Quote of the Day: Cook Says Obama Has Built Impressive Centrist Operation
Our political Quote of the Day comes from The National Journal’s Charlie Cook, who concludes that President Barack Obama has built a highly impressive White House operation — skillful in its dealings with Congress and largely centrist in character:
Whether one agrees with the Obama White House ideologically or substantively, one would be hard-pressed to cite an administration better connected with the personalities and dynamics of Capitol Hill. As we wake up to find the most significant change to health care policy since Medicare and the most important energy bill ever moving through Congress, this exhaustive list of experienced staff members with close relationships with the most important and centrally located Democrats on Capitol Hill explains how it is happening. A common thread through conversations with staffers is that they are so mindful of mistakes made by past administrations, particularly the Clinton administration, that they are determined not to repeat them.
The fact that Obama ran as an outsider and effectively had only two years of Senate experience before diving into the presidential campaign is ironic given the team he has created, whether on the White House staff as Bai detailed, or in the Cabinet. Even more ironic is that despite his National Journal rating as the most liberal member of the Senate in 2007, Obama’s Cabinet is not one that the Democratic Left would have assembled. I doubt if MoveOn.org, CodePink, or others on the Democratic Left recommended former Marine Commandant James Jones for national security adviser or that Robert Gates be kept on as Defense secretary. It’s also hard to imagine the Left recommending Dennis Blair, former commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, as director of national intelligence. These are not the choices expected of a doctrinaire liberal or an outsider.
And on the economic side? Is team Obama a cabal of Marxist-Socialist-radicals as some GOP conservatives suggest, out to undermine America As We Know It?
On the economic side, if one defines the Democratic Party’s economic spectrum as starting with former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich, Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and the AFL-CIO on the left, and former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin on the right (or more accurately, the center), the vast majority of the key economic picks looks like a reunion of Rubin proteges and fans, whether it is Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers, or Jason Furman, his deputy. To be sure, there are others to their left, notably Council of Economic Advisers Chairwoman Christina Romer and council member Austan Goolsbee, a former University of Chicago faculty member with Obama. But clearly the most economically centrist wing of the Democratic Party is better represented in this administration than Obama’s brief Senate voting record would suggest.
Indeed, Obama’s biggest criticisms now come from some on the Democratic left, who view Obama as mushy (a favorite adjective people on the left and right like to use to try and negatively characterize centrists or moderates who don’t agree with a left or right stand on a policy — someone MUST be mushy or unprincipled if they conclude that a hard left or hard right stand is not appropriate) and increasingly with near hysteria by some on the right.
For instance, listening to Rush Limbaugh yesterday arguing that the man who opened fire at the Holocaust Museum was REALLY a leftist (when other evidence clearly does not support that view) and that Obama is the one who has stirred up hatred was funnier than any headlining comedian or top rated sitcom.
Limbaugh accusing Obama of stirring up hatred is like the oversized pot calling the teacup an oversized pot.
10 Responses to “Quote of the Day: Cook Says Obama Has Built Impressive Centrist Operation”
One of Obama’s big supporters gets caught embezzling hundreds of thousands from AmeriCorps and what is the response?
Fire the Inspector General that found the crime.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_go_pr…
More:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/blogs…
Sounds like abuse of power to me, but I’m pretty moderate.
As for the Limbaugh portion of your article…….
If you really had listened to Rush yesterday, you would have come away with same view as the dependably liberal Chris Cillizza from the Washington Post, who, under intense pressure from Chris Mathews and David Corn on Hardball to say the opposite, stuck to the truth and said Limbaugh showed how the shooter was just as much a product of the left and that von Brunn should just be classified as a non-partisan crazy.
You’ve actually have to listen to get this type of information. Recaps by Media Matters or Crooks and Liars won’t go into this level of detail (or truth).
Here's an Associated Press report about the firing of the Inspector General of AmeriCorps.
Some quotes:
And:
The fired Inspector General is a political appointee of George W. Bush.
George,
The AP information was all in my link. I’m a conservative and post both sides of the story.
