Comments on Obama’s Cabinet

These are the comments I sent to the TPM blog vis complaints about Obama not hiring enough ‘progressive’ people for his administration:

Part 1:
This cloud of dust being raised by people critical of Obama is both funny and annoying. He isn’t in power yet. Frankly the anger at his lack of progressive appointments is just more of a reason to like his approach.

Ideologues got us into the huge hole we are in. From Reagan to Bush we have suffered through a right wing social experiment: from domestic to foreign policy right wing think tanks and their political fellow travelers drove the country off a cliff in pursuit of their ideological vision. The last thing we need is a sudden swing in the opposite direction.

What we need is a steady and persistent demonstration to the electorate that progressive solutions to our problems are superior to the failed experiments of the past thirty years. The way to build a sustainable center-left coalition is to begin by being obviously competent. Make government work. Re-build trust in government. Implement solutions that deal with immediate problems. Re-assure the electorate that the left can be trusted with security; trade; economics etc. Then eventually the left will be not just trusted but preferred.

That seems to be where Obama is headed.

I imagine the worst dream that a Republican politician can possible have is of a competent, sensible, and workably progressive administration. Such an administration would lead the country to a sustainable center-left future. That would mean the current GOP is unworkable and irrelevant. The progressives carping at Obama now could hinder rather than help in the construction of that future.

Part 2:

I must admit the carping about the lack of progressives in the Obama Cabinet annoys me. The last thing we need is a new set of ideologically driven people running the show. We need sound governance, stature, and maturity if we are going to recover from the Bush legacy. We have all harped on the terrible consequences of Bush, we cannot expect the cure to be either painless or quick.

Obama’s agenda appears to be solidly progressive: multi-lateral foreign policy; orderly withdrawal from Iraq; sensible homeland security; the elimination of most of Bush’s egregious attacks on human rights; and the focus on linking security and domestic policy [e.g. education; trade; environment etc].

This coherence is all a stark contrast to the gun slinging, yahoo neocon nonsense we have just suffered through. At the same time it is not disengagement: it is an attempt to re-establish America as the center of a morally based democratic coalition on progressive issues like global warming as well as things like anti-terrorism.

The fact we have a leader who can see the linkages between security and domestic policy issues gives us progressive folks a chance to dominate and re-frame foreign policy discussions.

It’s time to settle in and stop complaining. We’re not campaigning any more. We’re governing!