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Should We Get Hot and Bothered By Obama's Personnel Choices?
The man giving the invocation at Obama's inauguration doesn't like gays, his pick for Secretary of Agriculture is a supporter of corn-based ethanol with only incipient reformist tendencies, his choice for Interior seems to have big fans in the oil and mining community, and his next Transportation Secretary is a Republican lacking any serious record on transit issues. In short, the trepidation that Obama's early cabinet picks triggered in parts of the left continues as he fills in the few remaining spots.
So should those of us on the left get all hot and bothered? There are three ways to think about Obama's frequently uninspiring and occasionally troubling appointments.
(1) These appointees are bad symbolism in the service of good policy. Because Obama is picking people who occupy the center, center-left, and center-right, he can count on the support of huge swaths of the people from all ideological backgrounds when he tries to push genuinely progressive policy initiatives.
Unfortunately, we simply cannot accept this as true. Not yet, anyway. We don't know that Obama wants to push genuinely progressive policy initiatives. There are reasons to suggest that he does, of course. But Democrats who take it as a matter of faith that Obama is tapping people like Warren to co-opt the right and get them behind him for when he passes wonderfully liberal policy are projecting their hopes onto Obama's future policy agenda. We don't know the policy yet. All we know is the symbolism.
Besides, Rahm Emmanuel puts the lie to this idea somewhat. Rahm isn't just willing to use bad symbolism in service of good policy. His career in the House leadership involved several episodes where he used bad policy in service of keeping Democrats in power.
(2) We should freak out because Obama is clearly throwing progressives under the bus. We're underrepresented in his cabinet and we're underrepresented in his transition staff. Warren — the Warren choice has really ratcheted this debate up a notch — is a giant middle finger to the tens of millions of liberal Americans who worked so hard to get Obama elected.
I don't buy this either. There is too much evidence in Obama's history as a legislator and as a candidate to suggest he will abandon progressive principles and govern as a centrist. He obviously doesn't want to be seen as in bed with the progressive community, but that doesn't mean he doesn't hear them. Nor does it mean they will always be shut out of Obama's Washington. Also, keep in mind that Obama did hire a couple folks directly out of the netroots, including Mike Lux, to work for his transition.
(3) Wait and see. Obama's picks don't have the track record or the reformist zeal that many on the left would like to see, but it's Obama himself who directs policy. It is possible that these capable, experienced Cabinet appointments have been chosen because they are best able to run the federal bureaucracy efficiently and effectively, and that they will take their policy ques from a president who is to their left philosophically.
Or maybe that's completely and utterly wrong. The point is we just don't know what the picks bode for policy. It is worthwhile to bitch and moan, because that lets Obama know the progressive community is paying close attention and not growing complacent post-victory. It hopefully exerts a leftward pull on his policy and personnel moves. But any gnashing of teeth and tearing of garments is premature. Let's take a deep breath and wait for Obama to introduce his first legislative package. At that point, the issue of symbolism will be moot and policy can be evaluated on its merits.
We SHOULD be upset and we should make our voices heard. I thought the margins picked up this election from the non-evangelical factions quelled the myth that you have to pander to the far right to cement your wins. Using Rick Fatass Warren for the inaugural speech is hopeless and cynical. That above all else truly disappoints me.
"There is too much evidence in Obama's history as a legislator and as a candidate to suggest he will abandon progressive principles and govern as a centrist."
Not trying to kick a dead gift horse in the mouth, but I've never seen anybody support this assertion with facts, and I'm certainly too busy to go rooting around the in the Illinois legislature record to find some. I voted against McCain and I'm glad that he lost, but I've yet to see these beautiful "Progressive" tendencies from Obama. I understand that I'm left of most, but just give me a law or two, something that he's done that proves he is the progressive salvation.
I'm still stuck on Dean/Edwards '04. That was my hope for a progressive Democratic party. Please somebody prove me wrong.
Not to pee in you Cheerios, but it's not the left who elected Obama. If the left were his only supporters, he'd have lost by a bigger margin then he won. He has to move to the middle, because that's the best way to govern and because that's where the greatest majority of the folks who made the difference (Independents) reside.
Gay marriage and abortion? I suspect that most are ambivalent about these issues because in the end there are more important issues to address. Well tackle those when our economic and foreign policy houses are in order. Until then, they are non-issues for all but the most extreme ideologues. I'm all for gay folks getting married, but the bottom line is, whether they can or not doesn't affect my ability to SUPPORT MYSELF.(a concept lost on the most progressive in our society.)
The only mandate that Obama received from his stunning victory is to fix what King George broke. Enforcing laws that are already on the books and supporting laws THAT MAKE SENSE to ensure that honest people don't get steamrolled by unchecked manipulators. Repair our image abroad, make a controlled exit from Iraq, and rollback the most egregious government powers created by the 'War on Terror.' These are the things that Obama has to do.
If he wants to be anything more than a transitional president, he absolutely should throw the left under the bus with impunity. If he doesn't, voters will throw him under the bus in four years.
Also, I thought we had agreed on Rick "Cone of Silence" Warren as our humorous nickname of the son of a bitch.
Hmmm, I'm with the Heathen. You'll have to back the claim ,"he will abandon progressive principles". I took a lot of heat from Obama supports prior to the election for pointing out he was not a progressive choice, just the only choice. His Politics became real obvious when he voted to immunize telecoms, and he hasn't looked back.
