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Pat Buchanan is shrewder than I gave him credit for. It is indeed important to soothe your own base.
However, may I remind everybody that Obama during the campaign never really digressed from his happy bipartisan talk: let's bring everybody together? Quite obviously that includes Lieberman, the Clintonites and some fairly conservative Republicans like Chuck Hagel (just a reminder: yes CTH was against the war in Iraq but on most other counts Sanctimonious Joe is to his left). However incensed you are by the Lieberman affair, nothing in Obama's talk made me believe that he would not walk the walk of all-inclusiveness.
On health care policy, Hillary's crown jewel, she is the more liberal, and while she certainly does enough of her own triangulation, with Obama it is called "bipartisanship".
Apparently, a lot on the left bought into the Republican line of "Obama the most liberal member of the Senate".
The fact that Obama chose so many Clintonites for his transition teams to me is not yet an indication of future policies. It shows that he learnt the lesson of the Carter and Clinton transistions. Having Rahmbo as his chief enforcer shows that the president-elect understands: if you want to play ball in Washington - particularly if you want to rough up business as usual - it is good to have some heavy hitters in your own team who know their ways about Washington. Carter did have all the good intentions but he really got to almost nowhere because his people did not have a clue what minefields were waiting for their good intentions.
So far, most of the appointments have been about the mechanics of politics. The real test comes when the clockwork starts to run: what for?
I admit, FISA has been a big disappointment, already.
My feeling is that Obama really wants to have Hillary inside the tent, therefore the leak to put the pressure up. Their positions on future foreign and defense policies are not really that different, and on Afghanistan Obama seems to be even more hawkish than HRC. (Again, don't complain, he never said otherwise!). But boy, can you screw-up big in Afghanistan and Pakistan...
Ever since the story came out about Hillary being picked for veeping Ted Kennedy on health insurance, I wonder if Hillary is going to accept Obama's "offer".
In his eagerness to soothe people on the right, BO has shown little consideration for the left so far - not enough leaks for them, so to speak. I wonder how he is going to juggle "bipartisanship" with the necessity to reward the people who really made him win.
But don't panic, rare is a time when there is not silly season in the media. One horce race is over, the Derby winner is in the stables, but there are so many more races to be talked up breathlessly, and reporters are out-scooping each other. After all, there are 15,000 slots to be filled.
I got advice for you: don't start to yell after each favorite of the day, hour, minute ...
Instead relax, don't worry, be happy!
