Why Have Obama's Appointments So Far Been So Dreadful?

Before turning to that vexing question, a few preliminary remarks:

-Maybe, once the top tier positions in his administration are filled with Clintonites and Wall Street moles, Obama will throw a few sops to the “liberals.” There are signs of this already, though it is so far mainly confined to the Vice President’s staff – for example, the appointment of Jared Bernstein of the Economic Policy Institute as Biden’s economic advisor. Admittedly, we’re talking social workers, not socialists, but, in an era of small “change,” small favors are most welcome.

-I would venture too that today’s announcement that retired General Eric Shinseki will head the Department of Veterans’ Affairs is also good news. Shinseki is a military professional who was on the outs with Donald Rumsfeld even before being forced into retirement for opposing the administration’s transparently low ball estimate of the troop levels necessary to subdue Iraq and manage it after the American invasion.

-It is intriguing that Obama decided to appoint a Japanese American on Pearl Harbor Day, and that no one has accused him yet of palling around with kamikazes. The American Right has evidently made peace with Japan – even to the point of wanting the Japanese to run automobile manufacturing in this country, if that’s what it takes to do in the UAW. The Right’s reaction to Obama’s election also shows that they’ve made peace with the demise of Jim Crow – to the point that they can accept a (non-threatening) African-American President. But, as the example of Obama’s “pal,” Bill Ayers, attests, the folks who were right about Vietnam are still not forgiven. The lesson of that sorry phase of American history is still not learned.

-That “the sixties” remain contentious is a comparatively benign consequence of the fact that America’s defeat in Vietnam – and the defeat along with it of the War Party -- was less than total. The two Bush wars raging today, along with the wars initiated by Bush’s poppy and by Bill Clinton, are more malign consequences. This is why it is urgent to combat the Clintonites – Obama included – on the Bush wars, as much or more than it was to combat Cheney and Bush. They want out – who doesn’t! – but they don’t want there to be a perception of defeat because it would be bad for the empire; because America would then lose “respect.” This is a recipe for yet more disasters. Without some considerable come-uppins, we will have no chance at all of securing a relatively soft landing as the inevitable consequences of imperial overreach accumulate. The less clear it is that these latest adventures have ended in disaster – and humiliation – the more likely it will be that more of the same will happen again.

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Of course, it may yet turn out that circumstances force even the most dreadful members of Team Obama to do some pale approximation of the right thing – perhaps even to end the Bush wars. Still, the question remains: why has Obama been so drawn to war-supporting, free-marketeering Clintonites? Why has he made so many bad appointments? The most straightforward answer is that his politics are as bad as theirs. That hypothesis is confirmed by almost everything Obama has said and done since he announced his candidacy, with the possible exception of that too brief moment, before Super Tuesday, when Obama and his advisors thought it expedient to try to win over John Edwards’ supporters.

There are other explanations in circulation too, and they are not entirely implausible. However, for the most part, these explanations have an illusory aspect (in Freud’s sense of “illusion,” according to which illusions are expressions of unconscious desires). Obamamaniacs who are not yet ready to concede that they have been snookered are especially susceptible to illusions. There are also more hard-headed analyses in circulation. What they have in common is the idea, which may well be true, that Obama is extraordinarily shrewd. In the aftermath of that Grant Park moment, and in anticipation of Inauguration Day, the boundaries of these explanations easily meld together – as much for skeptics like myself as for “true believers.”

No doubt the most wishful explanation revolves around the idea, dear to liberal pundits, that Obama is so smart and so self-confident that he can fashion a “team of rivals” for their “competence” alone, while calling the shots himself. [The expression “team of rivals” comes from the title of a very unremarkable best-seller about Lincoln’s cabinet by pop historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.] For those who imagine this, Obama is “the decider” – though, in view of that term’s most recent uses, Obama’s cheerleaders dare not say so directly. Of course, the obverse is at least equally plausible: that Obama is so insecure that he needs Washington and Wall Street “heavies” around for cover and to keep him from going too far wrong.

