates far more dissent from the right than one you operate would show from the left.
HAHAHAHAHAHAAHAH
Now we know why bjb is such a bad lawyer.
“My blog demonstrates far more dissent from the right than one you operate would show from the left.”
Assumes facts not admitted as evidence. Pure speculation, since I dont have a blog and probably never will.
You, on the other hand, are the POSTER BOY for single issue voters.
Who said yesterday “a real insensitivity to irony”?
It fits here.
“The Progressive magazine, for one, is wondering just what the heck is going on?
When is Obama going to appoint someone who reflects the progressive base that brought him to the White House?
The Progressive asks why Hillary Clinton is being considered for Secretary of State, as well. The question shows how far Hillary fell from the left’s grace as she angled for the middle during the four years running up to the 2008 election. They really do despise her. Not even their love for Bill Clinton is holding up well, apparently.
The funniest suggestion the Progressive made was in saying that the famous UFO spotter from Ohio, Dennis Kucinich, would have made the better choice for Secretary of State. That suggestion in and of itself really proves how one just cannot take the folks at The Progressive magazine seriously.
Still, it is amusing to see Obama wholly snub the extreme left as he gears up to start his administration.
And it isn’t just The Progressive magazine starting to get suspicious.
On DailyKos, the Kossacks are beginning to wonder if they’ve been hornswaggled? Of the latest Obama picks, a recent KosKid carped:
So that’s 2 DC lifers, 1 billionaire & 1 more Clinton vet. 50% of hires are Clintonites. Lobbyists abound…What’s changing?
Another good question.
A poster on the DemocraticUnderground was just as wary of Obama’s choices.
Obama’s cabinet is at this point filled with DLC people, very centrist, anti populist, and big business among other things. We heard “change and clean up Washington” before from the last President and we got a redux on Nixon’s and Reagan’s people. Now we are getting a redux of the 90’s Clinton people, that doesn’t spell change to me…
Even the Associated Press is starting to wonder…
President-elect Barack Obama promised the voters change but has started his Cabinet selection process by naming several Washington insiders to top posts.”
Obama apparently cannot spare any change.
Universal Health Coverage will ruin the GOP.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122826686559774533.html
Heh, Monkeyhawk. Ya gotta love Thomas Frank.
Universal health care? It is just a manipulation tactic, Monkeyboy and Farmergirl. Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Joe Lieberman, and Terry McAuliffe have long been pushing the party to forget blue collar voters and concentrate instead on recruiting affluent, white collar professionals who are liberal on social issues. The larger interests that the Democratic Leadership Council wants desperately to court are corporations, capable of generating campaign contributions far outside anything raised by organized labor. The way to collect the votes and — more important– the money of these coveted constituencies, “New Democrats” think, is to stand rock solid on, say, the pro-choice position while making endless concessions on economic issues, on welfare, NAFTA, Social Security, labor law, privatization, deregulation, and the rest o f it. Such Democrats explicitly rule out what they deride as “class warfare” and take great pains to emphasize their friendliness to “business interests.” Like the conservatives, they take economic issues off of the table. As for the working -class voters who were until recently the party’s very backbone, the DLC figures they will have no place else to go. Democrats will always by marginally better on economic issues than Republicans. Besides, what politician in this success-worshipping country really wants to be the voice of the poor people? Where’s the soft money in that?