So far, so good on Obama transition

[babylonsister]

So far, so good on Obama transition

ANN MCFEATTERS
SYNDICATED COLUMNIST


WASHINGTON -- So, folks, how is he doing?

With every day bringing more bad financial news, with job loss now an equal opportunity experience, with paying the mortgage each month a major hassle, we can at least be glad Barack Obama is said to be ahead of any previous president-elect in putting together his team.

For sure, there are a lot of retreads from the Clinton years. And with the exception of keeping defense chief Robert Gates, there aren't a lot of Republican crossovers. At least not yet. True bipartisanship remains a vision, not a fait accompli.

When Obama holds press conferences, the markets gyrate down and up and down and up and down.

We still don't know what his exact plans for economic recovery or stimulus spending on infrastructure are. We have more questions than answers about where all the money is going to come from other than from government printing presses. We want to know how the flattening of the tires on our economic wheels will be re-inflated.

But there is steadiness and calm resolve when Obama speaks that are reassuring. He says he has the vision that will lead the country back to the new normalcy, whatever that will be. He pledges to hit the ground running on Jan. 20, which seems a scary long way away. But at least there is no more talk of President Bush getting us into another war, say, with Iran.

Obama's picks have been encouraging. For the most part, they have been men and women with experience but with the fresh perspective of having been away from Washington for a while. Their job is not to provide vision -- Obama says that's his prerogative -- but to spar with each other, think up new ways to come at old problems and carry out the policies they formulate together.

more...

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/389886_mcfeattersonline30.html

[leftchick]

1. wow!

talk about lipstick on a pig. This says it ALL for me....




Rove Praises Obama Economic Team Picks!!!!!!


http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/11/28/rove-praises-obama-economic-team-picks/

Karl Rove, for one, welcomes his new Democratic overlords:

Mr. Obama's announcement of his economic team on Monday provided surprisingly positive clarity. He picked as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, the respected, soft-spoken New York Fed president. Mr. Geithner has been a key player with Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in confronting the financial crisis. Every major decision in the rescue effort came only after the three agreed.

The National Economic Council director-designee, Larry Summers, is another solid pick. Mr. Summers has been an advocate for trade liberalization, he was the Clinton administration's negotiator for the financial deregulation known as Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and he even attempted to rein in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the 1990s.

Mr. Obama also named a respected monetary expert -- Christina Romer -- to head up his Council of Economic Advisors. On Tuesday he selected a first-rate thinker, Peter Orszag, to be director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget.

[babylonsister]

2. I don't understand what you mean. Rove is just trying to grab

attention, or polish the turd that is his legacy.

Rove again:

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/11/28/rove-health-insurance/
Rove: We Don’t Need A Change In Our Health Care System»

[leftchick]

3. he and all of the other obama praising repukes?

okay.

:eyes:

[babylonsister]

5. Would you prefer they be outraged? That would accomplish a lot. nt

[leftchick]

9. If they were outraged it would mean obama is actually being a progressive

instead of carrying water for the right/dlc. I thought that would be obvious by now.

[babylonsister]

10. He's not a progressive and never professed to be.

I don't know where you got that idea. A progressive would never have won this election.

[bemildred]

12. Obama is a "radical minimalist". I like that.

"Like all minimalists, Obama believes that real change usually requires consensus, learning, and accommodation--a belief directly reflected in many of his policies."

It is true that this annoys a lot of people, all stripes of ideologues for example, and that is likely to continue.

[babylonsister]

13. Translation?

:shrug:

[bemildred]

15. It's there now.

[babylonsister]

16. Thanks-I like it, too. He appeals to more people as a minimalist. nt

[bemildred]

17. Well, Bush tried the bull-in-a-china-shop approach.

How did that work? If Mr Obama does not in fact pursue progressive policies, which is what we need, when he has the reins of power, if he does not use the bully-pulpit to rally the public and beat the maroons in Washington DC into submission, then I will start to criticize.

[babylonsister]

19. I don't know if you've read this, but an interesting perspective here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x405533

[bemildred]

21. That's very good.

I've read it now.