As far as Obama’s excuses, its best put by Byron York:
“The bottom line is that the AmeriCorps IG accused a prominent Obama supporter of misusing AmeriCorps grant money. After an investigation, the prominent Obama supporter had to pay back more than $400,000 of that grant money. And Obama fired the AmeriCorps IG.”
You can put some perfume on this, but it’s still going to stink.
jwest in the big scheme of things that's a minor issue and not worth getting worked up about.
On the question of whether Obama's economic team is centrist, I would say they appear less so than when Rubin was Treasury Secretary under Clinton. I know Rubin was very sensitive to controlling the deficit and it's implications on treasury yields, and I have not seen that same concern today. You could make the argument that Geithner is intentionally risking inflation in order to save the failing economy, but there seems to be a willingness to spend without regard to consequence that I did not see under Clinton.
I am tired of some on the right calling Obama a Marxist/Socialist/Communist, but I am equally tired of some on the left characterizing all economic criticism of Obama as wild-eyed blather. There are legitimate concerns here, maybe it would be possible for once to discuss them without all the rancor.
This is an interesting take and certainly different from the CW that the Obama administration is the most liberal since, at least LBJ.
While the individual advisors may have had moderate credentials coming in, they appear to be acting in a very liberal manner on the economic front. National health care has been a liberal policy darling for decades. The administration's energy policy is also well left of center. Cap and Trade, and EFCA are also pretty well left, as is the ownership distribution of Chrysler and GM, both of which were largely forged by the administration.
It is true that Obama and his administration have moved closer to the center on defense and national security issues than many on the left would have thought…troop surge in Afghanistan, photo release, maintaining national security wiretap authority, slow walking the Gitmo closure, etc.
Overall, though, Obama seems to be moving, perhaps somewhat cautiously, in a liberal Democratic direction more so than any President in decades. It might be more appropriate to call Obama's approach “cautious” than centrist. And, even “cautious” may be overstating it when one considers the ambitious agenda and time frame on the domestic and economic fronts. The evidence of caution would be reflected in putting items like immigration reform and gay rights on the back burner, for now, to engage in other priorities. Or perhaps, it's just political pragmatism.
The parts of Cook's thoughts that are clearly true are that the Obama administration has been quite successful in dealing with Democrats on Capital Hill, and projecting the impression, even if somewhat illusory, that he is actually bi-partisan and centrist.
Good articulation, tidbits.
I think Charlie Cook generally does a good job of analysis, but this particular piece strikes me like he's making a bigger deal of this than it warrants.
After all, just how many liberals earn 4 stars on their lapels for Obama to choose from? Even Wesley Clark was pretty much a traditional military interventionist under Clinton…..he just went leftie, post retirement, over Iraq.
And since he started with Goolsbie, Reich and Krugman, who else could he recruit that could actually get their calls returned by the private sector? Rubin, Summers, Geithner were a readymade threefer that would be at least tolerated by the people they would have to interface with.
The criticism from the Left is, as usual, typically nonsense if not outright dishonest and self-debasing.
Obama a “centrist”? Ha. Like this site, occupied by so many liberals (some full-bore), “moderate.” Thanks for the laugh. I'll think about it every time the federally-run (including through the UAW) Detroit dinosaur called [The Good] General Motors gets more instructions from Washington on what to do next, and when the next maneuvers blatantly pushing federal health care in this nation transpire. (Maybe one reason these are able to progress as far already is because there are so many easily exploitable people out there, including those believing and actually claiming that lib Dems in Washington or on here are “moderate” or “centrist.” [snicker])
“CW that the Obama administration is the most liberal since, at least LBJ”
Which is the truth, obviously. And don't forget that their quite-liberal and more-liberal-still ambitions can be fully released and realized once the economy improves, if it improves in time before Obama leaves.
“projecting the impression, even if somewhat illusory, that he is actually bi-partisan and centrist”
Despite what frequently are his words, and more importantly, his and his people's _deeds_.
To me the related interesting thing will be to what extent they may misinterpret public opinion (too far left).