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I'm sympathetic to the leftists who are disappointed by Obama's cabinet picks. And I'm sympathetic to the liberals who are enthused by Obama's cabinet picks and evident political savvy and want everyone else to calm down. But the two sides are not arguing the same thing. The liberals seem determined to deny legitimate disagreements, and the leftists seem all too willing to paint Obama's actions as betrayals of his campaign promises. On the liberal side, Mike Tomasky writes:
there is a vast difference between applying pressure and taking bits of evidence and extrapolating to wild conclusions and crazy rhetoric from them. And people who can't see that Obama needs to reassure the political establishment by doing things like re-appointing Robert Gates at the Pentagon precisely so he can have the establishment's good will, which in turn grants him the room to operate and to isolate the political opposition, understand so little about politics that it's not even worth the time it would take to spell out the argument to them.But Tomasky has no more evidence than Chris Bowers. It may be that Obama is keeping Gates around for establishment good will. Or he may just believe, as many do, that Gates has done an authentically good job, and he may simply agree with the strain of old-line realism that Gates represents. Extrapolating Obama's beliefs from his appointment is, for now, working off the best available evidence anyone has. This is all the more true given that the evidence includes not just cabinet appointments, but White House staff and chosen advisers. You don't make Larry Summers your adviser because Wall Street trusts him. You make him your adviser because you, like many others, believe him a brilliant economic mind. Refusing to extrapolate here is synonymous with shutting out the evidence.But what confuses me about the consternation is that save for Hillary Clinton, all of Obama's choices have been almost entirely predictable. Take his economic team. Anyone expecting different wasn't paying attention. Obama's economic adviser was Austen Goolsbee and his director of economic policy was Jason Furman. Good guys, both, but you don't go from them to Thea Lee without something fairly strange happening along the way. Which is why I'm also confused by Chris Bowers saying things like “Isn't there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?” You get the candidates you nominate. And Obama was always a mainstream liberal who drew his support from the slice of the Democratic establishment that had tired of the Clintons or was more closely associated with the legislative leadership. As for Gates, he swore, often and publicly, that he would have Republicans in his cabinet. We are getting what we were promised.There will be tension between Obama and the left. He is not as left, and certainly not as committed to the left, as they are. The trick is in terming it "disappointment" rather than "disagreement." They disagree with Obama. As well they should. But it's hard to really say they should be disappointed by him. That's more the media's effort to make this look like genuine fractiousness within the Democratic Party rather than the continuation of a long-running, ongoing, and probably healthy, argument.
