Right Wing Hearts Obama?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Barack, Republicans
“Monday’s announcement of Mr. Obama’s economic team was reassuring,” Rove writes. “He’s generally surrounded himself with intelligent, mainstream advisers. Investors, workers and business owners can only hope that, over time, this new administration’s economic policies bear more of their market-oriented imprint.”Rove also offers praise of Berkley Economics Professor Christina Romer as Obama’s choice to head up his team of economics advisers
Then Fred Barnes started making cooing noises towards the President-elect…
It’s not that Obama, despite his unswervingly liberal record in the Senate, turns out to be a pragmatist. The point is he’s pragmatic (so far) in one direction-rightward. Who knew?
Yeah, who knew?
Maybe all of those bloggers who said he was a pragmatist from the get go and supported him because of it?
Here’s more Barnes love…
Clinton, for all her shortcomings, doesn’t hail from the surrender-at-all-costs wing of the Democratic party. Nor does retired Marine general Jim Jones, who’s slated to be Obama’s national security adviser. Jones, an Iraq war skeptic, is a strong supporter of offshore drilling and other steps to increase domestic production of oil and gas.Then there’s Bob Gates, Bush’s defense secretary. Obama wants to keep him at the Pentagon for another year. Liberals and the media like Gates because he replaced the man they loved to hate, Donald Rumsfeld. But Gates is no dove and no ally of the antiwar left.
So the scoreboard looks like this: Three of the four cabinet posts that matter most are going to those with views acceptable to the center-right of the Democratic party. That’s Geithner, Clinton, and Gates. The fourth, attorney general, will provoke a confirmation fight if Obama chooses his buddy Eric Holder, famous as President Clinton’s deputy attorney general for facilitating the pardon of Marc Rich.
Three out of four isn’t bad. Conservatives aren’t jumping for joy. But imagine how the left wing of the Democratic party-the dominant wing, after all-feels. Let down would be an understatement.
The one thing everybody has to keep in mind is that the left wing will get their due, but since Obama doesn’t owe left wing interests anything, he’ll be able to set an agenda on his terms, not theirs. That means he’ll start testing the waters for the progressive ideas that America is ready to accept and reject the ones he knows are political losers.
Meanwhile, the right wing will continue to see Obama as the reasonable guy he is, and while they won’t agree with him on everything…they won’t try to destroy him either. Well, that is until 2011…
So, if he can keep both sides on their toes, I can help but think his will be seen as an extremely successful first term and he’ll start to bring the unity to country we’ve been waiting for. And that could make 2012 a much easier race than 2008.
We shall see…
This entry was posted on Monday, December 1st, 2008 and is filed under Barack, Republicans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Pragmatic does not necessarily equal politically acceptable. If he only tries to take on issues he considers politically safe (not “losers”) then he will let down a lot of people, and in my opinion not live up to his full potential.
For instance, a political “loser” might be considered raising the gasoline tax, but many think this is also a very pragmatic policy. If Obama is talking about taking energy in a new direction this is an especially important move.
I like Obama’s cabinet picks, but let’s analyze them in terms of _policy_ not _politics_, because if he is making these centrist picks for politics then he is making them for the wrong reasons.
December 1st, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Wingnuts are always trying to game the system, because they can’t govern. They are just propping up Obama’s picks to advance this silly “center-right” argument, so that when he takes office, they can start obstructing every piece of legislation and claim that they are doing the people’s work. It’s all about trying to reclaim conservativism after years of failed policy.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:53 pm
I guess all that rhetoric about “change” actually meant “change back” to the Clintonian era.
Many bloggers did “hope” he would end up being a centerist, despite his political history and his left-wing campaign promises. Still, other bloggers at the Daily Kos and the DU “hoped” he would do what he said he was going to do throughout the campaign.
Since he appears to have renigged on all of those promises, your “hopes” may be fulfilled, Justin!
December 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm
To be fair, if he wants an experienced, Democratic White House staff then he almost has to pick people from the Clinton administration. I guess he could go back to Carter’s administration but I don’t even know who any of them are, they tended to be “outsiders” and probably still do not know the ropes of Washington very well.
As I understand it, Carter brought in a lot of outside the beltway folks and didn’t get much accomplished because of it. You want a White House staff that knows the ropes in order to get things done. “Getting things done” seems important to public image. Maybe look for the “change” aspect of his staff in deputies and under-secretaries, etc. so they have a chance to learn the system before being put in charge of it.
December 1st, 2008 at 5:02 pm
I believe most people who supported Obama early saw he would be pragmatic rather than partisan. It’s amazing it took this long for those who opposed him to come to the same conclusion.
December 1st, 2008 at 9:02 pm
For all the talk that Obama was a socialist left wing radical during the election have not really listen to what he was going to do if he got elected which he did. He was going have Hillary Clinton in his cabinet and would have Republicans. While people are questioning some of his picks who were once apart of the Clinton administration, lets not forget that during the Clinton administration the U.S. prosper during economic times and it was a time peace and prosperity unit 911 accure under the Bush administration came to power and you see the result during the last 8 years. It would have been silly for Obama to bring outsiders from Washington to his cabinet and make the same mistake that Jimmy Carter made when he came into office.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:28 pm
Spin all you want Jimmy. This is the type of unity government that Obama talked about all along, and it’s making me extremely happy.