Explanations that appeal to Obama’s shrewdness, more than to his majestic (or deficient) powers, all have one characteristic in common: they would make little sense had Obama not named Hillary Clinton Secretary of State. Thus there is the Godfather explanation -- “keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.” In these terms, Clinton’s appointment would be shrewd indeed. By becoming Secretary of State, she will serve at Obama’s “pleasure.” Should she be dismissed, she’ll have no Senate seat to return to. She’ll probably not have much of a base in New York either – since, in the circumstances, neither she nor her “better half” will have much reason to continue cultivating one. Indeed, they have no reason any longer even to maintain residence in New York. Watch for Bill Clinton to move his operation from Harlem to Washington; it’s unlikely to happen right away, but give him a year or two. Remember that, for the Clintons, parachuting into New York was all about launching Hillary’s Presidential campaign. Now that that’s a dead letter, why bother.

[How delicious it would be if, in eight years time, having been appointed to Clinton’s Senate seat, Caroline Kennedy would be elected our first woman President of the United States! Dynastic politics is not without ironies; and, despite the Bush family and the Clintons, it is not a wholly deplorable phenomenon.]

There is also a wrinkle on the last of these explanations that renders it more benign. Ralph Nader mentioned it – skeptically -- last week on “Democracy Now”; I don’t know who else has floated the idea. The thought is that by putting a high profile figure at the head of the State Department – Hillary surely is that – Obama is aiming to restore the State Department’s traditional preeminence in foreign affairs, at the expense of the National Security Council, the Defense Department, and the various, nefarious agencies of the National Security State. That hypothesis is supported by the continuation in office – allegedly for a short, if not fixed, period of time – of George Bush’s man, Robert Gates, as head of the Defense Department. In that capacity, he is likely to remain what he now is: a caretaker. That would help neutralize the Defense Department in the perennial struggle for foreign policy supremacy, effectively reversing the situation that, until quite recently, existed under Bush – before his entire administration went missing. It should become clearer whether there is anything to this idea when we find out who Obama selects to head the many potentially powerful national security posts he has yet to fill – especially at the CIA.

Perhaps, then, there is some good that will come out of all the dreadfulness. Perhaps too things will all work out better than appears. However, to think so, one must don rose-colored glasses. In the light of day, it looks increasingly like what we see is what we’ll be getting.

Where Are They, Now That We Need Them?

As Obama loads up his administration with Clintonites, two formerly prominent mainstream politicians, John Edwards and Eliot Spitzer, have effectively gone missing. Could their philandering really explain this phenomenon – what with Bill Clinton, that nine hundred pound philanderer, calling the shots from behind the curtains? Or is it that they’re both too immoderate for our President elect?

Whatever the explanation, it is an unfortunate turn of events. Although he went along with the foreign policy and national security consensus, Edwards ran for the nomination as a genuine progressive on domestic affairs. He even dared speak of poverty and the working class – forbidden words (and topics) in the Democratic lexicon. While he was still in the race, he pulled both Obama and Clinton leftward, though not nearly enough. If Obama wants to “keep hope alive,” at least until his inauguration, he could do much worse than put Edwards in his cabinet. The Secretary of Labor job is still open. If it doesn’t go to David Bonior, a genuine progressive and Edwards’ former campaign manager, then it should go to Edwards himself. And, whatever the state of their marriage, Elizabeth Edwards would be a fine appointment to any position worthy of her considerable abilities – in contrast to Hillary Clinton who is a terrible appointment to any position at all, but especially to those, like the one she got, that she deems worthy of herself.

Apparently, Spitzer, like Larry Summers, is “challenged” in the personal relations department. But, so what – he knows how to put corporate malefactors away! Corporate America is full of malefactors deserving the worst Spitzer can dish out. Lets sic the pit bull (sans lipstick) on them. Otherwise, the Forgiver-in-Chief -- the forgiver already of Lieberman and, before long, of all the President’s war criminals, including the President himself and the hyper-culpable Dick Cheney – will let them get away with worse than murder, the ruination of countless working and middle class lives. With no charges pending against Client Number Nine, there is no obstacle in the way; only cowardice – which, among Democrats, is a considerable obstacle indeed.

If You Can't Beat 'Em

The Clinton Restoration many thought they were voting against is now nearly confected. Foreign affairs will be run by unreconstructed Clintonites (and a Clinton), while the economy will be given over to barely chastened free marketeers of Clintonite vintage with Wall Street connections. Then, for the anti-war voters, add a dash of Bush in the form of Robert Gates and voilà – “change we can believe in.”

Meanwhile, liberals, famous for not taking their own side in an argument, can’t cut Obama enough slack -- or, worse, can’t stop cheerleading. In more thoughtful moments, they’ll acknowledge surprise and even disappointment. Still they persist in believing, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that Obama, “the decider” (??), knows best.

