Monday, November 24, 2008

Bipartisanship???

Jonathan Martin from Politico has a smart piece about Obama's new cabinet, and the lack of Republican names being floated for key positions.
Aside from Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, almost no Republicans have either been named or speculated on as being included in Obama's cabinet, depsite promises from Obama throught the campaign to "bridge the partisan divide" and include Republicans and conservatives in his circle of advisors.
The announcement this morning of Timothy Geithner and Lawrence Summers as his Treasury Secretary and Head Economic advisor respectfully, show that Obama will root his plans for economic recovery with center-left pragmatism much in the same way that Bill Clinton tackled a simlar, though less drastic, problem in the early 90's. In fact it could be seen that Obama is ripping a page right out of Clinton's playbook, stacking his cabinet and white house with many Clinton-era leftovers and building his economic recovery message much in the same way Clinton did in '93-'94. Whether the same plans will work this time is left to be seen, as a lot of the dregulation and free-market principles of the 90's are seen by some as the genesis of our current credit and housing crises.
The first test of Obama's economic council may be undoing and correcting some of the same problems and mistakes that some in conservative circles blame them for creating to begin with.

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