Confining Billary
Damn, I wish we could just yank the Clintons off the stage once and for all. My only slim hope is that they are few years older than I am so maybe I can actually survive them.
As many have pointed out, the No-Drama-Obama operation is now bordering on public soap opera — thanks to the stories about Hillary being considered, or asked to be, Secretary of State. If I had my druthers I’d just make her disappear.
That said, this just might be a superbly clever play by Barack Obama. That’s pretty much the conclusion of our friend Bill Bradley who opines that the term “masterstroke” might not be over the top in describing Obama’s move. What I particularly like about Bradley’s take is what he has to say about how all this would impact Slick Willie himself. Make sure you read his whole post. Here are some of the money graphs:
That’s what makes this look like a potential masterstroke for Obama, taking his once bitter rival and making her his ally and representative. It makes him look strong and confident. It also would make it virtually impossible for Hillary to challenge him in 2012, a prospect which looks very unlikely in any event. That is something Lyndon Johnson should have thought of when he refused to make Robert F. Kennedy his vice president in 1964.
While Hillary and Bill Clinton, especially Hillary, campaigned hard for Obama, they ultimately were not the keys to his victory. John McCain’s inability to adequately respond to the financial crisis, the backfiring pick of Sarah Palin, and Obama’s victories in all three presidential debates were much more determinative.
The move, which apparently has not actually been made, despite all the clamor about it, also looks like a mousetrap.
If Hillary withdraws from consideration, then Obama has made the effort he did not make around the vice presidency. And a shadow would be placed over her career in the Senate.
For, notwithstanding whatever reluctance she may have to make the move — which some Clinton associates are talking up — she and her husband are taking steps to make this happen.
Now that he’s back in the country, the former president is submitting himself to Obama’s vetting process. And he is saying that he would place future philanthropic and business dealings under the authority of the Obama Administration.
As the Wall Street Journal reported this morning, President Clinton has agreed to submit his future endeavours to strict ethics reviews by the White House counsel and the State Department’s ethics office. Obama’s White House counsel will be Greg Craig, a former Clinton Administration official who broke with the Clintons and leveled tough criticisms of them during the primary campaign.
Bill Clinton has agreed to publicly reveal all future contributors to the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, something he flatly refused to do during the Democratic primaries. He’s also agreed to publicly reveal “major” past contributors and has begun providing detailed information regarding his business dealings to Obama.
Bill Clinton has reportedly raised some $500 million for the Clinton Foundation, and another $15 billion or so for the Clinton Global Initiative. Both of which perform good works, in addition to the incalculable value they’ve afforded him from a public relations standpoint.
But those huge sums, especially for the Clinton Global Initiative, seem to come in large measure from foreign sources which may be very problematic. If they weren’t, the Clintons would have revealed them during the Democratic primaries.
Bill Clinton is turning over a great deal of information about his operations to Barack Obama. In politics, that sort of knowledge is power.
Kudos also to another good friend, Michael Balter, who on the issue of Obama’s Clintonite cabinet appointments had the good sense to agree with…me! Says Michael:
I am not saying that Obama might not end up breaking every single one of his campaign promises. It’s happened before. But the notion that his cabinet picks are an indication of what his policies will be seems, to me at least, to be illogical and inconsistent with the history of previous presidencies. All of these people will be under Barack Obama in the government, not above him, and there is no reason–at least no reason right now–to think that they will dictate to him or even influence him to change the core principles on which he ran for office.
Yet a third good friend, who posts comments here under the handle ModestProposal has a slightly differing view. He says he broadly agrees with my lack of concern over Obama’s appointments so far and then warns:
But but but… here’s my concern. It’s only a question at this point, because we don’t have all the information, or all the appointments. Doesn’t the point come though when a foreign policy team built on the likes of Hillary, Joe Biden, maybe Holbrooke, Dennis Ross etc etc makes one wonder — how can a group of people who got it so wrong on Iraq, starting during the Clinton era when they had access to all the intelligence, be expected to shift course in both a different direction and also the RIGHT direction now?
Well, It’s an excellent question. And MP’s fears might, indeed, turn out to be true. We will have to see. But I don’t think that Obama is either so naive nor so feckless. He just spent two years relentlessly battling and overcoming much of the Democratic Conventional Wisdom –especially on the issue of Iraq and on American foreign policy in general. I don’t think he’s throwing in the towel before his own inauguration. I am much more inclined to think he’s setting up the board to play the game he promised. Maybe I’m the naive one. As they say on the network news: Time Will Tell.
