Recent polls have shown that voters seem happy with President-Elect Obama’s choices for the Cabinet. A survey by Gallup and USA Today show 3 out of 4 voters, including a majority of Republicans, approve of his picks to date. Indeed the biggest objections seem to come from the far left who seem to have expected Obama to select nobody but hard-core liberals for his administration.
There has been some speculation as to why he has managed ratings like these, which are about 10-20 points higher than those obtained by President Bush in 2000 (in those polls a majority of Democrats disapproved). Some suggest that the polls are the result of superior choices (though Powell versus Clinton seems pretty even to me) while others say it is because people are eager to get past partisanship and want to give Obama a chance.
I suspect there is a little truth in both of these theories but I also think there is something else playing here which reflects the attitudes of the activist left versus the activist right. Now to be sure both sides are very partisan and both sides have been (and certainly will be) quick to attack those they disagree with.
But it seems to me that this time the right is showing a little more tolerance than the left did eight years ago. While many Republicans are suspicious of Obama and will likely move to oppose many of his policies, they are at least willing to put things aside during the transition and inauguration. The left (and again when I use terms left and right here I mean the activists, not the general population) does not seem to have the same level of tolerance (or at least did not in 2000).
Of course I am sure that once Inauguration Day passes, we will see plenty of partisan sniping and classlessness on both sides, but for the moment it’s nice to see a step in the right direction. Hopefully in the future it will become more common to both sides.