Later this morning, President-elect Barack Obama will announce his security team, which has already been prenounced by undenied rumor. In case you haven't been keeping up, expect Senator Hillary Clinton for State, retired General Jim Jones for National Security Adviser, Susan Rice for U.N. Ambassador, Eric Holder for Attorney General, Janet Napolitano as Homeland Security Secretary, and current Defense Secretary Robert Gates to stay on. It's a more centrist team than many had expected, but there are good reasons for these appointments, which is why it bothers me when people in the media write things like this:
What kind of news day will this be? A bit later this morning, Barack Obama -- the man who won the Democratic nomination and thus the presidency largely because of his opposition to the Iraq War -- will announce that he plans to keep President Bush's Defense Secretary in place.
Identifying Gates as "President Bush's Defense Secretary" makes Obama's decision seem ironic and troublesome, as long as you pretend not to know that Gates was a second term appointment whose job was to salvage the Iraq war and who is known as a pragmatic moderate, and that it has been made pretty clear that Gates' primary function will be easing the transition into withdrawal from Iraq. Only if you elide those facts does this seem earthshaking.
On the other hand, the Hillary Clinton appointment is much more troublesome to progressives, for reasons Ezra lays out here. In a somewhat sloppy piece for the Guardian, I make the argument that Obama's decision is a big move designed to broaden progressive foreign policy ideas in the wider Democratic/centrist establishment:
The foreign policy side is more opaque. During a primary campaign debate with Clinton, Obama explained: "I don't want to just end the war, but I want to end the mindset that got us into war in the first place." Now the target of that barb will have the most high-profile foreign policy position in his presidency. There are any number of good political reasons for Obama to make this decision, but it's hard not wonder if he's substantively changing his programme. Without policy announcements or actual policy making, there is no way to know, but by choosing his chief intra-party rival as the spokesperson for the new foreign policy vision of the Democratic party, it's very possible that he is cementing his views as the conventional wisdom, and shifting the party's establishment to the left as he does it. The only real way to end the Iraq war mindset is convincing the leaders of his party to leave it by the wayside.
All this depends on several factors, not least important, how to pick the sub-cabinet and lower level staffers who do the bulk of the policy work and administration? If these positions are distributed with an eye to Obama's more progressive campaign advisers, the future of a liberal foreign policy will have been well seeded; turf battles could arise if lingering bitterness leads to a hiring preference for Clinton loyalists. Ultimately, the success of these appointees depends on Obama's effectiveness as a bureaucratic player and a strong leader: If he asserts his liberal policy vision, his administration will fall in line. With the political cover Obama can provide – and with their own ambitions in line – Clinton could be an effective administrator of an Obama doctrine that breaks sharply with the last eight years, withdrawing from Iraq, building alliances and restoring liberal internationalism.
The good news, as folks have noted in the past few days, is that a much broader list of Agency Review team members appeared on the Transition website a few weeks ago, and were only really picked up last week. Two members of the State Department team, Sam Power and Lee Feinstein, are the kind of progressives that really need to be at State. (Power was one of Clinton's harshest critics during the primary and was distanced from the campaign after calling her a "monster," which could make initial meetings awkward.) Working on the transition is no guarantee of a long term job, but both have the chance to shape the initial policy and hiring decisions. The national security policy working group also has some good names, not the least of which is CAP's Gayle Smith. And of course, there are reports that Jim Steinberg, an early (2004) proponent of Iraq withdrawal, will be Deputy Secretary of State.
Anyways, it's all kind of moot until we have announced policy statements, or see the results of policymaking. We'll have more on the national security team after it's announced.
--Tim Fernholz
