It's not liberals who have problems with Obama's choices, it's the well informed, politically astute and literate.
Choosing the authors of the current economic crisis is putting the fox among the chickens. It's the kind of choice you could expect from Bush and is likely to have the same outcome; failure.
Voter's rejected the Clinton dynasty only to have Obama restore it by staffing the White House with the Clinton administration has beens.
Keeping Gates, one the early practitioners of cherry picking intelligence and shadow government in the saddle is just plain bad judgment.
Obama's statement that change would come from him was Obama was every bit as arrogant as anything that popped of the mouth of President Smirk.
This is not how change looks. At best this is a recipe for strife and gridlock. At it's worst it's how more of the same looks.

We need to join with those working to increase third party support --

IMAGINE KUCINICH AND NADER BARRED FROM THE DEBATES--!!

AND WORK FOR IRV VOTING --

Ridding ourselves of the electronic computer "tallies" and a return

to paper and pen --

Another election in 2 years --

"According to all myth, the female - not the male -- gives life"

"But I understand where the vision for change comes from. First and foremost, it comes from me. That's my job -- to provide a vision in terms of where we are going, and to make sure then that my team is implementing."

Did anyone pay attention to the above quote coming right out of the mouth of Obama? "vision" hmmm. A "vision" is going to come from Obama for change.

I'm sorry, if most posters do not get the significance of this one word, we are all in trouble.

I voted for McKinney.

The prognosticators and prognostications here are utterly beyond belief. Not a single one is worth a hoot, because the politics of the doable cannot be about wishful ideology or singular belief systems. Not a single one of the self-anointed sages here are near capable of coalescing a fraction of the support and the hope that Obama has managed. Not any of the alleged liberal representatives cited here, not any of the arguments waged, nor any of the left versus right versus centrist hogwash matters one bit. What matters is what is doable.

Where is recognition for the fact that these appointees will serve at the pleasure of Obama, who may replace them when needed? No credit is given to the realization that these appointees (whom so many here seem to know so well) are but single players on a team, and just as in sports it is the team performance that matters most. No respect is being given to the reality that these appointees must maneuver within a power structure that already exists, and that must be nudged cautiously and purposefully rather than forced idealistically. Most astonishing of all is both the rapidity and rabidity with which these negative prognostications are being supposed. At least some are mature enough to wait until the man has actually taken office, but where is the appreciation for Obama thus far being more forthright, transparent and productive than any other president-elect?

Most important to this whole issue is the ease with which some of you folks sit back and merely criticize. Follow up with metal's (metal November 27th, 2008 11:05 pm) suggestion for a national summit, not to hold Obama's feet to the fire, but to demonstrate how you do speak for genuine well-considered popular and just causes. If you are truly rooted and right-minded, then why not believe in your own ability to influence our democracy? Perhaps if you weren't so quick to pass judgment on others that are at least trying, you could believe more in your own effectiveness.

The foxes are guarding the henhouse and if you just sit back and expect Obama to thwart all the foxes by himself then you will have failed him, not the other way around.

Help him help us. Be realistic. Apply common sense. And do what you can.

http://change.gov/

The way it works is Obama sets the course and his "crew" makes it happen. Barack hasn't yet been given the tiller. Patience. After eight years of steering by a drunken pirate, our ship of state will need a little time to be righted. This will be done and having an experienced crew with the correct orders increases the probability of success.
RJW

He ran on the platform of "Change". So far, ain't no change in sight. Just more of the same old. He deserves the criticism.

Patience progressives, as the reality of the house of cards economy continues to collapse, even "the audacity of hope" will have to give way to the reality that business as usual isn't working and something different has to be tried.

Between now and innauguration will be what is expected to be a very dismal holiday shopping season and the quarterly necessity to adjust another momnsterous pile of unsecured sub-prime securities.

More buckets of ice cold water of economic reality dumped on the new president's head will include the resumption of higher petroleum prices and the continued dimunition of purchasing power of our devalued currency.

Poet

IT'S A BLOODY DISASTER!!!!

NOW IS NOT THE TIME FOR NEW PEOPLE!!!

LET'S HIRE THE PEOPLE WHO CREATED THE DISASTER!!!

Oh Barack. Shame on you.

Why is it that the people who made this bloody mess are considered competent?

Why not bring in Kucinich, McKinney, Nader, and others who are competent and have new ideas for change?

let's call for ralph nader to head the environmental protection agency *and* the federal trade commission !

Emmanuel? Gates? Maybe Hillary? This is change? Looks like the future is going to look a lot like the past!

This country will never regain its glory as long as the powers that be pick the president they want.

Sad.

I am waiting to know who he picks for Interior and Labor. I will give him the benefit of the doubt on all the rest, but these will be the real litmus test for me. The environment, public lands, waterways, parks, mining, EPA; OHSA, unionization, etc. I haven't heard a word about possible candidates for these. Either he is keeping his considerations close to his chest or I've managed to miss reading about it.

