During his campaign, Barack Obama championed the cause of “hope” and “change”.  What exactly that “change” would be made of was a source of much controversy, as critics highlighted a persistent vagueness and even vacuity in Obama’s rhetoric.

During an unusually calm transition period (made possible, it should be pointed out, by a remarkably non-partisan and even downright classy approach from the outgoing Bush administration), now-President Obama has sent many promising signals that give moderates and even some conservatives cause to sign on to the “hope” and “change” mantra.  With relatively few exceptions like the Labor Department, President Obama has appointed technocratic pragmatists to many key positions.  His economic appointments in particular have been well-qualified and apparently resistent to the kind of dramatic swings and vacillations that came from the Bush economic team throughout 2008.  And the retention of Defense Secretary Robert Gates promises to provide President Obama with a much more smooth relationship with a skeptical military leadership than was possible with President Clinton’s early missteps.

President Obama’s overt efforts to reach out to Republicans also promise to short-circuit, at least in part, the toxic atmosphere of partisan demonization that has persisted ever since the far left refused to accept the 2000 election.  Obama’s centrist appointments, his refusal to participate in the one-last-shot Bush-bashing glee and his “one president at a time” deference to the Bush administration on economic and foreign policy topics has been a source of great frustration for the BDS brigades, but it is precisely his willingness to annoy the far left that makes his outreach efforts to moderate conservatives seem credible. According to The Moderate Voice, President Obama offers the best chance yet to really transcend the culture of partisan mutually assured destruction that has infested the core of American politics for a generation.

If President Obama and his administration continue a centrist, pragmatic pattern, he offers the best possible chance to produce a critically needed psychological boost, unifying the country in a time of economic and security peril.  Like Franklin Delano Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, President Obama could prove to be an epocal leader at exactly the right time.