Politico has a run down on what Obama's "war cabinet" means. None of it surprises if you've, say, been reading TAP the last month or so, but number five is really funny:
He is willing to jettison campaign promises to suit the political landscape
Every president does it, but Obama is breaking (or at least bending) a stack of promises even before he takes office.
His staff has spread the word that he will not immediately push his plan to raise taxes on the rich by repealing the Bush tax cuts. Many Democrats predict he will hit the brakes on the movement to make it easier to force unionization of the workplace – a core demand of his most loyal supporters that could get a lower priority as he scrambles to head off a depression. And Obama has signaled that liberal dreams like the repeal of the military's don't-ask-don't-tell policy on gays in the military will take a back seat to more practical elements of his agenda aimed at helping struggling middle-class families.
Remember his assault on lobbyists? That has quieted, too. He has put lobbyists in prime positions on transition teams – and shown little interest in really clamping down on their role in this town. ... If he tries to move that center in a leftward direction, it will be in a slow and careful fashion.
To start with, none of this has anything to do with Obama's war cabinet and thus doesn't belong in the article. And while the headline of the section promises "jettisoning" promises and the first sentence describes "breaking" or "bending," none of the examples are of promises broken. In fact, they're about delays -- hardly the same thing. Now from reading Politico throughout it's existence, I'm aware they don't care too much about precise language, but seriously, guys, let's get a grip.
So the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire in 2010 instead of being repealed immediately. Not a huge practical difference, especially in an economic climate when deficits are inevitable. On Don't Ask, Don't Tell, did Obama ever promise to end that in the first hundred days? No. And don't be surprised if there are executive orders issued early on limiting the enforcement of that legislation. And consider the source for their reporting on the delay in pushing the Employee Free Choice Act: "Democrats," not transition or administration officials, just unnamed Democrats -- probably labor officials who are correct to worry that Obama may be putting off a difficult political fight. But it's not a broken promise until he doesn't do it. As to the lobbyists issue, is Politico aware of any violations in Obama's rigorous transition staff ethics policy? I doubt it. Obama has done more than any politician in recent memory to limit lobbyist influence on his staff and administration; if that falls short of what Politico expects, they owe it to their readers to explain what he should be doing better.
So Obama hasn't jettisoned or broken or even really bent his campaign promises yet, mostly due to the fact that he's not in office yet and hasn't made any policy. But this isn't about knee-jerk Obama defending; if he doesn't follow through on his central, or even his secondary, campaign promises, there will be much criticism from this blog. This is about bad journalism. Politico has shoe-horned this item about Obama's breaking of promises into an unrelated story in search of ... well, controversy, I suppose. Maybe because they can't bear to write sentences like "He's very focused on governing" without saying something unpleasant about the president-elect as well. Certainly part of the issue is that they insist on worrying only about process, when Obama made clear throughout the campaign that "change" means policy change. Obama will be trying to shift the center leftward, and he is doing it patiently. But that's not the same as jettisoning campaign promises, and political journalists ought to learn the difference.
--Tim Fernholz