It seems to me that Obama has chosen stupid, uneducated, wrong-headed people whose antics precipitated the present financial crisis to help fix the crisis on the slender hope that they have really learned something, rather than to choose people who were correct all along. In order to get things done, he has chosen influencial insiders with track records of being wrong, rather than give any voice or power to those with track records of being correct.

Obama hasn't picked 10% of his team to combat the economic crisis...the environmental crisis...the legal crisis...the foreign policy crisis, and the whiners and second guessers are at work before he even takes on the job. Let him become President and see in 100 days what a profound change be will bring about, changing course here and and in our foreigh relations, and see if we can see light at the end of the tunnel. Then, if he let's us down...if we can't see progress and action...then it is time to start the second guessing. Give him a break.

Pragmatism pragmatism pragmatism. "Pragmatism" is the excuse that allows Obama and his Clintonistas to dismiss or ignore those who were right about the Iraq War, right about the threat to the economy (two or more years ago), and right about a host of other issues that will press this administration.

Health care, for example, will see no serious challenge to the money-grubbing insurance industry because it would be "unpragmatic" or "unrealistic" or "utopian" to dismantle the bloated system of corruption that effectively denies tens of millions medical coverage.

Likewise, in the case of the bailouts, "pragmatism" is just another name for the "moderate" dogma that is determined to leave unchallenged the gross excesses of Wall Street billionaires, many of whom just happen to be major supporters of Obama (e.g., Goldman Sachs).

Obama deserves to be bashed. The fact that a lot of progressives are coddling Obama, fawning over, and giving him the benefit of the doubt shows to me that the Left has gotten flabby and has lost a good bit of its punching power.

Bashing him helps. Bashing Obama can push him into the right (left) direction.

Christ, the guy wants to send more troops into Afghanistan!

He's a smart man. He should know better.

Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."

Obama's picks profile is not good. Not even a token progressive so far as I can see. One (1) female economic team member who has demonstrated knowledge about the New Deal. Lawrence Summers and Geithner stink outright of that unrepentant de-reg parasite Robert Rubin--who is STILL somehow participating in negotiations re CitiCroup's "bailout" last I heard. Obama doesn't seem to get the concept of "conflict of interest" where all these neo-lib fat-heads are concerned and the constant media chant re their "competence" is more of a comment on Big Media's lack thereof.

Keeping an Iran/Contra era bonesweeper like Gates around as Sec. Def. is the most disturbing one of all. He's a "cleaner"--not a solver. Hillary as Sec. State is really Hillary at 2:00 AM constantly on the phone to Madeline Albright--both thinking about how to manipulate Gates while he's manipulating them with better inside connections to the MIC, private intell and mercenary spooks doing off-the-books tasks with laundered money. We needed a true Statesperson as Sec. State right now, not a strutting human megaphone with an ego the size of Wisconsin forever stargazing at the White House. Hillary is as unqualified to be Sec. State as Condileeza still is.

Obama's "plan" to create 2 million-plus jobs in two years shows he doesn't grasp the enormity of the job losses already looming that will dwarf that figure by 2010. His speech about greenhouse gas emission reductions to 1990 levels by 2020 is even more woefully inadequate.

I hope leaders of large and medium-sized progressive groups are opening back channel discussions with one another about a national summit and unification into one massive Progressive Party. Even a well organized "starter" Party of 5 million strong would be a very good start. It's time for Ralph, MoveOn, Cindy and others in the environmental, labor, anti-"free trade" and anti-war groups to start talking unification. This country and this planet have little time to lose. Something big enough with enough electoral power to matter must hold Obama's feet to the fire.

These cabinet picks are a nightmare, even for those clued in to Obama's phoney progressive posturing during the primaries. Certainly, by the time Obama voted for the FISA bill and the bailout, it was all too clear he leaned toward the plutocrats and corporatists - against the public interest.

Now, it's all a matter of a little PR. The vast number of Dem Party loyalists are still drunk on hopeful slogans from the campaign. A few reassuring coos will do the trick.

-TIA

"Everyone needs to keep in mind that he's inheriting a bloody disaster."

Yeah, and the people he is appointing to correct the disaster are the same people who engineered the disaster.

I think Mr. Obama has been putting us on.

I don't buy Obama's argument, period, though there's still room for a few outsiders in his administration.