People should consider what Mr Obama has accomplished, and by what age, and with what opposition. He did not do that by letting other people set his agenda; and a pragmatist is the opposite or an ideolog, he doesn't care a fig for ideology, so if you don't like that, he is going to annoy you. But he might get a lot done ...

[leftchick]

20. for the first time ever I disagree with you

I don't even think Obama knows what he believes by now given the right wingers (DLC "centrists") he has surrounded himself with.

[bemildred]

23. That's OK LC, we can still be friends.

I expect in due course it will become clear if I'm wrong or not. We can agree in that I'm not particularly fond of any of these people.
:hi:

[leftchick]

26. you know I love you!

man, we have weathered some horrible times haven't we? I may be too cynical by now to be a good judge of what comes next but it ain't looking too hopeful to me. I mean Hillary Clinton for SoS???? wtf? Talk about ZERO hope for any kind of MidEast Solution!


anyway......

I hope you and yours are well. :)

[bemildred]

28. I love you too.

We are all doing pretty well.

I think we, the country, are in one hell of a mess.

I remember Jimmy Carter, who came in in a similar situation, and what happened to him, and I will be glad if Mr Obama proves to be a somewhat cynical person himself.

[leftchick]

18. oh my bad!

NOT! Talk about rewriting history! I swear, sometimes :banghead:


... here, let David splain it for you...



http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/11/08/obama_progressive/print.html


Obama, be progressive!

Voters want you to go big and go liberal -- and not channel Clinton-style incrementalism.

By David Sirota

Nov. 08, 2008 |

"What do we do now?"

That's the question Bill McKay ponders in the classic movie “The Candidate” after he wins office promising "a better way." America will now ask Democrats the same haunting query following the historic election.

These are heady times for the party of Jefferson, Roosevelt and Obama. Only a few years ago, Democrats were almost relegated to permanent minority status by a Mission Accomplished sign and a flight suit. But since President Bush's 2004 reelection, they gained at least 50 House seats, 12 Senate seats, seven state legislatures and seven governorships. As Republicans used "socialism" attacks to make the election a referendum on conservatism, Democrats also registered their biggest presidential triumph since 1964.

So, while the president-elect talks of forming a bipartisan Cabinet, his victory wasn't the public's cry for milquetoast government by blue-ribbon commission. As Deepak Bhargava of the Center for Community Change says, Obama's win was an ideological mandate presenting "an opening for transformational, progressive change."

Maximizing this opportunity relies on Democrats understanding the parable from Spider-Man comics -- the one about great power coming with "great responsibility." In politics, that latter phrase is a euphemism for high expectations.

What the party gains in strength, it loses in a Republican scapegoat that previously justified inaction. On huge issues -- whether re-regulating Wall Street, reforming trade, solving the healthcare emergency, or ending the Iraq war -- America envisages enormous progress in the months ahead, and Democrats will have no one to blame for failure but themselves. After all, with more than 360 electoral votes, President Obama cannot credibly claim he lacks the political capital to legislatively steamroll a humiliated GOP and its remaining senators. The same goes for Democrats everywhere. Meeting expectations requires championing far-reaching -- even radical -- initiatives.

That was always 2008's theme. Amid lipsticked pigs, Joe the Plumber and Super Bowl-size candidate events, the election became a choice between continued conservative rule and a progressive agenda as far-reaching as the current crises. And as the defeated John McCain said, "The American people have spoken, and they have spoken clearly."

To meet the challenge, Democrats have to abandon their worst habits.

They must, for instance, acknowledge their progressive mandate, rather than denying it as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid did on Tuesday. "This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology," he fearfully told reporters.

They should also retire the Innocent Bystander fable about being powerless onlookers. Democrats first cited this myth as reason the Iraq war continued during their congressional majority -- expecting the country to forget that Congress can halt war funding. Today, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that "there's not much we can do" to amend the sputtering bank bailout. In 2009, such mendacity will metastasize from banal dishonesty into grist for scathing comedy-show punch lines.