I could go on about how this is what you get when you demand nothing. But I confess I’m looking forward to a Lincolnesque oration and another Grant Park moment on Inauguration Day. So, for now, lets join in the celebration. There will be plenty of time to state, and restate, the obvious later on. In case reality gets in the way, just remember that it could be worse.

I was reminded of this by a Steve Brodner cartoon in the December 1 New Yorker. It pictures Obama’s “Team of Rivals”. Hillary Clinton is at the head of the table, next to the Commander-in-Chief. Then there’s Bill O’Reilly as Secretary of Defense, Joe the Plumber as Secretary of Labor, Todd Palin as Secretary of Homeland Security, Michele Bachmann as the Head of EPA and, best of all, a tarantula.

Change: Rorschach Style

Barack Obama ran for the nomination as the Rorschach Man – the candidate in whom voters could see what they want. His watchword was “change” – in context, as vacuous a concept as could be. Of course, when voters looked beneath the surface, they found a candidate situated at his party’s center-right (alongside Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden) -- far to the right of his party’s base. But few cared to look. Now the situation is even clearer. Still, remarkably, the world is full of people who’d rather not know. Obama has yet to lose the Rorschach touch.

Thus “anti-war” Obama is filling out the higher echelons of his national security apparatus with war Democrats (unreconstructed Clintonites). Hillary herself will preside over them! And, if that’s not sufficiently unbelievable, now we are told that Obama will keep George Bush’s Defense Secretary on, at least for a while. Thus along with Biden and Clinton, we’ll be getting Robert Gates – of Iran-Contra fame, called back to Washington after the 2006 elections (from Texas A&M, where he was doing whatever university presidents with CIA backgrounds do) to clean up Donald Rumsfeld’s mess, the better to keep the Bush wars going. Even Bill Clinton never appointed anybody like that. All this is happening, moreover, with only a barely audible peep from what passes these days for a peace movement.

Obama’s response to Bush’s economic meltdown is arguably even worse. Not only are the Obama appointees unreconstructed Clintonites, but some of them -- the ones occupying “the commanding heights” like Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner (loomed over by Robert Rubin, the éminence grise of Wall Street moles) -- are the architects of the deregulation that brought the crisis on. Not to worry, though, say ever hopeful liberals. Obama is still somehow the new FDR or rather, since he has learned from FDR’s mistakes, FDR verbessert.

Months ago, I wrote that Obama’s “change” was of the plus ça change variety – cosmetic, not substantive. I was too generous; it’s not even that. Nevertheless, Obamamaniacal illusions remain.

The support Obama is getting is, on the whole, a phenomenon of more clinical than political interest, but it does have a (somewhat) reasonable basis nevertheless. After Bush and Cheney and Henry Paulson (Mr. Magoo), and all Bush’s other “Brownies,” each and every one of them doing a “heckuva job,” there is a longing not just for “change” but also for competence. On that dimension, the Obama appointments shine in the manner of JFK”s “brightest and best.” Will these heirs of Camelot go on, like their predecessors, to launch yet another functional equivalent of the Vietnam War? Time will tell.

The fabulation now is that the gaggles of Clintonites and Wall Street flunkies are on board for their competence only, and that “progressive” (but also “pragmatic”) Obama will be calling the shots. Thus the contention that personnel and policy are not the same. How long before that illusion is shattered!

We must never forget that Bush and Cheney made Obama possible. They also made possible a far more radical transformation of the political scene than Obama will bring. Unfortunately, that opportunity was set aside once the primary season turned into a two-way, Obama v. Clinton, contest. Ironically, though, again thanks to Bush and Company, it could come back – as the fall-out from their misconceived policies and rank incompetence becomes more salient. The pain of it all could yet force Obama and his minions to go where no Clintonite has ever dared to go.

But we must also not forget that as long as Obamamiacal illusions persist, “we” have no claim on Obama or his policies. “We” never demanded anything from him, and that’s exactly what we’re getting. No matter how bad things get, Obama will still be working, Clinton-style, for Wall Street and the other Democratic paymasters, unless we turn him around. To that end, this Rorschach thing, this seeing what we want to see, has to stop. When it does, what will come into focus with the utmost clarity is one plain fact: that, insofar as he is permitted to go his own way, Obama will never be part of the solution. For that, he and his “competent” subordinates -- we must hope they really are just subordinates! – will have to be dragged kicking and screaming. Otherwise, we might as well have ended up with a full-fledged Clinton Restoration, not just in substance, but in name as well.