November 19th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
I’d recommend that rather than endless hand-wringing, simple ambivalence or referring to the predictable stuff emanating out of the academic and/or marginal left, it would be more productive for progressives who are considering the potential and pitfalls of an Obama administration to take time to read Bob Kuttner’s “Obama’s Challenge” for a realistic and historically grounded meditation on the big problems that we’re all facing and the kinds of proposals that we might rally around to wrest the best out the new administration.
http://www.amazon.com/Obamas-Challenge-Americas-Transformative-Presidency/dp/1603580794
November 19th, 2008 at 8:22 pm
A very brilliant review of an earlier Kuttner book penned by a mutual friend of both Marc and Steve
http://tinyurl.com/5kx2ks
November 20th, 2008 at 2:33 am
Mouse trap theory is beautiful. Please make it so.
Second best: Billary keeps pushing for State, but Obama gives axe because Bill’s vetting doesn’t work out. (As Obama knew it wouldn’t). Obama then “cedes” to majority public opinion in not choosing Billary. We can only Hope.
November 20th, 2008 at 5:29 am
It’s too bad Kuttner doesn’t have the vast audience of WBAI so that he could dispense a finer wisdom, such as Henwood’s. Example:
“As Adolph Reed told LBO, an Obama presidency ‘could give us the worst of all possible of worlds: one in which race is completely repackaged as a discourse of celebration and, to the extent that that had already become the only metaphor through which American politics could accommodate critical discussion of inequality, the language of ‘Ëœdisparity,’ it will no longer be possible for critiques of inequality to be heard as an appropriate topic for political discussion. . .’ ”
http://prorev.com/2008/04/doug-henwoods-obama-reality-check.html
This kind of knee-jerk “leftist” shit is why I mostly have contempt for that crowd insofar as they claim to be “political.” Noone involved in political discourse has all of the answers and left critics can be insightful in their insistence on structural analysis, but relying primarily on voices that could seriously float such notions as Reed’s is a political dead end at best.
Of course there’s a Charlie Brown “Lucy pulls away the football again” quality to the mostly dashed hopes of left-liberal critics within the Democratic Party, but the farther left is immersed in a history fraught with worse ironies and even less impact, unless one literally believes that every movement for justice in the 20th century followed a carefully laid Marxist plan. (Henwood argues in that book review linked above that there couldn’t have been a New Deal without the existence of the Soviet Union. This kind of thinking aligns a bit too neatly with the most insane critics of FDR, MLK, etc. Even Obama for that matter.) I can’t predict the outcome of the Obama administration or its ultimate historical convergence with the “long arc of justice”, but the moral and intellectual exhaustion apparent in commentary like the above is as stunning IMHO as the natterings of Newt Gingrich.
November 20th, 2008 at 7:02 am
I suspect that a lot of the pundits are still caught up in presidential primary mode, in the sense that everything is still perceived as a battle among equally weighted contenders, and where Hillary is still seen as the opponent. That’s where all this speculation about Obama fighting off a 2012 run by Hillary comes from. Short of Obama getting into his own Viet Nam, it’s close to zero probability. Think of it like this:
By noon of January 21, 2009, Obama will have been the president for a whole day, and people will begin to view the federal government as the president and all the rest of those senators and congressmen and cabinet appointees — that is to say, a lot of planets revolving around Obama’s sun. It may not exactly be the way the Constitution originally designed things (where the legislature takes a more prominent role), but it is the way our people and our journalists tend to view things nowadays.
The reason that I’m not all that concerned about the makeup of the cabinet is that I see Obama as fully in charge. The fact that potential appointees functioned in a certain way under Bill Clinton is of less interest than whether they did them well. The latter is a measure of ability and learned competence. The fact that they were following different policy directives is only of interest if what they were doing was inately unethical or evil. We can hope that Rahm and Tom will work expertly to get a health care reform package passed by congress; this is something that the Clintons failed at, and it looks like Obama has learned something from that failure.
