Obama's new team

Those of us who have been politically opposed to Barack Obama worried most that, despite his platitudes of forthcoming centrist policy, he would follow his prior track record of a liberal legislator. Imagine my surprise when after his election he began to assemble a cabinet consisting almost entirely of people to the right of himself politically (a category which, I'll grant you, includes 95% of the general population). Oh, how the MoveOn.org crowd and the rest of the venomous left must be howling at this turn of events.

Now the appointment of Rahm "table-stabber" Emanuel, a brilliant but divisive partisan with a reputation for a nasty temper and furniture mutilation, was not a good start for Obama's supposed new age of "bipartisanship". However, now that the Obama camp has moved beyond the campaign strategy of blaming George Bush for everything from global warming to male-pattern baldness, the President-elect of late has started making more pleasant noises to the conservative ear. These dulcitones include his wise backing-off of his campaign promise to tax the rich during a recession, and his recent statement after the terrorist attacks in Mumbai that terrorism remains a "grave and urgent threat". But most fascinating of all are who he has chosen (and not chosen) for his major cabinet positions.

Of his economic advisors, none of the major players include people of extremely liberal (or what one might call "socialist") schools of economic thought. The Treasury Secretary-to-be Timothy Geithner is one of the leading minds behind the Bush administration's strategy for the current economic crisis. His mentor, Larry Summers, an academian and former Sec-Treas himself, will be the White House's chief economic advisor. Newly minted Director of the Council of Economic Advisors Christina Romer, another academic economist, is one of the foremost authorities on the Great Depression, and she has done some brilliant work on how tax increases during economic downturns further damage the economy. (Sound like Obama's read her work?)

On the National Security front: Bush's Sec-Def Robert Gates, has been asked to remain over the DOD and has accepted. This nod to continuity apparently signals a change of heart in the Obama camp, a tacit admission that the "surge" in Iraq has worked and conditions are improving markedly in that country. It also may make the intelligence community breathe a little easier knowing that a man who worked his way from entry level CIA employee to Director of Central Intelligence has been retained at DOD.

The most intriguing Obama cabinet appointment of all has to be Hillary Rodham Clinton for Secretary of State. After being perplexed as to why Obama would pass her over for Vice President only to give her the reins at State, I have come to the conclusion that she was quite simply the best person for the job of those who Obama would have selected. While her domestic policy ideas make my blood run cold, she is decidedly hawkish and to the right of Obama on foreign policy. She will wield the diplomatic might of the US, perhaps not in the stark black-or-white manner of the Bush administration, but in a decisive and no-nonsense fashion. Add this to the fact that Obama banished lefty Bush-hater extrordinaire Susan Rice to the UN ambassadorship speaks volumes about how Obama intends to frame this administration.

Also fascinating were the decisions to announce the most potentially troublesome of Obama's cabinet appointments, Attorney General in-waiting Eric Holder, along with the rest of the National Security team, so that the supernova of Hillary would block Holder entirely from view of the media. Expect Mr. Holder to face a Republican revolt in the Senate unless a full hearing in given to his involvement in the Mark Rich pardon and the Elian Gonzales raid among other questionable dealings. This will be especially important since many expect Holder to go hammer-and-tongs after the our own intelligence operatives who have engaged in aggressive interrogation (or "torture" as Mr. Holder will call it) on illegal enemy combatants who had information that may have thwarted recent terrorist plots.

I was admittedly one of those voices during the 2008 Presidential campaign that decried Barack Obama's past as an extremely liberal politician and his associations with questionable and even dangerous figures in the Chicago political scene. However, it would appear that when faced with the reality of doing the job he's sought for the last two years, Obama has begun to take a much more pragmatic approach. Will this new dawn of centrism continue once Obama assumes the mantle of the Presidency, and will it survive the coming onslaught of demands from leftist congressional leaders? We shall have to see what we shall see, but it would appear at this early hour that Obama's recent metamorphosis from liberal activist to moderate leader may finally be a "change I can believe in".

Nolanbuck