Oh, my: Barack Obama is still more than a month away from assuming the presidency, and already there are reports about "the left" being dispirited about change they no longer believe in. These fears – in this case expressed by a rather small number of bloggers and writers – are aggravated by praise for Obama’s transition choices from conservatives who seem relieved that the president-elect is neither Lenin nor Robespierre.
There is nothing new about anxiety among progressives that the candidate they just elected is destined to break their ideological hearts. In his journals, no less a loyalist to John F. Kennedy than the late historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. expressed dismay during the 1960 transition period over Kennedy’s apparent attraction to "a collection of rather respectable and conservative names for the Cabinet."
In a Dec. 1 journal entry, Schlesinger described a meeting in which he told Kennedy "that the liberals were concerned about having a spokesman in the Cabinet." Kennedy replied: "Yes, I know, the liberals want visual reassurance just like everybody else. But they shouldn’t worry. What matters is the program. We are going down the line on the program." Schlesinger concluded that Kennedy was seeking "an administration of conservative men and liberal measures," an intriguing notion to apply to Obama.
As it happens, Obama’s team is by most reasonable tests somewhere to the left of the one Kennedy assembled. That’s because reality has moved left, particularly over the past six months. When a Republican administration presides over — let’s call it what it is — the partial nationalization of the finance industry, and when even conservatives are calling for large-scale deficit spending, the very definition of the political center needs to be revised…
Having little else to say myself [Ha!], I’d like to weigh in on the Obama hasn’t picked enough Progressives and has picked too many Clintonites issue. We just lived through eight years of ideological government and a level of divisiveness unheralded since the conflagrations of the sixties. I don’t want any more of that. This Governor Rod Blagojevich episode tells us a lot. First, he’s a Democrat and all of us want him out of there yesterday. Message: We will not defend crooks – Progressives, Democrats, Liberals or otherwise. Second: Rush Limbaugh et al will attack no matter what. Failing to find Obama guilty of deal-making, they’re now on him for not talking about not deal-making fast enough. What Obama does or doesn’t do doesn’t matter he’s damned if … etc. Third: Progressives, Democrats, Liberals are not of one mind by definition. That’s what the word Liberal actually means. Finally: I don’t want any more government filled with ideologues, of any kind. Clintonites were Clintonites because they were the best we had to offer. They did a pretty good job. Hire them all, except for Clinton.
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