Whether Hillary will be a good secretary of state depends on a couple of things, the most important being whether she will subordinate her own ambition to Obama’s policy goals. I suspect that she can, but perhaps I am more naive and optimistic than Marc about things Clinton.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:06 am
“Henwood argues in that book review linked above that there couldn’t have been a New Deal without the existence of the Soviet Union.”
Don’t you think there’s some truth to this, that the presence of a powerful Communist state inadvertantly pulled American politics a bit to the left? Didn’t it enlarge the field of political/economic alternatives and make it necessary for American business to meet certain demands in order to quash calls for more radical economic change? I’m not arguing on behalf of the Soviet Union. It was brutal, oppressive and hideous. Just saying that its presence ironically fostered a more humane capitalism elsewhere. The question is can we now create a more humane capitalism without the gravitational pull of some brutal alternative order. I suppose the current crisis might make this happen. Too bad it takes a crisis.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:15 am
“My only slim hope is that they are few years older than I am so maybe I can actually survive them.”
Well, there’s already a script of `They Saved Clinton’s Brain’ floating around town, so good luck with that.
November 20th, 2008 at 9:38 am
Waxman, after a secret vote, forced Dingle out of the Chairmanship of the Committee on Energy and Commerce. Let the global warming waste begin!
November 20th, 2008 at 9:40 am
There’s “some truth” to a lot of things. I just think it’s telling that someone who doesn’t have even a hint of a strategy for political work in the U.S. would put the existence of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union close to the top of one’s list as to why progressive politics had an opening in the ’30s, and especially as regards FDR. I’d give more credit to the confluence of some relatively progressive and/or essentially pragmatic voices in FDR’s circle (and among the intellectual elite of the time) and to the grassroots social movements, which were not salons for debating marxism but reformist organizing efforts that used the language of democracy and left populism to grow their base and contest power.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:10 am
The grassroots social movements may not have been salons for debating marxism but they breathed some of the same air and were themselves probably made stronger by the presence of Communist Russia. So maybe the existence of the Communist Party and the Soviet Union should be farther down the list of influences (I didn’t actually read the article). But they’re still on the list, which is too bad. We shouldn’t need a radical bogeyman in the closet to make less radical social reform possible.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:26 am
I would say the existence of the Soviet Union is the PRIMARY reason why we don’t have a strong workers movement in the United States nor anything resembling a pro socialist constituency. I dont think the presence of the Soviet state had an iota to do with the New Deal. if there had been no Communist state, I firmly believe that American capitalists would have still be in favor of saving themselves. Also, if I were an American capitalist between 1920 and 1990 I cant think of anything that would make me happier than to have a Soviet system hanging around as a wonderful example to point to as the very unattractive alternative.
As the influence of the CP itself in forging the New Deal.. well… certainly its organizers and ground troops, along with union forces gave grat muscle to the reforms of the 30′s. But I think that would have happened just as well without a Stalinist state behind it. Probably would have worled better. American radicals who were NOT tainited by association with a totalitarian state would have been, um, less tainted.
As to Adolph Reed: Now there’s a guy I havent seen in some years and who used to write some pretty sensible stuff. His latest writings on this past election, however, including the cited passage only illustrate the continuing estrangement of the radical left from American politics. Let’s see if I get this right: the election of a black man as president of the united state might be the worst of all worlds because his election will somehow automatically short circuit discussion of race and racism? That of course is patently absurd. Recognizing partial victories, like, say, the election of a black president, should only encourage and incite passion for MORE change — not less. What’s Reed’s fears? That if things get a little better we may delude oursleves into thinking they’re just not gawdawful. Talk about an End Days strain within the Left…. whew!
November 20th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Second on that Marc; there were some interesting leftist/poor people’s movements in the 1930s, but I don’t see them as inspired or even related to Communism.
As for the New Deal itself, oh please. It’s almost entirely a drive (to call it a system or a philosophy is to vastly overestimate its coherence) to stabilize capitalism, and in particular a new kind of capitalism, more oriented to skilled work and the right to consume. Tom Ferguson and Alan Brinkley have done excellent work on this topic, at least that’s what I say when I teach them. . .
(And Marc, as a regular reader and irregular commenter, thanks again for the generally great work.)
November 20th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Marc -
Didn’t the Soviet Union pose a more potent ideological challenge in the 20′s and 30′s than it did later, when its crimes and horrors became widely known? In those initial decades its presence may well have given strength to the workers’ movements which helped bring the reform American business turned to for survival.