Abandon (Almost) All Hope

It seems that Democrats in the Senate won’t cede enough power to that old carpetbagger and Official Wife to keep her dwelling among them. New Yorkers rejoice! Rejoice that in Hillary Clinton’s mind, and in the view of increasingly many liberal commentators for whom Barack Obama can still do no wrong (despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary), she is owed more. Thus, according to the latest leaks, the junior Senator from New York has decided to accept Obama’s offer to become Secretary of State.

New York’s gain is everyone else’s loss. But we mustn’t exaggerate the harm. From the outset of the primary season, Obama ran as a new model Clintonite. When John Edwards was in the race, he pulled Obama, and Clinton too, slightly to the left. But Obama was always a figure of the center-right of the Democratic Party and, as such, far to the right of the large and growing Democratic “base.” Of all the candidates vying for the nomination, he was the worst – after Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. On health care, his position (no mandated universal coverage) was even worse than Hillary’s. But, apart from being the first African-American to have a chance of winning, he had two things going for him: first, unlike Hillary, who is unrepentant to this day, he opposed the Iraq War from the outset (while voting to fund it, of course, once he became a U.S. Senator and could actually have made a difference); and, more importantly, he offered the hope of ridding the political landscape of that dreadful (and, in Bill’s case, criminal) Clinton family – not just by bringing ignominious defeat upon them, but also by concocting an administration free of the most thoroughly compromised Clintonites. As I have been pressing in these entries since last spring, that was the main thing Obama was good for.

Well, now it’s clear: he’s not good even for that. Moreover, despite what benighted people in what passes for an anti-war movement evidently still think, neither is he any better than Clinton would have been on Iraq. In 2006, anti-war voters unwittingly elected a gaggle of war Democrats. For that, we have the Democratic leadership, especially Rahm Emanuel, candidate selector extraordinaire, to thank. In 2008, anti-war voters, similarly betrayed, have made Hillary Clinton their Secretary of State and, it is lately reported, retired Marine General Jim Jones their National Security Advisor. [The latter may actually turn out to be a decent appointment, in a Brent Scowcroft, not a “change we can believe in,” sort of way.] Putting Jones in is, in any case, better than keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense, as the inside tipsters claim will happen too.

Should we still be glad Obama won? Well, of course the African-American thing remains. But once the wonderment of that fades, expect lots of Obama voters to crash hard. This is what happens when “liberals” demand nothing of candidates who take their votes for granted.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Obama is due to announce his economic team: Timothy Geithner for Secretary of the Treasury, Bill Richardson for Commerce Secretary, and Larry Summers and Paul Volker as top economic advisors (with yet unspecified titles and job descriptions). Richardson is about as good as anyone associated with Bill Clinton could be. As I’ve often opined, better him for President than Obama; better him too for Secretary of State than Hillary. We should be thankful that Obama felt he needed a high profile latino in his cabinet and that Penny Pritzker, his plutocrat buddy, turned the job down. As for Geithner, it’s too soon to tell. He is said to be a protégé of Summers and, even worse, Robert Rubin. On the other hand, he seems to be doing a good enough job as president of the NY Federal Reserve. In addition, compared to most of Obama’s appointments, he’s a devil we don’t know – yet. Summers, of course, is bad news, and not just because he is “challenged” when it comes to personal relations or for what he said at Harvard about the mathematical abilities of women. Along with Rubin and others in the Clinton fold, he helped set the stage for the economic collapse we’re now experiencing. Volker is an octogenarian deficit and inflation hawk who, in comparison to the formerly venerated free-marketeer Alan Greenspan, now looks good. Who knows what advice he’ll bring, if any. I suspect that Obama wants to use him the way the citizens of Colonus used the body of Oedipus – as a talisman conferring benefits.

It could be worse, of course; much worse. But it could be much better too. In that regard, I wonder why Eliot Spitzer, a proven bugbear of Wall Street malefactors, and John Edwards, a man who at least dared utter such words as “poverty” and “working class” in the primaries, have disappeared into the nation’s memory hole. Why would a country that has forgiven Bill Clinton’s sins of concupiscence more times than he can shake a stick at wax puritanical over the comparatively minor transgressions of these philanderers, especially now that we need both of them? Like the respect liberals of recent vintage accord the likes of Harry Truman and Ronald Reagan, this is one of those “only in America” things that defies explanation.

