It’s a symbol — but it isn’t there yet.
The names surfacing so far for President Elect Barack Obama’s cabinet are proving reassuring to some Americans in the center and on the right (and disappointing to some on the left): a group of people known to be serious, solid and centrist. And — in most cases — Democrats.
What’s so bad about that? Nothing. Democratic partisans will argue that given the state of the country and the Democrats being out of power for 8 years, it’s TIME for another party to totally take charge. But Obama had suggested that his cabinet would also have at least one high-profile Republican and, yes, one key name being pointed to does count. Technically.
But, in the minds of many, that name probably won’t.
Today’s big news was that quintessential centrist Democrat New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will become Commerce Secretary and Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, will become White House economic adviser. But Obama is now starting to take heat from progressives and some other Democrats for staffing his administration with so many former Clinton people that some have begun to wonder aloud if it won’t be Clinton Administration Term 3 — an unlikely scenario, but a charge that could be problematic in a world where both the new and old media thrive on easily-recognizable “high concept” labels and narratives. The Clinton 3rd term charge is also now being picked up by some Republicans as well.
The problem for Obama: So far there is no high-profile Republican seemingly on-tap for a major cabinet post. And the one who many predict will be asked to stay on – -Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — isn’t the kind of highly-symbolic Republican that would change the emerging media narrative of an Obama administration staffed largely by Clinton associates. Note The Politico’s report:
Appearing on CBS’ “60 Minutes” last Sunday, Barack Obama reiterated a campaign-trail promise.
“Yes,” the president-elect told Steve Kroft, he would include Republicans in his Cabinet.
Pressed if there would be more than one, Obama declined to elaborate.
As the top tier of his Cabinet begins to come into focus, however, it looks increasingly unlikely that Obama will break new ground when it comes to fashioning a bipartisan government.
Instead, he appears to be taking a check-the-box approach that would differ little from the pattern set by predecessors Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
They both made a nod to the opposition party in their Cabinet selections but in the main did not depart from Washington’s to-the-victor-goes-the-spoils tradition in their personnel choices or the policies that flowed from them.
The most likely Republican for a top Obama post, based on published speculation and reporting within his transition team this weekend, is Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who might keep his job in at least the opening phase of the new administration. Obama has said foreign policy is the area most in need of more bipartisanship, and the likely appointment of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) leaves few other openings.
A Gates reappointment would send a message of caution and continuity within national security circles — not exactly the message that Obama’s most ardent anti-Iraq war supporters are yearning for.
But it would hardly signal a dramatically new style of partisan bridge-building.
The Politico’s piece notes that there has been seldom more than token bipartisanship in most American presidential administrations — and that GOPers are now closely watching to see if Obama does set himself apart from most incoming presidents. Some other GOP-linked names are reportedly in the running for government posts: Sen. Chuck Hagel and former NATO commander Jim Jones.
Here’s a partial list of some of the names selected or reportedly in the running. Note that this list could change as you read it and there has been no big official announcement from Obama yet:
Secretary of State: Hillary Clinton
Commerce Secretary: Gov. Bill Richardson
Secretary of Health and Human Services: Tom Daschle, former Senate Democratic leader
Senior adviser: David Axelrod, Obama’s campaign strategist
Senior adviser: Valerie Jarrett, Chicago businesswoman and longtime Obama associate.
White House counsel: Greg Craig, former counsel to Bill Clinton
Chief of staff: Rahm Emanuel, Political director under Bill Clinton and Democratic Congressional powerhouse.
Political director: Patrick Gaspard, a New York labor official
White House press secretary: Robert Gibbs, political consultant and key Obama campaign 2008 official.
Vice President’s chief of staff: Ron Klain, former chief of staff to vice president Al Gore
Other likely to emerge according to reports:
Treasury Secretary: Timothy Geithner
National Security Adviser: James Jones,
Attorney General: Eric Holder, former Clinton administration member.
Head of Homeland Security: Janet Napolitano
A centrist cabinet? It’s shaping up as one. Declared the New York Times:
President-elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.
Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury — suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.
The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.
But the names racing through the ether in Washington about the choices to follow also suggest that Mr. Obama continues to place a premium on deep experience. He is widely reported to be considering asking Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to stay on for a year; and he is thinking about Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant, for national security adviser, and placing Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary whom Mr. Obama considered putting back in his old post, inside the White House as a senior economic adviser.
“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign policy.”
Obama has also received praise for his “Team of Rivals” approach so far, with particular attention focused on his apparent selection of Hillary Clinton. Be sure to read TMVer Jerry Remmer’s post on that HERE.
