Month: November 2008

Jocelyn Guest says that SNL is re-casting Obama. I vote for this guy.

A reader writes:

Allow me to be a dissenter on the criticism people have been leveling at Obama for wanting to move slowly on DADT.  The public and younger folks may be perfectly supportive of opening the military to gays serving openly, but that’s not the case with the military.  No matter how delicately the administration approaches the issue, there will be resentment within the military. And it could turn violent at the lower echelons.

My fear is that moving too quickly and creating resentment by repealing the ban will simply make things dangerous for gays who are currently serving.  I want Obama to take the time building consensus and support.  I want him to work with the JCS to make that happen.  If servicemembers see that the policy isn’t being ramrodded down the military’s throat, there may not be as open hostility as there currently is or will be.

I want DADT repealed and the ban on gays lifted.  Badly.  But, I’ve been with the military for the past 11 years under DADT.  Another year is not a long time and worth it if the policy change is implemented smoothly and people are safer as a result.  I don’t want Clinton’s mistakes repeated or compounded.

I agree. Haste would be foolish. I mereky wanted to remind people that there are actual servicemembers involved here – defending us, risking their lives, or serving their country. Honoring their service means not treating them as if they were a contaminant.

Justin Fox:

One thing Geithner doesn’t have much background in is economic policy other than financial policy (at Treasury his big job was jetting around the world fighting the emerging markets financial crises of the late 1990s). So the other names on the economic team that Obama is set to announce Monday are going to be important. They’re likely to be the ones designing a stimulus package while Geithner spends his days trying to make the banking system work again.

James Surowiecki:

The Geithner appointment doesn’t solve the interregnum problem, obviously. But it does reassure Wall Street that a smart, capable person — who isn’t Hank Paulson — will be running Treasury, and that Obama is serious about bringing real stability to the markets. Obama is supposedly going to introduce his entire economic team next week, and that will also be good for the markets, since it’ll give him a chance to lay out, even if only in broad strokes, what he plans to do as soon as he takes office. Two months is too long, but markets are forward-looking, and if people get the sense that real change (major fiscal stimulus, spending the rest of the TARP, saving the automakers, and so on) will be implemented in January, it could create a sense of optimism, however fleeting.

Linda Barnett, mother of of slain U.S. Army Sgt. Jon Stiles, clutches a U.S. flag during Stiles funeral at the Fort Logan National Cemetery November 21, 2008 in Denver, Colorado. Stiles, 38, of Highlands Ranch, Colorado, was killed in action in Jalalabad, Afghanistan November 13 when a roadside bomb detonated near his vehicle. He had survived a suicide bomb attack just the month before and had refused medical leave in order to rejoin his unit. By John Moore/Getty.

How insufferable will Arianna get in the next few years? Maybe this insufferable:

“I only text three people – my two teenage children and Barack Obama.”

I might as well confess: I don’t know the president-elect personally and don’t intend to get to know him socially. I do intend to watch him like a hawk, as I have now for two years. And I hope he is everything his first supporters saw in him. So far, the solid conventionality of his cabinet picks – with the sole exception of torture apologist Jim Brennan – seems exactly what I’d expect from a serious man intent on serious government.

Which must stagger Sean Hannity, Stanley Kurtz, Jonah Goldberg, Hugh Hewitt, et al. I mean: this far left, Islamist, terror-loving America-hater just picked … Timothy Geithner. Noam Chomsky was unavailable?

That’s what the Times is reporting. Ackerman is afraid that Clinton will fill the State Department with loyalists:

Obama loyalists wonder whether the same people who attacked Obama on foreign policy during the primaries can implement Obama’s agenda from State Dept. perches. “Look, Clinton and Obama are both smart people,” said one Democratic official who would not speak for the record, “and I’m sure their one-on-one relationship would be OK. But when you hire a Clinton, you hire more than just that one person, you get the entire package.” If Clinton becomes secretary of state, it’s possible that the fissures between her loyalists and Obama’s would be a significant undercurrent of the administration’s foreign-policy decision-making.

Drezner thinks the outcry is overblown. Me too. The differences between Clinton and Obama were always exaggerated; and we need all the talent we can get. I defer to no one in Clinton Derangement Syndrome, which is why I believe it’s good for them to have their hands full and to be kept under surveillance. But it’s not a done deal yet, anyway. Bill could still derail it.

Goldberg explains why he likes Clinton at State. I do think that the Clinton appointment will utlimately come down to the Israel-Palestine question. And Clinton enables Obama to overcome unnecessary resistance and paranoia from the Israeli right. She credentializes him with Israelis and American Jews – which will help build support for a sustainable compromise before it is too late for the Jewish state. I remain a fan of the pick, but wonder if Clinton has the poise to accept it.

James Pethokoukis suggests that Obamacare could kill the GOP:

Recently, I stumbled across this analysis of how nationalized healthcare in Great Britain affected the political environment there. As Norman Markowitz in Political Affairs, a journal of "Marxist thought," puts it: "After the Labor Party established the National Health Service after World War II, supposedly conservative workers and low-income people under religious and other influences who tended to support the Conservatives were much more likely to vote for the Labor Party when health care, social welfare, education and pro-working class policies were enacted by labor-supported governments."

Passing Obamacare would be like performing exactly the opposite function of turning people into investors. Whereas the Investor Class is more conservative than the rest of America, creating the Obamacare Class would pull America to the left. Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute, who first found that wonderful Markowitz quote, puts it succinctly in a recent blog post: "Blocking Obama’s health plan is key to the GOP’s survival."

Thomas P.M. Barnett on transition hires:

There is always the feeding frenzy when a new president takes office, especially if the break for the party in question is 8 years or more. You have this entire universe of super-talented, ambitious and supremely focused players who’ve gone into the exile of think tanks for the long winter, cranking all manner of—admittedly—pretty dull books (you want to say careful things) and attending conference after conference to network like crazy, and never turning down any commissions or what not. So when the floodgates open, it’s not pretty. I mean, you’re talking about true addicts to power—as in, people who’ve organized their entire lives around these moments of possibility.

Yes: it’s not pretty in DC right now. But at least, unlike the Clinton transition, people aren’t openly buying their appointments.

Bruce Lee plays ping-pong: