I had NPR on my radio headset while walking the dogs out along the shoreline Thanksgiving morning, as they discussed Obama’s cabinet and economic panel selections so far. Both the interviewer and his political pundit agreed that “left wing bloggers” are upset so far about Obama’s choices, and they made much of the irony that conservatives so far are happy with the selections.
While the dogs galloped about joyously, I grit my teeth.
The premise is that Obama is a liberal, of course — portrayed during the campaign as not just a liberal but (gasp) one of the most liberal U.S. senators. Yet now supposedly he is moving right, becoming a centrist, in these selections.
Obama, they agreed, who ran as an agent of change, is opting for experience now, for Gates and Volcker and other insiders who represent continuity, not change.
To quote Charlie Brown: “Oh, good grief.” I changed the station to listen to music instead.
But I couldn’t turn off the voice in my head. Barack is going to be fine as president. He is going to be a progressive. Just because he is bringing in experienced hands doesn’t mean he is changing his course or breaking his word. People, he’s the same guy we elected.
The new administration is going to address global warming and intenational relations in a new way. The neocon’s unilateralism is simply being replaced by a man confident enough in his principles to be able to listen to diverse opinions. Rather than the failed Reagonomics of stratified wealth, Obama will get people working again, middle class people, given jobs restoring our national infrastructure.
Calm yourselves, pundits.
Sometimes I think these people yammer on this way solely to fill space.
Couldn’t they do it to greater advantage by giving us the insightful reportage they do from around the world, on other cultures and ecologies? Okay, they’re not as boneheaded as Fox, which is beyond the pale.
And for that, on this day of giving thanks, I am thankful. Still. As well as NPR usually runs its journalistic course, in going for the easy irony I think they stumbled. Fortunately for us, it was only a brief lunge into silliness, and the quality quickly resumed — for which I do give thanks.
I agree. That’s the problem with the 24 hour news stream, whichever station you’re listening to. They all yammer.
If Obama were filling his cabinet with inexperienced left wing folks, they’d be yammering about that, about how difficult it will be to get anything done with such an untested crew, etc.
Obama has never seemed all that left wing or liberal to me. I know he was portrayed that way by the right, because they wanted to scare middle of the road people, but I have seen little evidence of him being even as liberal as I would like him to be. But his cabinet picks have nothing to do with my feelings on that. His policies do. Is he as liberal as I would like? No. Am I thrilled that he will be our president, do I wish him well and expect great things? Indeed, yes.
I know! Vermont elects a socialist to the Senate, yet the far right wanted to smear Obama as our most liberal senator — that takes some imagination.
I agree wth yu on the rest, too. I’m looking forward to finding out.
I thought you were going to say that you stumbled while walking the dogs, maybe cus a squirrel attacked you… but the steadying voice of Terry Gross scared your psychotic little park-stalker away and for that… you were grateful.
But..
this was good too.
Hey, Am., good to see you. There are ground squirrels in the rocks and boulders along the shoreline, but Edie hunts them so ardently there’s little chance one of them would dare stick its head out very long.
Any physical stumblings would be my own — and more likely to result from playing tag with the pups!
And while I don’t hang out with left wing bloggers, the boyfriend is decidedly one of those who don’t believe Obama is progressive enough, and his choice of *gasp* Republicans in his cabinet is evidence of his lack of liberal street cred. To this rant, I merely sigh. I’m just so pleased to once again have a President whose IQ is in triple digits.
Agreed about Obama. If he were to hew to an idealistic liberal line, I think he’d get far less done.
Let’s see what happens in the first few months, what progress is made. And even if the administration does take “the middle path” (to paraphrase a smart fella from Nepal), it still seems like progress to me, given the old Dublya troublya.