I like them both..."Fatass & Cone of Silence". I also think "Big stick up my ass" is a good one too.
I know this has nothing to do with the subject at hand, but hey, it's holiday time, we're suppose to have fun!
I love the pretense that somehow human rights issues cannot be attended to while other issues like the economy are on the table. I would think 'multi-tasker' would be a criteria for any higher elected official. Nice try, dan.
Dan, I think that you are missing an important reason for Obama's election: the many, many progressives who went to bat for him through volunteering, sending money, and GOTV efforts. I don't see Obama being president without the grassroots/netroots support he received from the progressive community. If he wants to have that sort of infrastructure in place for '12 then he going to have to throw more than a few bones our way.
Get serious, what good does bitching and complaining do until the practice of the new administration takes place?? It is true that the re-cycling of the officals that caused the quagmire that society is presently in does portend no good, but the time is not now that all can be explained. What bothers me is the fact that he has not bothered to choose people from the anti-war movement that has brought the cause of peace and justice to the fore and the necessity to end the war to get there. Further he ought to have chosen on the ground environmentalist activists, and woman's liberation people, as well as elected trade union leaders, and some socialist and communist American citizens. He should spread the net wide and bring in as many opinions as includes the American peoples. Narrowing the vision to only those with previous experience in governments of the U.S.A. is not really inclusive of all opinions that could cause the return to the liberation path.
Having said all that I am not of the opinion that there is not a dimes worth of difference in the new postings especially now that I hear that Bob Gates has just notified his officials of how to close Guantanamo Bay and end the torturing path of the Buschco regime. That in itself is a big and necessary move to trust of the peoples confidence that change will occur. Hopefully his administration will chose the on ground ordinary people to give the correct and useful lines in agricultural organic growing, natural methods instead of poisons of herbicides and pesticides and the concept of renewable resources such as wind, tidal, and solar power that need to re-tool the entire industrial revolution so that the end of pollution (97%) can take place. GMo's and Bio-fuels are a dead end. Organic agriculural communes are the needed future throughout the world.
"Dan, I think that you are missing an important reason for Obama's election: the many, many progressives who went to bat for him through volunteering, sending money, and GOTV efforts. I don't see Obama being president without the grassroots/netroots support he received from the progressive community. If he wants to have that sort of infrastructure in place for '12 then he going to have to throw more than a few bones our way."
That's a good point, however, an incumbent certainly doesn't have the challenges that a little known freshman senator would have. Also, you're going to get some bones thrown your way early. I suspect Gitmo will be gone. And an orderly withdraw from Iraq.
However, he has to be very much the pragmatist in the first 2 years especially.(and I would argue 4, because if the we're still hurting economically... he will not be reelected) The Democrats have a strong majority in both houses now and he'll want to keep and possibly improve on that. Going way left early will hamstring that effort before he even gets started. The extremes on both sides are vocal MINORITIES and repellent to much of the majority.
Making changes proposed in the primary will have to come slow. And he has a lot of holes created in the last 8 years to plug before he can even begin to make some of them happen. Marching to the lefts orders early on would be a much quicker way to restore republicans to power than anything they could do themselves.
Paul, despite being loud, progressive aren't that powerful of a force.(that probably hurts the most and leads to you condescending attitude.) If they were, California wouldn't have overturned gay marriage. The majority of American's don't want it, period. Obama has to acknowledge that, no matter how cynical doing so might be. Coming out in favor of gay marriage would be political suicide for a president. I know it hurts when you're on the right side of an issue and you're in the minority, but this is an issue you're going to have to eat if you want to get other things done. Nice try.
Ok - so it's alright for Obama to pick misogynists and homophobes and nearly all men for his cabinet
Is anyone going to get outraged if he picks an outright racist?
Hmmm thought so.
Obama never pretended to be anything but a militaristic, corporate stooge (see for instance his plans to boost the military, to expand the war in Afghanistan, to keep a garrison in Iraq, and his extreem support for Israeli policy). True, his PR team created the image of Obama, the man of Change, a clever Brand, built around the slogans: "Change! Hope! Change!), but that was advertising (his campaign was, by the way, the envy of the advertisment industry, who in October elected him "marketer of the year 2008", as reported in "Advertising Age", the leading magazine of the Advertisment industry).
What we'll see under an Obama administration is more more war, and more misery. In other words: the usual. But this time the socalled "left" bears almost as much responsibility for the misery the arrogance and imperialism of the USA will cause as the party-bosses of the two business parties which rule the USA.
For that's the price one pays for cheerleading a warmonger like Obama (who is, by the way, obsessed with al Qaeda, as he again showed in his recent "60 minutes" interview, where he said once again that "it is a top priority for us to stamp out al Qaeda once and for all").
On the eve of the inauguration, I'm thinking that this sentence, " I don't see Obama being president without the grassroots/netroots support he received from the progressive community. If he wants to have that sort of infrastructure in place for '12 then he going to have to throw more than a few bones our way."
is very curious. So many over the years have questioned why we need a third party during election years, yet come the midtterm, when it's become clear that the Democrats were merely whispering sweet nothings at the progressive community they suddenly wake up and realize on important factor that might be needed.
LEVERAGE.
If the progressive community continues to lead the charge to squelch nascent and struggling third party movements, such as the US Green Party, they can have no one to blame but themselves when a savior figure like Obama might inch his way to the center slowly but deliberately.
I think Rick Warren is only the opening bell. . .