Anyway, why be surprised or disappointed that a man of the center-right would appoint center-right people to the highest echelons of his administration? Perhaps it’s just that the Rorschach Man conjured up hopes of doing (slightly) better. He well could have. He could at least have dispatched the Clintons, and outnumbered the devils we know with devils we don’t. Instead, he seems hell-bent on doing the opposite. Liberal commentators call it “pragmatism.” It’s impossible to watch MSNBC these days without becoming sickened by the praise it elicits. I call it multiplying reasons to abandon hope.

Should we, then, abandon all hope in Obama? Not quite yet, I say; not before Inauguration Day. After eight years of Cheney and Bush, we could all do with a little “inspiration,” no matter how meretricious we know it to be. After that, there will be ample time to despair – and, once Obamamania is finally drowned in an ocean of buyers’ remorse, to fight back en masse.

Leaks

Capitol Hill seems to be the source of most of the leaks coming out in recent days about Obama’s appointments. It’s inevitable – Obama and Co. have to test the waters there, and the place is full of blabbermouths. They’re the reason appointments for the likes of Sam Nunn, Warren Christopher and Penny Pritzker were authoritatively reported, and then even more authoritatively denied. But they’re not the only ones. Those consummate leakers, the Clintons, are doing their share too – cleverly boxing Obama in, so that the Secretary of State job is Hillary’s for the taking. Needless to say, as the whole world – even Tom Friedman and David Broder, denizens of its more ludicrous nether regions – realizes, Hillary Clinton would be dreadful in that position. Still, thanks to the ambient incontinence, we may not yet get to see the back of her.

The bad news this morning is that Bill Clinton seems to have come to terms with Team Obama on financial disclosures. There is good news too, but it’s a slender reed on which to pin our hopes. The New York Times reports that, having done so much to get the offer, Hillary is tempted to turn the job down – if the Senate leadership, that gaggle of Pelosiite betrayers of voters’ expectations, agrees to give her the power she thinks her due, not withstanding her lack of seniority and accomplishment. Since she’s in the Senate already and can’t be voted out of office for several more years, and since her worse half won’t go away either (much less be called to account and brought to justice), this would be the least bad feasible outcome.

Lesser and Greater Evilism

News of appointments dribbles in:

Janet Napolitano, it seems, will head “Homeland Security.” [Remember when those words conjured up images of Nazi Germany; remember when Germany, not the Bush boy’s America, was the archetypal authoritarian state!] Napolitano will be a major improvement over Michael Chertoff and, needless to say, over John McCain’s color-coded buddy, Tom Ridge. For an Obama appointee, Napolitano is comparatively free of Clinton associations; and she won’t cower before Joe Lieberman, who, thanks to the Forgiver-In-Chief, will head the Senate’s Homeland Security Committee.

Should Penny Pritzker become Obama’s Secretary of Commerce, as press reports this morning indicate she will, Obama will have appointed at least one devil official Washington doesn’t know well. [Most of the others are Clintonite devils known all to well.] No doubt, there is sleaze awaiting exposure in the family businesses; apparently, she and other Pritzkers have been known to pal around with predatory lenders (and even to join in from time to time). One thing is clear, though – as a Chicago plutocrat, she, like other Pritzkers, knows commerce well.

For Health and Human Services, Tom Daschle, already yesterday’s news, isn’t a bad choice either. He was pretty much his own man back in his Senate days, and he knows how to get bills through Congress. The appointment signals that Obama is serious about reforming health care. We won’t be getting single-payer (aka what we obviously need) and we won’t even get universal coverage. But we could well end up with a lesser evil than the status quo. On the Clintonite scale, from one to ten (where ten indicates absolute servility to corporate power and subservience to the Democratic Party’s paymasters), Daschle is maybe a five. In contrast, Donna Shalala, Bill Clinton’s HHS Secretary, a Clintonite avant la lettre, was easily a 9.5.

Thus, in the past few days, Obama has done OK. But, of course, he hasn’t provided anything resembling the “change we can believe in” that Obamamaniacs thought – and still think -- they were voting for.