Democrats need to discard other lies, too -- especially those about Bill Clinton. To hear the pundits tell it, Clinton's first-term pitfalls underscore why the next administration should avoid "governing in a way that is, or seems, skewed to the left," as the Washington Post's Ruth Marcus most recently asserted. History, of course, proves the opposite. Recounting Clinton's early years to Politico, a lobbyist correctly noted that the new president didn't move left -- he pushed conservative policies like NAFTA, thereby demoralizing his base and helping Republicans take Congress.

Obama rose on a promise to eschew those triangulations, and he won because America realized invertebracy and sail trimming will not solve problems. Voters rejected Clinton-style incrementalism in the primary, then scorned conservatism in the general election, meaning that the Democrats' best response to Bill McKay's "What do we do now?" question is a two-word answer: Go big.

[babylonsister]

24. Sirota has progressed (ha!) in his thinking...

also, I invite you to read the article referenced in #19.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/18926

snip...


What's particularly annoying - though not surprising - about this right now is that if there was ever a time for a paradigm shift, it is now. We're facing a potential depression that is a direct result of conservative's ideological and decidedly un-pragmatic policies. Our own history during the Great Depression indicates that the pragmatic way to deal with such a massive crisis is through some good old fashioned ideological progressivism.

Obama, I think, knows this, and is doing something of a dance - one that doesn't seek to challenge or change the Orwellian shenanigans, but to manipulate them for his own - and likely progressive - ends. It could be really brilliant (as long as what he's doing isn't the opposite - an attempt to sell policies crafted by conservatives with a marketing team made up of progressives - I don't think it is, but we can't be totally sure just yet).

As I told Rachel Maddow this week, his initial moves suggest a president who hired ideological free-market conservatives, and who will order them to push ideologically progressive policies - all under the mantra of "pragmatism." And doing that is certainly very pragmatic. Assessing the Washington landscape and the economic situation, Obama - in a very pragmatic way - seems to have determined that the practical thing to do is pass progressive legislation, and that the most practical way to do that is to have that legislation carried by free-marketeers whose conservatism gets them painted by pundits as "pragmatists."

Indeed, if Obama can and does do that, he would be both the most pragmatic and progressive president in contemporary history - proving once and for all that "pragmatism" is no substitute for progressive ideology, but in these tough times, a synonym for it.
_______

[leftchick]

27. there is that qualifying term again

"and likely". How hopeful! :(


we can agree to disagree I suppose. Time will indeed tell. And I always love your posts regardless of my cynicism. :)

[babylonsister]

29. Can I just say

I'm so tired of being angry. I have to give this exceptional man a chance to make things better.
I will be around to criticize, no doubt, but for now, I can't. He's just setting up what needs to get done until he can get something accomplished.

[leftchick]

22. I got the idea from

OBAMA! read David Sirota's piece I posted before you chastise me again.

[babylonsister]

25. leftchick, no one is chastizing you. This is a discussion board.

If we all agreed, there'd be no DU.

[Shiver]

8. It's part of the new meme

The right praises him for his picks, making the subtle impression on the unaware that the picks themselves represent the views of the praiser, and that Obama is further to the right than people think. The left hears it and gets upset, thinking that anything the right approves of has to be bad. This leads to argument and division.

It's their time-tested strategy of dividing the opposition against themselves. It's one of the ways they win elections.

Just ignore them.

[leftchick]

11. were you around when Bill Clinton was elected?

time tested? lol!

[Shiver]

14. Yes, but in all fairness, I was only 8 the first time.

All I understood was the outcome. Same with in '96. I didn't start paying real attention until 2000.

[onehandle]

4. What about this picture?

Obama is clearly swearing his and his family's allegiance to Dick Cheney.

[babylonsister]

6. Sure, that's what he's doing.

Did you forget this? :sarcasm:

Seems like that's what one has to do to be sworn in as a senator, but who knows?

[bemildred]

7. Rove is good at sucking up, and being enemies with the President has it's drawbacks. nt