Thursday, December 18, 2008
Triangulating me
Tom Maguire, with ill-concealed mirth, is busily cataloging the various ways by which Barack Obama is driving Barack Obama's leftiest supporters insane. Whether your concern was tax cuts for the rich, the war in Iraq, the dropping of eaves without a warrant, support for charter schools, or the culture wars, Obama is backing away from the hopes and dreams of the activist left. There are exceptions, including particularly the environment, and the left will no doubt get plenty of lower profile appointments in immensely important jobs that you and I have never heard about, but in the main the cabinet nominations and policy signals have both been much closer to the center than I dared hope on November 4.
Of course, we still have not seen how Barack Obama and the Congressional majority will govern. Pending another major reversal, however, I am provisionally confessing some error in judgment. More than one smart person -- including Howard Fineman during a chance encounter in a bar in Princeton last spring -- told me that Obama would govern much closer to the center than his scant record suggested. I believed otherwise. I thought that moderates who supported Obama were the rubes, and that his administration would turn out to be very left of the American center. Well, the early evidence is that it is not going to be nearly so left as I, at least, feared. Maybe it would have been if the global financial system and economy had not fallen apart in September, but then maybe Obama would not have been elected. Either way, I have rarely been so delighted to be wrong. I hope that I am not wrong again.
CWCID: Glenn Reynolds.
11 Comments:
By 
Escort81, at
Thu Dec 18, 09:14:00 PM:
Either way, I have rarely been so delighted to be wrong. I hope that I am not wrong again.
1. We don't yet know that you were wrong. It looks like you might have been wrong, but let's at least wait until the man is sworn in.
2. It is a high probability event that you will be wrong again about something. If you don't believe me, ask Mrs. TH.
3. The President-elect is a very cool customer and would not easily be rattled by protestations from the left -- as I've posted before, where else they gonna go? He knows that to really leave his mark on the office of POTUS, he has to serve two terms, and will be subject to a re-election campaign. If he ran the country the way Kos & Huffpo wanted him to, that would probably reduce his chances of a second term.
4. I didn't believe during the campaign that then-Sen. Obama would be a raging bleeding-heart liberal POTUS, should he win. I believed that McCain would be more forward-leaning in his prosecution of the GWOT (of course, it helps that most voters in his party actually believe that there is a GWOT), and that Obama was overall a much less experienced candidate. And, yes, I was somewhat uncomfortable about Wright/Rezko/Ayers, and was turned off by certain elements of the apparent cult that surrounded Obama's campaign, but CWCID, they were very effective ground troops (and the ones that came to my door were actually nice people), though it was never clear to me how seriously Obama took all of the silliness. But if I understand you correctly, you now believe that the election was a contest between two centrists: one slightly center-right and one slightly center-left (and the punchline is, "but which candidate was which?").
By Tom the Redhunter, at
Thu Dec 18, 09:16:00 PM:
I think you're being premature in "confessing some error in judgment"
As you mention, he hasn't even taken office yet, so we don't really know what he will do.
There are three possibilities as I see it:
1) He does govern from the center. This would make his campaign one of the greatest bait-and-switch operations in modern history. It would mean Obama is a better liar than Clinton, which would be some doing.
2) He flips back and forth; half the time kooky left, half the time in the center, and it's impossible to tell what he'll do at any one time
This is the one tho that I think will happen
3) Obama is a stealth leftist. He needs a stable world and decent economy to get done what he wants, so he'll be pragmatic there. Once a year has gone by and the world and economy are stabilized, he brings out a far left domestic agenda that radically transforms the U.S. By this time he's lulled the right into a false sense of complacency, and we roll over and play dead.
This ain't over yet. It hasn't even begun.
By Dawnfire82, at
Thu Dec 18, 09:17:00 PM:
It's one thing to declare plans and personal stances, and another to face down Congress.
Like I said before, give it 6 months.
By 
, at
Thu Dec 18, 11:02:00 PM:
Not Howard Fineman or anyone else has even the remotest clue how Obama will eventually govern, because there is no record to judge by. So save your breath on "governing from the center".
My biggest concern with Obama was and is how he will deal with nutty Islamic jihadists, including stateless loons like al Qaeda and Ialamic Jihad, semi-states like Hezbollah and the Taliban, as well as crazy states, like Iran. North Korea is another serious problem, a place where Clinton failed to mobilize a solution fifteen years ago and George Bush has completely despaired of solving in any meaningful way his entire term in office. These are the issues where I worry a lot about Obama, and the return of people like Scowcroft (bad) and Brezinski (truly frightening) as well as very bad people like Malloy.
The economy would solve itself, given the freedom to do so, and eventually that will happen. But Obama probably can't do any worse than Bush has done over the last two months.
It's fun to watch the nutroots go crazy over the cabinet appointments, but truly, who cares. Iran. Iraq. Pakistan and Afghanistan. India. China. North Korea. These are the points to remember.
By , at
Thu Dec 18, 11:48:00 PM:
I think it depends on what's meant by the "center". What is a moderate these days anyway? Someone who thinks government bailouts should be limited to one a month?
By Gary Rosen, at
Fri Dec 19, 02:57:00 AM:
BO will govern from the center - of Chicago. Ideology will take a back seat to taking care of the gang. Compared to BO, Bill Clinton's principles are etched in granite.
By , at
Fri Dec 19, 04:11:00 AM:
I don't think the campaign was a "bait and switch." The "bait and switch" is in process now, and I'm not taking the bait.
By , at
Fri Dec 19, 08:42:00 AM:
Obama will likely want to be a "great President" which means doing "great things" ... which will in the end cost us and our children a lot of money ... and further increase the size of our already too big federal government.
Link
By Viking Kaj, at
Fri Dec 19, 10:39:00 AM:
Everything Gary Rosen said, plus a question.
Why is everybody so excited about the "experienced" Clinton foreign policy team?
Some of their notable foreign policy (kind of a oxymoron) gaffes:
1) Failure to stop genocide in Rawanda (Obama's new UN secretary was in charge there).
2) Failure to accept Osama when Somali govt offered to ship him to us in 1996. He went to Afgahnistan instead.
3) Failure to intervene with bombs in Serbia until it was almost too late. Mad Albright had to shame them into it.
4) Three words: Oil for food. (Ha Ha)
5) A dirty word: NAFTA.
6) China policy? What China policy? Buying lots of their cheap stuff will eventually topple those lousy Chi Coms.
7) Middle East. The line to donate to my presidential library forms on the left.
8) Will somebody please wake up Warren Christopher so we can all go home?
I could go on and on...
Please feel free to ad your own to the list. There was no foreign policy in the Clinton administration.
If you liked that, you will love Obama's focus on overpriced civil construction programs.
By Viking Kaj, at
Fri Dec 19, 11:33:00 AM:
Forgot to add that the two most important appointments for 0 are Ray "The Hood" LaHood and Arne "Center/Forward" Duncan since they will be overseeing how the $ 800 Billion in pork chops for infrastructure gets grilled and served.
0 could give a flying fig about foreign policy, that's why he put the Clinton "know nothing" team in charge.
By , at
Fri Dec 19, 03:39:00 PM:
...and this terrible fellow too. In instances where the political ground has been well prepared, like Global Cooling Worship, Nationalized Health Care Triage and Payments, support for the SEIU, and military budget reductions, I think you can expect to see Obama govern from as far left as he reasonably is able.