We should therefore savor the moment as Obama and the Clintons move closer to closing the Secretary of State deal, and before other clear signs of a Clinton Restoration emerge. And, of course, we should keep in mind how much better even a Clinton Restoration will be compared to what we now have, notwithstanding the Iraq sanctions, the Yugoslav wars, the “humanitarian interventions” and so much else (including Clinton’s Reaganite assault on the welfare state and his zeal in deregulating financial markets).

In that regard, it is worth noting that Cheney and Bush and their Palinite co-thinkers in the Republican Party seem determined to foul the nest as much as they can before they finally go away (unfortunately, not to the prison terms they richly deserve). Implementing hard to reverse environmental regulations – weakening the Endangered Species Act, for instance, and opening up ever more federal land to commercial exploitation – is now their highest priority. It now seems too that the Bush crime family will do their best to implement a massive counter-stimulus package before they leave office. That’s what letting the Big Three auto companies go under, before there is any chance of doing anything for their workers and for the larger economy, is all about. Having lost the election decisively, Cheney and Bush and the other beneficiaries of our soon to be Forgiver-in-Chief are about to rule, as best they can, from the grave (well, unfortunately, not quite the grave) -- handing Obama a mess so massive that, unless he somehow finds a backbone and takes a radical turn, he’ll have to spend the next four years digging out from under.

Lesser evilism runs rampant in Obama’s appointments so far, but even so, the gap between “lesser” and “greater” is large indeed.

Forgiver-In-Chief

Robert Kennedy is supposed to have said – “don’t get mad, get even.” In excising what little backbone the Party of Pusillanimity had in it, the Clintons pretty much dispatched that sentiment, except of course in cases where Slick Willy felt slighted. That Clinton legacy reached its apogee yesterday in the light slap on the wrist handed out to Joe the Renegade Lieberman. But Senate Democrats wouldn’t have gotten to that point on their own; they needed urging from Bill Clinton and forceful intervention from the soon to be Forgiver-In-Chief. Obama, so far from being a “secret Muslim,” is turning out to be an early Christian, interested first and foremost in turning the other cheek. If it isn’t a fiendishly clever strategy on his part – and there is no sign that it is – it’s a tendency that bodes ill for what ought to be a prime order of business for the new administration: settling accounts with the crimes of the Bush-Cheney years. They are far more momentous than the impeachable offenses the Party of Pelosiites, swept into office on the strength of popular revulsion at Bush’s murder and mayhem in Iraq and his manifest incompetence in Louisiana, took “off the agenda.”

Meanwhile, the Clinton Restoration is proceeding at full throttle. The two positions offered yesterday, according to credible reports, were Attorney General and Budget Director. Obama could have done worse than nominating Eric Holder for the former slot. In the waning years of the Clinton administration, long after Janet Reno whacked the whackos in Waco, Holder was second in charge in the Justice Department. But he doesn’t seem to have been much in Clinton’s thrall. It will count against him that he vetted Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, after Rich’s wife stuffed the right coffers, but that’s not a big deal; Holder has already apologized for his lack of vigilance. Holder’s shenanigans as a corporate lawyer in recent years – especially the work he’s done for Big Pharma and Chiquita (formerly United Fruit) – are more worrisome. But don’t count on Democrats to raise many questions about any nominee’s corporate-friendliness.

Holder seems to have been a more than capable prosecutor and he is apparently well liked in the law enforcement community. Yet he’s not a vicious “law and order” type. One would welcome an Attorney General with more qualms about judicial murder (capital punishment). But there’s no way Obama, a death penalty proponent, would appoint anybody like that.

The likelihood that Peter Orszag will move from the Congressional Budget Office into its White House counterpart is more troubling. Orszag is a Robert Rubin protégé. His appointment bodes ill for the more senior economic policy appointments to come.

From the beginning, Obama was the Rorschach candidate in whom “believers” saw what they wanted to see. He hasn’t yet lost the touch. Is his vaunted “pragmatism” (never mind that those who use the word have little idea what it means!) – for instance, in offering the Secretary of State job to Hillary Clinton – a stroke of genius in the service of “change” or a sign of incoherence in deference to the status quo? It’s not yet a hundred per cent clear, but I’d bet on the latter. On the other hand, it’s not beyond question that Obama’s offer was a sage move. Neither would it be all that horrible were Hillary to accept the offer, at least not in comparison with some of the (likely) alternatives. Among other things, it means that Richard Holbrooke won’t be getting the job and that, along with other pernicious characters, including the already excluded Vice President To Be, he won’t have any grounds to complain. Bill Richardson would be a better appointment; even John Kerry would. But, as with Holder, Obama could have done worse. Still, it’s a long way from the “change” many voters thought – and still think – they voted for.

