The Obama Jolt
BARNES, FRED
The Obama Jolt Is Barack a secret centrist? BY FRED BARNES Barack Obama wants to give the economy a jolt. So far, though, the biggest jolt we’ve seen is the one the economy has given to...
...We don’t intend to stumble into the next administration,” he said...
...She’ll have little infl uence...
...If Obama wants to pursue economic and national security policies that would thrill MoveOn.org, William Ayers, and the Democratic left, he has a funny way of showing it...
...Reluctantly, Obama has begun to provide them...
...Jones, an Iraq war skeptic, is a strong supporter of offshore drilling and other steps to increase domestic production of oil and gas...
...His national security choices also underscore this point...
...For all Obama’s talk about education reform, chances are he’ll bow to the teachers’ lobby in choosing an education secretary...
...In their eyes, he’s acting president...
...As a believer in the indispensability of global trade, Summers is bound to advise Obama to reject labor’s call for limitations on trade, especially during a world fi nancial breakdown...
...They focus on the future, and that means Obama...
...Biden’s role in foreign policy is likely to be minimal with Clinton at the State Department...
...He said he’d be getting full daily briefi ngs on what’s happening on Wall Street and Main Street...
...Obama has dozens of lesser posts to fi ll, and no doubt he’ll use some of those jobs to assuage the left...
...And the foreign policy left...
...The fourth, attorney general, will provoke a confi rmation fi ght if Obama chooses his buddy Eric Holder, famous as President Clinton’s deputy attorney general for facilitating the pardon of Marc Rich...
...So far, though, the biggest jolt we’ve seen is the one the economy has given to Obama...
...In trying to give fi nancial markets a sense of comfort and continuity about his priorities, Obama might have provided one further note of assurance: that he won’t raise taxes in 2009 or 2010...
...The Washington clich...
...The only reasonable conclusion is he’s spurning the left...
...Tinkering with trade would unsettle fi nancial markets...
...After two days of market collapse, his aides spread the word that Obama’s choice for secretary of the Treasury would be Timothy Geithner, the head of the Federal Reserve in New York...
...Last week, Obama made his choice of Geithner official...
...Obama wants to keep him at the Pentagon for another year...
...Then there’s Bob Gates, Bush’s defense secretary...
...Who knew...
...But Gates is no dove and no ally of the antiwar left...
...He stopped short of that...
...But it took a 900-point dip in the stock market, plus persistent pleas, for Obama to act...
...True enough, but fi nancial markets don’t look at Washington that way...
...But knowing Kerry, Obama looked elsewhere and fastened on Clinton as his secretary of state...
...She’ll squash him if he sticks his head up...
...And how about the environmental lobby, which totally embraced Obama...
...Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Later he told reporters his advisers would recommend whether to repeal the Bush tax cuts for the well-to-do and on capital gains and dividends, or merely allow the cuts to be “not renewed” and thus expire at the end of 2010...
...But imagine how the left wing of the Democratic party—the dominant wing, after all—feels...
...In fact, I suspect he’s already urged Obama to go along with “card check,” labor’s latest scheme for unionizing workers, but not the protectionist agenda...
...That’s Geithner, Clinton, and Gates...
...The point is he’s pragmatic (so far) in one direction—rightward...
...There’s a larger point here...
...It made him virtually America’s acting president...
...So the scoreboard looks like this: Three of the four cabinet posts that matter most are going to those with views acceptable to the center-right of the Democratic party...
...Jones will be hard for environmentalists to stomach...
...The losers in the Obama administration, as of now, are Joe Biden and Susan Rice, favorites of the left...
...It’s not that Obama, despite his unswervingly liberal record in the Senate, turns out to be a pragmatist...
...But fi nancial markets are Obama’s overriding concern as presidentelect...
...And Obama owes Kerry for having lifted him from obscurity and made him keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic convention...
...Last week, Obama’s tone had changed...
...about appointments is that personnel is policy...
...Obama is fond of saying—he said it again last week—that the country has only one president at a time, and until January 20 it’s George W. Bush...
...Financial markets demanded at least some comforting hints about Obama’s plans for reversing the economic downturn...
...The left views Jones, Clinton, and Gates as enemies...
...Let down would be an understatement...
...Labor can probably have its pick as secretary of labor...
...He held press conferences three days in a row...
...If former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle becomes health and human services secretary, that will please the single-payer crowd and the champions of more governmentmanaged health care...
...Conservatives aren’t jumping for joy...
...Organized labor must be crazed over the selection of Summers...
...He was alarmed...
...In his postelection press conference on November 7, Obama said his aides would be monitoring markets and the economy...
...BY FRED BARNES Barack Obama wants to give the economy a jolt...
...This was change fi nancial markets could believe in...
...With the door opened to leaving the cuts in place, shutting it would be hazardous...
...The transition, in other words, would be relaxed and unhurried...
...Rice, an assistant secretary of state in the Clinton administration and an Obama campaign adviser, may wind up as United Nations ambassador, a highly visible but inconsequential post...
...Keeping the cuts would enrage the left, but fi nancial markets would appreciate the jolt...
...But he offered a signal...
...Nor does retired Marine general Jim Jones, who’s slated to be Obama’s national security adviser...
...Three out of four isn’t bad...
...Interviewed on 60 Minutes, Obama said, “We shouldn’t worry about the defi cit next year or even the year after...
...And he named former Treasury secretary Larry Summers his top economic counselor at the White House and chose a monetarist, Christina Romer of the University of California at Berkeley, as the head of the Council of Economic Advisers...
...Liberals and the media like Gates because he replaced the man they loved to hate, Donald Rumsfeld...
...Clinton, for all her shortcomings, doesn’t hail from the surrender-at-allcosts wing of the Democratic party...
...Hillary Clinton benefi ts from not being John Kerry, who desperately wants to be secretary of state...
...The stock market rallied...
...That jolt, in the form of a plummeting stock market, upset Obama’s desire for a leisurely transition...
...It’s an exaggeration but essentially true...
Vol. 14 • December 2008 • No. 12
