Follow BeltwayBlips on Twitter
NYT: "Obama Is Planning to Govern from the Center-Right"
Open Left - Front Page —
Don't blame the messenger (me) - blame reality:
Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas
By DAVID E. SANGER
WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.
Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury - ...
The Saturday Word: Obama Aims for 2.5 Million Jobs
The Caucus —
... . In his analysis of the experience-vs.-change factor in the president-elect’s appointments, The Times’s David Sanger writes, “If Mrs. Clinton is taken from the “Team of Rivals” model, Mr. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is from the Team of Neutrals.” Mr. Sanger also writes that while liberal Democrats and those drawn in by Mr. Obama’s promise of change might be disappointed by many of his cabinet choices, “it is the selection of Mrs. Clinton that appears the biggest gamble, in part because she has never had to engage in the give-and-take of ...
The New Center-Right
Matthew Yglesias —
David Sanger for The New York Times:
Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury - suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party.
Honestly, I’d like to see some more hard-core liberals in the cabinet — and maybe we’ll get ‘em at Energy, Interior, etc. But in some respects this is the genius of picking a relatively moderate cabinet. ...
Proper News
N/A —
It’s altogether proper that Obama moves to the center to govern. Capitulating to those who got you where you are? So last year. This year’s model?
“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign ...
No More Mister Nice Blog — ... The New York Times ran a story today titled "Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas." And apparently that headline was a distortion of what the story's author, David Sanger, really thinks -- Sanger wrote of Obama: ...
Ghettoization & The Difference Between Politics & Policy
Open Left - Front Page —
... This quote, from the New York Times story asserting that Barack Obama will govern from the center-right, highlights a very important dynamic in politics: the tendency of politicians to use the argot of progressivism in their public presentations (to "hold power with the left hand") - all while wielding conservative policy ("playing the music with your right"). ...
Who Rules the Pentagon?
Antiwar.com Original —
... be fought), but the Army and Marines will expand, as (so he promises) will the Navy. The essence of the matter is simple enough, as Frida Berrigan, arms expert for the New America Foundation and TomDispatch regular, indicates below: The Pentagon, even in the toughest of economic times, is likely to prove relatively untouchable. The Obama transition team's explanation for the remarkably familiar look to its emerging national security lineup, suggested David E. Sanger in a recent front-page think piece in the New York Times , is "that the new administration will have no time ...
Digby, Hegemony and the Policy-Personnel Debate
Open Left - Front Page —
... by many liberals over the fact that Obama's most significant appointments thus far are composed of pure Beltway establishment figures drawn from the center-right of the Democratic Party and, probably once he names his Defense Secretary and CIA Director, even from the Bush administration -- but not from the Left. In an email yesterday, Digby explained perfectly why this reaction is so mystifying (re-printed with her consent): ...
