by Damozel | According to a USA Today poll, Americans are feeling pretty happy with how well Obama is doing before taking office. I am pleased to hear it, but I can't help laughing at this:
More than three of four Americans, including a majority of Republicans, approve of the job Obama has done so far — broad-based support he'll need as he faces tough decisions ahead. (USA Today; emphasis added)
The public already thinks he's doing a great job before he's even started. Yay!
Specifically, they like the direction portended by his Cabinet picks. Yes, whatever else you might think about them, they were astute. I, of course, was elated by the Clinton selection. I can also see the reasoning behind the Gates retention: very shrewd.
I suppose that as a progressive, I should be concerned that Sullivan and I see the same advantages to Obama's strategy.
And yet...I am not. The virtue of pragmatism is that it tends to show up extremism as ineffectual, shrill, impotent, and comical in a dreadful, tiny-little-fists-shaken-at-the-whole-of-reality sort of way. I think Obama might just be the antidote, and the end to, Kristol and Kagan and Cheney and all the rest of that gang.
Back to the survey, which may show that Americans really were sicker than they realized of the partisan fury of the far right.
By 69%-25%, those surveyed approve of his pick of New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, his former Democratic primary rival, as secretary of State.
By an even wider margin, 80%-14%, they favor his decision to ask President Bush's Pentagon chief, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, to stay on the job.(USA Today; emphasis added)
I realize that some lefty bloggers, including some I very much like, are fretting in advance. But on this score, I must agree with the Rude Pundit, who says bluffly: Obama's Cabinet Choices Are Shut the Fuck Up. The Rude One says further:
But let's just say this as...people huff and puff about whether they're hawks or not progressive
enough or problem children or disappointing or what the fuck ever:
Ultimately, the cabinet does the bidding of the president.....[T]hey are policy
implementers. Nothing less and nothing more. You have to be willing to
go along with the boss to do the job, or you don't take it. And it's
all a political game. If we know anything at all about Barack Obama,
it's that he's one crafty motherfucker in the realm of politics.
If
you wanted to, say, change the course of the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan and our strategic relationships around the globe, who's
gonna do it without pissing people off? Secretary of Defense Dennis
Kucinich? Fuck no. You get the guys and gals who were proponents of the
war in at least some way or have cozy goddamn Capitol Hill
relationships. If the great and glorious David Petraeus and the shiny
Robert Gates are saying, "Bring the troops home," then you've defused
your enemies.... It's just
fuckin' smart. The same goes for economic policy and it will go for
domestic.
Yeah, if Obama lets his hawks run the place and make
him break his promises, then we can squawk. But for now, can we just
take a breath and see how it all works out?
FYI, Gates says he and Obama are "on the same page" with respect to Iraq.
When asked specifically if he considered himself “at odds” with Mr. Obama on a withdrawal timetable, the secretary replied, “I think that I would subscribe to what the president-elect said yesterday in Chicago.”
“He repeated his desire to try and get our combat forces out within 16 months,” Mr. Gates acknowledged. “But he also said that he wanted to have a responsible drawdown, and he also said that he was prepared to listen to his commanders. So I think that that’s exactly the position a president-elect should be in.”
Next up on Obama's to-do list: working out a working relationship with the CIA. Yeah, that one is going to be tricky alll right. And it's on this score that there are unsettling intimations that Dems might fear any change in course will, sooner or later, get them blamed for something or other.
Mr. Obama’s...future relationship with the agency are complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda....
One of the first issues Mr. Obama must grapple with is the future of C.I.A. detention: will the agency continue to hold prisoners secretly, question them using more aggressive methods than allowed for military interrogators, and transfer terrorism suspects to countries with a history of using torture?
Yes, and now that Dems are in charge, the Orwellian doublespeak and euphemism are already taking over:
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who will take over as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in January, led the fight this year to force the C.I.A. to follow military interrogation rules. Her bill was passed by Congress but vetoed by President Bush.
But in an interview on Tuesday, Mrs. Feinstein indicated that extreme cases might call for flexibility. “I think that you have to use the noncoercive standard to the greatest extent possible,” she said, raising the possibility that an imminent terrorist threat might require special measures.
Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said he would consult with the C.I.A. and approve interrogation techniques that went beyond the Army Field Manual as long as they were “legal, humane and noncoercive.”
Yeah. I know the Dems are scared. After this report, we're all scared. But there are some principles that are binary and have no middle ground. "Legal, humane, and noncoercive" precludes certain methods and the experience of seasoned interrogators who have actually obtained useful information tells us that extreme/barbaric methods don't even work and certainly don't make us safer. (Buck Naked Politics)
So because I basically think the Rude One is right about giving Obama a chance, I plan to adopt a wait and see attitude concerning his promise to restore our nation's sense of decency, humanity, and respect for international law.
Meanwhile, the transition has put back in place many members of the Clinton administration who have commented---anonymously---on the contrast between the White House now and in days of yore. A New York Times piece rounds up a few reactions and an intriguing glimpse at the technology available to the president and how it might affect decision-making.
[T]hey have been surprised to see the degree of tactical detail about two wars and a handful of insurgencies — from the tribal areas of Pakistan to Sudan and the Congo — that surrounds him. Partly this is because the high-tech makeover of the Situation Room, completed about two years ago, makes instantaneous conversation with field commanders easier than ever.
Both the transition officials and some White House insiders say it may make this communication too easy, sucking the commander-in-chief into a situation in which real-time, straight-from-the-battlefield discussions of tactics masquerade as a conversation about strategy.
Mr. Bush himself has talked about how the installation of secure video links has changed his presidency. In addition to the screens in the “Sit Room,” he has links on Air Force One, at Camp David, and in a trailer across the dirt road from his ranch in Crawford, Tex...But several veterans of the White House have noted in conversations over the past two years that the secure video does not lend itself to open, vigorous debate. Instead, it can squelch it. The picture is being piped into too many places....
One recently departed National Security Council official noted earlier this year that in his view, the problem is that the system is largely in the hands of war-fighters; only on a rare day, and only toward the end of his presidency, did members of Provincial Reconstruction Teams and other aid workers involved in nation-building pop up on Mr. Bush’s screen.
“The technology tends to skew the nature of the advice you hear,” this former N.S.C. member said, declining to speak on the record because the sessions he witnessed were classified. “You spend a lot more time talking about hitting a house of full of bad guys in Waziristan than you do talking about why our effort to build schools and roads is moving so slowly.”It is not yet clear what Mr. Obama thinks of the high-tech toys he will soon have at his disposal, but at the announcement of his new national security team on Monday in Chicago, he was clearly aware of the problem they can accentuate. “One of the dangers in a White House, based on my reading of history, is that you get wrapped up in groupthink and everybody agrees with everything and there’s no discussion and there are no dissenting views.” He insisted he would be “welcoming a vigorous debate inside the White House.”
Memorandum has further blogger comments here.
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