Barack Obama's first major appointment -- Rahm Emanuel as chief-of-staff -- was a major disappointment for the hard-left, still hoping against hope that its perceived candidate would usher in a new dawn of American progressivism. Emanuel, after all, has been described as a "quasi-neocon hawk" and he distinguished himself among Congressional Democrats for refusing to apologize for backing the Iraq war. (How to argue with the partisan who played an instrumental role in meting out the "thumpin'" of '06?) Since Rahmbo's return to Pennsylvania Avenue, a steady trickle of other job announcements from Obama has only further demoralized the left. Chris Hayes' honest but credulous complaint in The Nation stands a model of the "we were had" genre. And Ron Radosh and Jamie Kirchick's summaries of the various forms of resentment now setting in among Obama's quixotic online fanbase evoke nothing so much as the useful term schadenfreude.
Now comes Max Boot, a former McCain foreign policy adviser, pleased as punch about just how safe the president-elect has been playing it:
As someone who was skeptical of Obama’s moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments, most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain. (Jim Jones is an old friend of McCain’s, and McCain almost certainly would have asked Gates to stay on as well.) This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign. His appointments suggest that, if anything, his administration will have a Reapolitiker, rather than a liberal, bent, although Clinton and Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for “neo-liberalism” which is not so different in many respects from “neo-conservativism”. Both, for instance, support humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur and Bosnia.
I'm not so sure Clinton at State won't prove to be a mistake in the long term, however much neoconservatives now warm to her as a late-forged Iron Lady. My reservations are shared by Boot's Commentary colleague Shmuel Rosner, who, writing in Slate, explains the dubious position of the secretaryship and wonders if an over-ambitious pol with a proven record for putting career before country can reform herself, especially under the authority of the man who deprived her of her ultimate ambition.
As for the 16-month timetable for withdrawal, that was always feint, as I tried to demonstrate in this assessment of Obama's Iraq policy, which was almost Straussian in its dependence on dual narratives -- one for the antiwar coalition that ensured his primary victory, and one for anyone else who bothered to compare his will o' the wisp rhetoric to realities in Baghdad. Banging on about how certain political "benchmarks" were not being met when in fact they had already been met was one way to broadcast your improvisational, anything-goes style. Not for nothing did Obama recently win Advertising Age's marketer of the year for 2008. If he campaigned in jingles, he seems poised to govern in the literature of product recall. But conservatives aren't the emptors now faced with a host of unheeded caveats.
add a comment