I’ll grant you that the argument falls down in later decades when it became clear that the Soviet Union posed no viable alternative. But by then the cat was out of the bag and the U.S. already had a changed economic system and a union movement with some actual clout which managed to persist for awhile.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:19 am
Evets
By 1932 it was bloody obvious to anyone who cared to look that the Soviet union was already totally Stalinist as was the CP. Indeed the public blood orgy peaked in the middle of the New Deal during the horrific 1937 purge trials. Within 2 years we had thoudands of Sovietized American CPers running around defending Nazi Germany as adjunct to the Hitler Stalin pact
Its always fascinated me to what degree non Stalinist american lefty historians often apologetically wax about the good old days of the CP. This includes figures from Zinn (who is theoretically more of an anarchist) to chomsky and buhl. Then there was of course the whole romnaticization of the CP from its allies like Pete Seeger and Studs Terkel
Some of us come from a different tradition that early on recognized the CP as gravediggers of socialism. No force in history has more discredited socialism than the Communist movement. That’s the CP’s real legacy.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Marc -
Fair enough, but a lot of people hadn’t had their eyes opened in 1932. And btw my grandfather was a non-communist socialist who came out of Russia just before the Revolution and founded a couple of credit unions and a cooperative bakery in his adopted hometown. The bakery went bust b/c the clerks had their hands in the till, so he went into the shoe business. And worshipped FDR, as did my father. The rest is history.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:42 am
And btw if you want some real Marxist-American-populist romaticism, you should read the poems of Thomas McGrath.
Good poems actually.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:42 am
I think that the romanticization of the CP, leaving the orbit of marxist ideologues of the discussion, has to do with the public face of figures connected to the Party who gained credibility – much of it merited – in the context of “Popular Front” Stalinism. Pete Seeger and Terkel are great examples, along with lesser known organizers on the ground and folks like Marc’s old friend Dorothy Healy who were generally more sensible and decent people than of their political allegiance would suggest. The irony of this is that these folks represented, in terms of their practical work and most of what they publicly espoused, the leftwing of New Deal politics and grassroots activism for unions and civil rights, along with a cultural sensibility that one might romanticize as “Jeffersonian populist” as much as socialist. It’s the spirit of “the little guy” that animates Terkel and even Seeger to a great extent. “Little Boxes” was written and sung by a couple of old commies, but it’s a condemnation of the industrialization of social life – the old Soviet Union would have considered housing the proletariat in “little boxes” a great success of socialism. Maybe it was a great success on the part of capitalism. But there’s something quintessentially “American” in the rebel sense that drove even the best of our radicals who were in or close to the CP that trumps the bullshit, sectarian ideology the party attempted to spoonfeed its adherents. I mostly agree with Marc, although it may be a bit too easy to blame the CP for the general failure of the left.
November 20th, 2008 at 11:43 am
“leaving the orbit of marxist ideologues OUT of the discussion…”
sorry
November 20th, 2008 at 11:57 am
As an aside, Henry Waxman ousting John “SUV” Dingell from the House Energy Committee Chairmanship bodes well for “change.” Much more important than what happens to Joe Lieberman…
November 20th, 2008 at 11:58 am
“Some of us come from a different tradition that early on recognized the CP as gravediggers of socialism.”
—
Right, the one that Alvy Singer talked about.
Alvy Singer: I’m so tired of spending evenings making fake insights with people who work for “Dysentery.”
Robin: “Commentary.”
Alvy Singer: Oh really? I had heard that “Commentary” and “Dissent” had merged and formed “Dysentery.”
November 20th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Before this thread degenerates into another pissing contest over Israel and the Palestinians as they all tend to, might I suggest a heated argument over the precise year – between Trotsky shooting down the Kronstadt sailors in 1917 and Brezhnev invadiing Checkoslovakia in 1968 – that sensible people should have seen through Bolshevism/Stalinism/Revisionism ? This is a question that demands a clear and precise answer.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Sorry – Kronstadt was 1921 I think.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:10 pm
reg -
I think it was right after the Hebron massacre or Deir Yassein. Not sure which.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
Reg’s has made a very contribution at 11:42 am. If access to this website wasn’t free anyways, I’d go on a limb and say that it’s worth the price of admission. It made me think about Rbin DG Kelley’s quite excellnt book about Alabama Communist party in the 1930′s. Here’s an organisation built from scratch by working people, largely poor blacks, most semi literate and religious, with no Euro American radical political tradition. What happenned was that a very resilient movment was forged in a world which mostly despised blacks and radicals and that local culture shaped the development of the party whic paved the way for future cvil rigths activism
I think that historians like Buhle are interested in this aspect of American radicalism, how the CP and the language of Marxism provided a vehiclefor American radicals to critique the word around them.