But a cabinet with more than Republican tokens?
So far it’s a work in progress…
SOME WEBLOG OPINION
–Talk Left’s Big Tent Democrat, one of the most thoughtful bloggers on the left, argues that Obama will refine progressivism:
Concentrate on the policies, not the drama. For the past two years, I spent a lot of time criticizing Barack Obama for his Post Partisan Unity Schtick. But the circumstances have made all of this moot. the calamities the nation faces make the selling of the progressive agenda unnecessary. Whatever agenda Obama seeks to unveil will be the Center.
By default, President-Elect Obama gets to define what the middle is. I believe he will define progressivism as the middle. If that is called “Center-Right,” so much the better. Consider what that makes Extreme Republicanism (out of the mainstream of political thought instead of occupying the White House) and what that makes the formerly loony Left (the respectable Left flank.) Role reversal. This is a good thing.
—Right Wing Nut House’s Rick Moran:
Here, in the winter of conservative blogger’s discontent, a small ray of sunshine has peeked through the black clouds and brightened what has otherwise been an unrelenting skien of gloom and doom.
I am talking about how president-elect Barack Obama has tacked to the center by reaching out for establishment Democrats and Clintonites to fill in the first blanks of his administration’s personnel sheet and the reaction to that by our blogging friends on the left. And then there’s the sore spot that is Joe Lieberman and the monumental sense of betrayal felt by the Kos Kids that the “traitor” wasn’t boiled in oil and his bones made into a xylophone.
Intra-administration ideological ghettoization isn’t new. The last Democratic administration engaged in its share of conservative-progressive ghettoization – but rather than making the policy/politics barrier the wall of the two ghettos, it divided the two ideologies between the cabinet offices with different jurisdictions. The cabinet offices that oversaw economic regulation and defense largely went to conservatives, and the cabinet offices with powerful grassroots progressive constituencies like Labor, EPA and HUD went to progressives.
The potential ghettoization in the Obama administration – and I stress again, it’s only the potential – is one where the policy sculptors are center-right Establishmentarians, and where the policy marketers (ie. the political team) is comprised of people who know how to package and sell policies in the language of progressivism, and sell those policies to progressive activists, a progressive-dominated Democratic congressional caucus and a center-left public at large. Certainly, Obama may mimic the Clinton administration and give Labor, EPA and HUD to progressives as well, but the politics-policy divide nonetheless seems to be the defining progressive-conservative boundary right now.Obviously, the division of responsibility is never totally cut and dry. As Karl Rove showed, a White House political team can have a lot of influence over policy. So we can’t draw any hard and fast conclusions about what this will mean in the Obama administration. It’s very possible that the progressive political team will have a lot of policy say.
—Jules Crittenden wonders if storm clouds are coming in from the left for Obama:
Tragic irony alert. They hated Hill because she hearted the invasion of Iraq, and only turned against it in a naked bid to become president. They even bared their venerable breasts at her in their rage. They loved Obama because he was pure. He always hated the Iraq war, even before anyone cared what he thought. It was going to be a shining city on a hill, where AmeriKKKa would be Goddamned and humiliated in the world. Surrenderpalooza. But the standard bearer of change … has changed. How long now before the Change-Hoper is confronted with the breasts of wrath?
It should not come as a surprise that Obama has picked more centrist figures, many from the Clinton years, for his top positions. Bill Clinton was the only Democratic president in recent years and Democrats who have experience in Washington are most likely to have obtained it from working under Clinton. The economic crisis requires that Obama builds an administration which displays stability and competence, preventing the appointment of inexperienced outsiders to top positions.
Much of the work of government is also done by the appointees under the cabinet secretary position, and this is where there is greater possibility for bringing in new blood. The people brought into government at this level are the ones who will advance in future years and might be the ones who really change Washington. Policy is also developed far more in the White House than by the cabinet, and I expect Obama to be receiving a wide range of opinions, including from the left.
Cabinet members under Barack Obama will still be implementing the policies of Barack Obama. It is fortunate, not cause for panic, that many Republicans are pleased with Obama’s appointees as this will better enable Obama to achieve bipartisan cooperation to pass his policies. Many ideas which were considered far left in the past are now considered to be more centrist. If Obama’s policies are good policies, it is actually advantageous politically if they are considered to be pragmatic or centrist as opposed to leftist. We should judge Obama based upon the actual policies which come out of his administration, not by his appointees before he has even taken office or the labels applied.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.