It’s still pretty early, but maybe an Obama presidency won’t be as bad as we had feared
It’s already been noted that our incoming president, Barack Obama, has been picking moderate Democrats for his economic team. And now, he’s showing responsibility with his national security and foreign policy team. While I personally loathe all things Clinton, selecting Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) for Secretary of State isn’t a terrible pick. And now it seems that the current Secretary of Defense, Robert M Gates, has been asked to stay on in that role.
From his biography on DefenseLink:
- Secretary Gates served as Director of Central Intelligence from 1991 until 1993. Secretary Gates is the only career officer in CIA’s history to rise from entry-level employee to Director. He served as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence from 1986 until 1989 and as Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Adviser at the White House from January 20, 1989, until November 6, 1991, for President George H.W. Bush.
Secretary Gates joined the Central Intelligence Agency in 1966 and spent nearly 27 years as an intelligence professional, serving six presidents. During that period, he spent nearly nine years at the National Security Council, The White House, serving four presidents of both political parties.
You can’t argue with those qualifications!
In addition to retaining Dr Gates, Gen. James L Jones, USMC (Ret.), a former Commandant of the Marine Corps and commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe, will be named as Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the head of the National Security Council.
Kevin Drum of the far-left Mother Jones wrote:
I’m not yet in the mood to make any thundering pronouncements on any of this stuff. None of these people have actually been announced yet, for one thing, and the rumor mill might be wrong. And even if these do turn out to be Obama’s picks, they aren’t the whole team. And anyway, Obama never pretended to be some kind of Noam Chomsky acolyte. He’s a mainstream liberal American president.
Still — and keep in mind that I’m speaking as someone who’s only modestly left of center on foreign affairs — this is a disturbingly hawkish team taken as a whole, isn’t it? I get the whole “water’s edge” thing, as well as Obama’s desire to bring back some kind of consensus in the national security arena, but it would be nice to see at least one or two really serious progressives getting some high profile national security positions that have the president’s ear, wouldn’t it? I mean, that is why most of us voted for him, right?
It’s a bit difficult to see anyone who writes for Mother Jones as “only modestly left of center” on anything, but I’ll take his word for it. 
Still, it’s good to know that the Howard Zinn philosophy, a hatred of nationalism and American identity, remains on the outside of the incoming administration.
At least from the early indicators, our 44th president seems as though his model is our 42nd president. That won’t be bad in every respect.
Sharon:
Obama ran to the left of Hillary Clinton and John Edwards on foreign policy, promising to meet face to face with dictators in his first year and to pull our troops out of Iraq immediately, regardless of the consequences. Since winning his party’s nomination Teh One has moved consistently to the right, and this is just part of that movement. He did, after all, vote for FISA. One would have to be a complete idiot to want to lose in Iraq now, even though Obama could never bring himself to admit that the surge actually worked.
My guess is (that means I don’t have news stories supporting my theory, mike) that once Teh One started getting the “for your eyes only” briefings from the Bush administration, Obama decided it was better to piss off his supporters than put national security at risk. So far, I’m liking the Obama presidency.
26 November 2008, 10:18 amaphrael:
If Obama turns out to be Clinton without Clinton’s personal problems, I will be content.
I would *like* him to be more than that. But drama-free Clintonism would be better than anything we’ve had in the last 20 years.
26 November 2008, 1:12 pmDana Pico:
The thing I liked best about the Clinton presidency was that President Clinton helped to elect the first Republican majority in both Houses of Congress in forty years!
That constraint tempered the hard-left turn he was taking during his first two years.
The thing I liked the least about the Clinton Administration was his strong support of abortion, and the people he nominated to be federal judges.
26 November 2008, 5:54 pm