November 20th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
Yikes, I meant to say that Reg has made a very good contribution at 11:42
November 20th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
Just a few points of reference.
Orwell opposed by 1937.
Kolakowski had his doubts by 1950, but in his defense he was only 23 then and had been born into the system.
Robert Conquest took until the mid-forties, but he made up for the delay in vehemence later.
After claiming all was well in Russia, Edmund Wilson abandoned that view in 1938.
John Dos Passos also bailed on the Communists in 1937.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Clifford Odets in 1952
Elia Kazan around the same time.
November 20th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Nice to check in with the “Nutballs on Clinton” left; here where Cooper and Company pull off the neat trick of siding with the worst of the baby talk left AND the trashiest of mainstream non-thinking. It is hilarious to read the uproar the likes of Balter and Bradley have their underthings in over Clinton.
Bottom line: Obama is smarter than all of you: like many, many Americans, he was very impressed with the Clinton campaign and seems to be raiding the stockpile of talented people the Clintons brought to Washington.
Seeing as most of their posistions were extremely close, this is no suprise to those capable of modest critical thinking. But Coop tied himself to Coulter and the Impeachment Crew long ago, and will never be man enough to admit he was wrong, crazy wrong.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/20/barack-obama-president-intelligence-agency
pdf Read the National Intelligence Council report
November 20th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
#
New report predicts end of US dominance
US intelligence says incoming president will inherit country unable to ‘call the shots’ alone
* pdf Read the National Intelligence Council report
* Bill Clinton discloses donors to clear Hillary’s path
* Republicans plan to win back Hispanic voters
* US political briefing: Obama forms his team
* Poll: Are the days of American power over?
#
Fresh sanctions imposed on Somalia
UN agrees to freeze pirates’ assets amid calls for armed peacekeepers to be sent to Horn of Africa
* Reports warn lawless zone could grow
* British warship to lead EU armada into Gulf of Aden
* Ginny Hill: Keep an eye on Yemen
November 20th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
Damn, sorry…trying to get a live line on the
pdf Read the National Intelligence Council Report
I believe it comes in as a link within the first link to article that I posted.
The PDF is pretty juicy reading.
November 20th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Sweet. So who does Oceania go to war with first, Eastasia or Eurasia?
November 20th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Speaking of juicy reading, Anna C should check the Lee Abrams thread
November 20th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
been there, done that, Ahmed.
worry about creating a local food source. hill, bill don’t amount to a hill of beans compared to what is coming.
November 20th, 2008 at 10:27 pm
I agree with Anna. Start stockpiling food… and weapons.
Old Cold War US Empire hegemony- era fossils like Dingell, the Clintons, Chomsky, Waxman and “reg” will be dead by the time the US Empire really eats shit in 15-20 years, so this hill of beans is their last hurrah.
November 21st, 2008 at 6:47 am
Here’s an interesting headline: Waxman beats off Dingle for House Energy Committee chair
November 21st, 2008 at 6:59 am
Sergio: Woody is probably dumber than you are – I’m not really sure – but he’s actually more coherent.
November 21st, 2008 at 9:39 am
reg -
The sad thing is that Sergio’s actually coherent. What’s motivating him in this inane and absurd vendetta is a mystery. You should just take it as a weird form of flattery and move on. Brush the dirt off your shoulder.
November 21st, 2008 at 10:36 am
evets – it beats me what Dingell, Clinton, Chomsky and Waxman have in common that arouses such ire. Makes no sense whatsoever except as incoherent (generational?) vituperation. It’s always pretty clear to me what political/social pathologies drive Woody’s peculiar form of insanity. Sergio, not so much.