For real change, this Democratic forgiveness thing has got to stop, even if, in the short run, it somehow makes strategic sense. Not that it’s much of an accomplishment, but Bobby Kennedy was more right than Jesus. Will Obama see the light? Will the New Lincoln realize that he can’t fool all (or even most) of the people who voted for him forever? It’s too soon to tell, but the prospects are not good. For a long time to come, those who really do want to move forward, may well have an intransigent Forgiver-in-Chief with whom to contend.

More Reasons for Concern

Don’t blame me; I didn’t vote for him. As I’ve explained in earlier entries, living in a state that was clearly going to choose Obama over Hillary Clinton, I felt free to vote for Mike Gravel. I preferred him to the others because he wasn’t shy about saying that the others were full of shit. In the circumstances, that seemed more important than registering support for Dennis Kucinich’s better (thoroughly marginalized) politics or John Edwards’ (partially marginalized, anti-poverty) lost cause. Then, in the general election, with Obama a sure winner in my state, I was free to vote for Ralph Nader – in protest and out of habit. I confess, however, that in view of the real alternatives in both cases, I did hope Obama would win. Day by day, that hope is becoming harder to justify.

First, there was Rahm Emanuel – the War Democrat, Wall Street flunky, and friend of the Likud. Then a bunch of lower level Clintonite appointees – Greg Craig as White House Counsel, Ronald Klain (late of Al Gore’s VP office) as Joe Biden’s Chief of Staff, and Jim Messina and Mona Sutphen as Deputy Chiefs of Staff. In recent days, Obama has also made a few less egregiously Clintonite appointments: Philip Schiliro as liaison to Congress and Peter Rouse as Senior Advisor.

In her weekly appearance on NPR’s “Morning Report,” Cokie Roberts, the doyenne of conventional wisdom, attributed the preponderance of Clinton people, the devils we know, to the alleged fact that there are no other Washington-savvy Democrats around. Back in 1992, a similar situation didn’t stop Bill Clinton from enlistng devils we didn’t know yet. According to la Cokie, that was because, back then, there had been no Democratic administrations for a much longer period of time. Evidently, Cokie thinks the difference between twelve years and eight changes everything. Or else Jimmy Carter somehow fell into her memory hole. Maybe that happened for her, as it did for POP, Party of Pusillanimity, stalwarts, when in Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, Carter dared state the obvious about the fifty-first state.

Obama’s transition team appointments are even more worrisome. He took his “intelligence” transition people whole cloth from the politicized intelligence wing and the torutre and rendition defenders of the CIA. Obama has floated the idea of keeping Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense, and bringing Clinton’s Wall Street moles – including Robert Rubin and Larry Summers – back to Treasury. Worst of all (so far), for those of us who voted for Obama to keep the Clintons out, and for those of us – like me – who didn’t but still hoped he’d win for that reason, the job of Secretary of State is apparently Hillary’s for the taking. At least there’s no evidence that Obama offered anything to John McCain when they met on Monday in Chicago. The way things are going, even that wouldn’t be out of the question.

[Why would Hillary want to be Secretary of State? To stick it to Bill? To acquire the foreign policy credentials she claimed she had during the campaign? Probably the main reason is that, with her presidential aspirations quashed, being in the Senate is no longer useful. After she lost the nomination, the punditocracy predicted she’d be the next Ted Kennedy. But she’s no Ted Kennedy, and it will be years before she could accumulate enough seniority even to pretend that she is. So why not Secretary of State! For Obama it would be a Godfather move – keeping his friends close, keeping his enemies closer. For those seeking “change,” it would be a straight out, deadweight loss.]

It is remarkable how there are still so many ostensibly sensible people who insist that Obama really is an agent of “change”; that he will be in control, no matter whom he appoints, and that he has his own ideas. Perhaps so -- though there is no evidence of it whatsoever. Much like the (alleged) divinity, Obama elicits faith, notwithstanding a total lack of (defensible) reasons for it. Pundits seeking insight into the transition process who are now flocking to read Team of Rivals, a silly book about Abraham Lincoln written by pop historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, would be well advised to turn instead to Sigmund Freud’s analysis of theism’s tenacity, a phenomenon much like Obamamania, in The Future of an Illusion.