Mark Baur's Blog

The desire for constructive social and foreign policy does not require rose-colored glasses, but is sustained by a simple recognition that the question comes before the answer. Such is my hope for the incoming administration, and it ought to be a considerable gauge of its success. Not all expectations will be met as the Bush years fade into painful memory, yet the wide-spread optimism following Obama’s victory has yet to be disappointed. For my own purposes, certain events of the past week have done well to undermine my political naivete, while others have altogether strengthened my conviction that rational idealism is not beyond grasp.

Senate Democrats determined that the best course of action leading into the next legislative session would be to allow Joe Lieberman to continue to wear the D badge he has pretended to wear over the last several years and which he used as a prop for bipartisanship during the downward spiral into bigotry of the McCain campaign. That was on Tuesday, and his initial attempts to play nice have been altogether unconvincing. Then, after conceding his electoral defeat on Wednesday, convicted felon Ted Stevens got a standing ovation on the Senate floor, including a singing-of-praises by Harry Reid. Seriously, are you kidding me?

Thankfully, the Democrats taking over the executive branch seem to have their act together. Last week, I focused on potential appointments at State and Defense, and news this week seems to confirm those observations. As the cabinet takes shape, the announcement of Clinton as the country’s top diplomat is all but made, Gates appears to be sticking around for a while, and now it looks like James Jones will be asked to serve as National Security Adviser. Jones’ hesitant relationship with politics and his NATO credentials are particularly worthy of mention, and combined with Joe Biden’s position in the administration (and the possibility that John Kerry will take over the chairmanship on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee), it seems safe to say that the American front office to the world is looking rather more qualified than it has of late.

So, while Congressional Democrats are sending the usual signs that they are, in fact, their own worst enemy, the Obama team continues to surprise with its absence of unpleasant surprises.

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It’s been almost two weeks since the US election, and the gravitas associated with the transition of power ought to be a welcome sign of things to come. As the focus of the operation around the next president has shifted full-time to the daunting task of assuming executive duties from a failed administration, the gloating over a progressive victory after these eight years has been largely withheld. This is perhaps due to the depth of the historical moment, or the grinding down of the economy, or the wars into which the country has been forced, or the chilling savagery of the final laps of the campaign, but nevertheless the victors, particularly the inner circle of Obama’s new machine, have shown themselves remarkably reserved about their spoils. (If W. won a mandate last time, then “that one” is free to do whatever he damn well pleases this time…) Specifically, the threads that have been emerging about potential cabinet selections are an encouraging sign that the political pendulum, swung devastatingly far to the right during the Bush years, might be kept from swinging to an untenably left position. Prominent centrists on both sides of the party divide thus find themselves on the short lists. Though wary of too gross a generalization, the Bush administration represents failure in theory as much as in practice, in ideology as well as in execution. The lessons to be learned for the years to come must not ignore either side of the coin in favor of the other and to the detriment of all.

To be or not to be (partisan), that is the question. Obama’s first appointment of consequence was of Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff, an early sign that bipartisanship might not play such a role in the new White House after all. (Ironically, Emanuel’s many layered connections to Israel may make the next administration’s nuanced Middle East policies even less palatable to neo-conservatives. One can only hope…) In the cabinet, speculation remains over who will take over in Foggy Bottom and at the Pentagon, and considering the precarious state of American foreign relations I don’t find it too unreasonable to suggest that these appointments will be the most immediately consequential decisions in the first year of Obama’s presidency.

Hillary Clinton apparently leads the field of candidates to be the next Secretary of State, and although this must surely point to a great deal of political calculation (she is arguably the only viable Democratic contender left on the national stage) it is easy to imagine the reception that another Clinton would receive in the capitals of the world. Nevertheless, such an appointment might not exactly embody the “change” mantra in its fullest and could easily be construed as more cynical than it actually is. A better guarantor of the Clinton legacy can surely be found, and there’s no harm to be done in filling the job with a less familiar (or toxic) name, but at least Kissinger thinks that Clinton fits the bill.

The process towards the next Secretary of Defense is perhaps the most encouraging. The decision seems to be narrowed down to either retaining Robert Gates, praised for his sober realism since taking over at the Pentagon less than two years ago, or bringing on Richard Danzig, the highly regarded former Navy secretary. In either case, ongoing military transformation, debates between traditional and COIN-centric defense architectures, the (successful) end of major deployments in Iraq, and the refocusing of war efforts in Afghanistan will be overseen with the non-partisan gravity that the mission requires. Indeed, the notion of keeping Gates on board for an initial transition period before installing Danzig is highly appealing.

Though expectations on the new administration are unreasonably high (due in no small part, ironically, to the bold message of the Obama campaign), the early signs coming from Washington allow for plenty of optimism. The hard work remains to be done, but there has been yet no cause for alarm as the country prepares to emerge from the shadow of the past eight years.

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