November 21st, 2008 at 11:16 am
I guess you’re right – that particular post isn’t all that coherent; in fact it’s logically entropic. I was referring more to his consistency over time. Whatever you say, on whatever topic, really really pisses him off and whatever’s wrong seems to him much too obvious to require clarification. There’s something to be said for that sort of sticktoitiveness.
November 21st, 2008 at 11:20 am
An excellent debate between Marc’s pal David Corn and Jeremy Scahill, about Obama’s transition team
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/11/20/agents_of_change_or_hawks_clintonites
November 21st, 2008 at 11:52 am
I agree with evets, there’s some charm to be found in the sincerity and consistency of Sergio’s approach. I like the guy
November 21st, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I like him too. Quite a lot. I’m just trying to be honest with him because I care.
November 21st, 2008 at 8:34 pm
Hillary at State, Bill filling the Senate seat for two years(at least), just leaves Chelsea to find a job for. So voting Obama at bottom meant voting for the Clinton family full employment plan.
November 22nd, 2008 at 11:02 am
Over at the nations blog, Christopher Hayes states what is increasingly becoming obvious
“I’ve been trying to avoid commenting on specific personnel for the Obama administration, because it’s hard to know what’s real and what’s rumor, and because it’s also difficult to get my head around what the proper evaluative criteria is. The federal bureaucracy is inordinately complicated and there may be reasons to put certain people in certain positions that has nothing to do with their ideological bona fides. That said, I pretty much agree with Chris Bowers:
I know everyone is obsessed with the “team of rivals” idea right now, but I feel incredibly frustrated. Even after two landslide elections in a row, are our only governing options as a nation either all right-wing Republicans, or a centrist mixture of Democrats and Republicans? Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration? Also, why isn’t there a single member of Obama’s cabinet who will be advising him from the left? It seems to me as though there is a team of rivals, except for the left, which is left off the team entirely.
Not a single, solitary, actual dyed-in-the-wool progressive has, as far as I can tell, even been mentioned for a position in the new administration. Not one. Remember this is the movement that was right about Iraq, right about wage stagnation and inequality, right about financial deregulation, right about global warming and right about health care. And I don’t just mean in that in a sectarian way. I mean to say that the emerging establishment consensus on all of these issues came from the left. There’s tons of things the left is right about that aren’t even close to mainstream (taking a hatchet to the national security state and ending the prison industrial complex to name just two), but hopefully we’re moving there.
And yet, no one who comes from the part of American political and intellectual life that has given birth to all of these ideas is anywhere to be found within miles of the Obama cabinet thus far. WTF?”
November 22nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Ralph Nader should have been named Attorney General
November 22nd, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I think the Uncle Tom comment probably scotched that possibility . . .
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:39 pm
I don’t think anything about the Obama administration is “obvious” at this point. And the notion that there isn’t a single person who will be advising him from the left is premature, to say the least. Look for James Galbraith and Robert Reich on the Council of Economic Advisors, among other. Hayes is wrong on folks like this “not being mentioned.” Tom Daschle’s appointment is a signal that health care is a major legislative priority – he couldn’t have picked a better choice for HSS if he wants to push universal coverage forward. I don’t know much about prospective National Security Advisor James Jones other than that he was the ONLY member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who didn’t buy into the “WMD” argument before the Iraq invasion – that seems like a good man to have assessing national security. Bob Kuttner made a similiar point as Hayes on This Week, but he also stated the obvious – that Obama was much shrewder politically than he had understood and that every time he tried to second-guess Obama during the election season, Obama turned out to be right and he was wrong. This “left” critique of Obama is so predictable, I’d be more worried if it wasn’t being made…
November 23rd, 2008 at 6:40 pm
I should have enclosed that second “obvious” in quotation marks. Sorry.
November 23rd, 2008 at 8:06 pm
I also think that many who were neo-liberal on economics in the Clinton years are now less neo and more liberal (in the John K. Galbraith sense). This would apply to L. Summers and also to Paul Krugman (who won’t be on the ‘O’ team). I know Krugman has admitted that his thinking has evolved as he’s witnessed the ongoing experiment with radical derugaltion. I believe Summers has made some similar staements.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Krugman is a great example – Leftie folks would be lauding Obama if he included Krugman, but until recently (and we only understand this because he’s a newspaper columnist and watched his transformation to self-styled “liberal conscience” in the context of the Bushe regime) he was a technocrat totally steeped in the conventional wisdom of globalization, etc.