Reflections on Obama’s Moves Thus Far
In the run-up to the presidential elections a lot was said about now president-elect Barack Obama’s liberal voting record in the United States and Illinois Senate. As many, including myself, pointed out in recent months, Obama had the most liberal record in the U.S. Senate and his views on abortion, among others, were most definitely not within the mainstream.
Many feared that this could very well mean that Obama’s promises of bipartisanship, unity and tolerance would prove empty.
Now, at the end of November, however, the situation has changed dramatically. Obama still has a highly liberal (and ideological) voting record, but he has started to surround himself by pragmatists, centrists and in a few cases even by conservatives.
His latest decision, to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to stay on a little bit longer, proves that Obama is more serious about Iraq than many of us feared, and that he is willing to be pragmatical about a U.S. withdrawal. This while ‘the angry left’ and ‘anti-war’ base of the Democratic Party demands an immediate withdrawal.
Other appointments or near-appointments in recent days also indicate that Obama is willing to do what he did not do during his years in the U.S. Senate: stand up to the liberal base of his own party. His decision to ask Senator Hillary Clinton to become his Secretary of State was, for instance, far from popular among purely liberal bloggers. They did not quite understand what Obama, who was their candidate after all against the DLC and centrists in charge of the party for decades and who were personified by Clinton, would get out of such a deal.
The answer is becoming increasingly clear: a centrist, pragmatical approach to foreign policy and national security. He may have told liberal activists what they wanted to hear during the primaries and the general campaign, but now that he will actually be the next president, Obama has decided to change course and adopt a more realistic and pragmatic approach to foreign affairs.
And that is good news for those of us who believe that neither liberal nor conservative ideologues have all the answers to the problems in the world, and especially in the Middle East.
I think a lot of us expected the leftist illuminati to dominate his cabinet. Though I think it’s wise for him to choose people from all political backgrounds, the fact that he wasn’t creative (I guess?) in his choices is what seems to be unwise, since so many of his choices aren’t fresh faces with new ideas, but just members of the washington good ole boy club.