The EPA is going to be very important, particularly as regards healing what Bush has wrought. I also freely admit Bill Richardson is nobody's boy, though would much rather have him at State than Commerce. Energy will also be terrifically important, and there's no good reason to pick an insider--in fact, given the power of the conventional energy lobbies, every reason not to. There's also zero reason to give Colin Powell Education. That would be the most preposterous, obvious quid pro quo imaginable. And Daschle for HHS? On what credible grounds is Tom Daschle among the twenty people best qualified for that position? One would need to argue it's because Daschle is the best guy to get Obama's health care agenda passed, but health care was never Daschle's specialty when he was in the House or Senate. And bringing Robert Gates back? That's the second choice? And John Brennan, who favored extraordinary rendition and thought some torture was allowable was the first? This is change I can believe in?

And the counter to the counter, Obama saying he'll be the one creating the vision for change, is, then why on earth would you want Daschle and Clinton and Gates hanging around? There are plenty of technocrats and diplomats around if what you want implemented is your vision.

From the article: "Liberals who are most upset by the cabinet picks may have had unrealistic expectations about what an Obama presidency would look like, he said, especially "the ones who have been there from the beginning."

As someone who knew from the beginning that Obama, above all else, was a canny pol from Chicago, I'm NONETHELESS disheartened by his weak, unimaginative picks.

obama says he will provide "change" and that he needs a mass movement to push him: summers did not get treasury and brennan did not get the cia; both faced strong and loud progressive opposition and it worked! progressives should make concrete requests of change, have obama declare them "change" or "no change", and compel him to offer alternatives whenever he declines a request. when obama will embrace a reform publicly the team won't matter because it'd be up to progressives to make sure that the team executes things fine, that any bluffs are called out, and that team members who sabotage things are exposed. post-election spectator-sports habits won't cut it anymore, folks. good obama or bad obama and good team or bad team, progressives will have to be vigilant and loudly --if smartly-- assertive. as for concrete things to ask for right now: i) creation of a federal bank that will hire laid-off experts in identifying needed production and use it to inject credit in actual production and so bypass the banks of the rentier class that are sitting on bailout moneys waiting for a good moment to give the money to their investors (they risked, they lost, so let's use the money to jumpstart the financing of real production directly); and ii) stop the subsidies to fat-cat farmers but redirect a big part towards small farmers (this would win obama the rural states!). above all be assured that if obama dared to appoint any non-main-stream people, blackwater inc. would take him out in a breeze well before inauguration, so be happy that the center right is so delighted right now and think twice of what you are asking for. [and yet if progressives campaigned for ralph nader as secretary of the interior it would be fine even with militia types].

It would seem that the transformational nature of a leader is lost on many of the posters here. It is the job of a transformational leader to choose people to implement his vision based on the best available pool of people. Perhaps the liberals who post here could pick someone that they know who has the experience or wisdom to get us out of the current economic crisis or the two front war we are currently in based on their personal knowledge of economics, finance, Washington politics, corporate strategy, or Constitutional law? For all my knowledge of political animals, I cannot think of one that would satisfy the left side of the Democratic Party or serve the American people. The ones we think would be good, have had and continue to have the good sense to stay out of Washington. Consider who has refused to serve this President already, then consider that if you think they are so great and not self-serving, ask them why they refuse to serve the American People. A transformational leader provides the vision, lets others implement it with guidance so that the vision is not lost. Until January 20th, President-ELECT Obama can only make appointments, share his vision and direction with them, and then expect them to follow through under his control. In addition, he is trying to create calm in the economic markets and public sector, while waiting to see what garbage BushCo is actually leaving him to deal with in light of the undisclosed Iraq agreement (its an agreement so it does not need Congressional approval like a treaty), Paulson's continued trashing of the economy, and hundreds of other signing statements, executive orders, and other secret actions by Cheney and others. So cut him some slack, let him lead and guide. He has a vision of a better America and it is up to us to help him create it, not just demand instant results on a platter before he even has the power to deliver any of it at all.

Baraka
The real test is not in who he chooses but in how his choices are used. For example if he continues to sustain health care as a commodity by supporting the insurance industry I will turn on him and his administration. I believe he's the smartest pup in the litter but I want to see him hunt.

Until he takes office all this is posturing when he makes the decisions we will see how he is made. I want to discover a great president not just some one better than Bush. I have a dog at home better than Bush, what we need is a great President. These times and the 20 years of incompetence since Regan (including Clinton) is not in the right direction. We (I) want our country back from the corporate oligarchy that has been robbing us and has proven unethical and incompetent.

While many progressives laughed at the idea that Obama was one of us, most supporters actually bought into the idea that he WOULD implement real change.

Their projection was that given the opportunity, Obama would move away from the disastrous policies of the last SEVERAL presidents. And, yes, dear Dems, you can't get away from the reality that Clinton's crew destroyed some of the last remaining regulations when he signed Glass-Steigel's end. Many who then circled around Clinton, now circle around Obama. YES, we need to be OUTRAGED.

Is it too much to ask that there be SOME additions to the team that signal CHANGE? I don't think so.

Let's try a Paul Krugman in the economic team! Let's add a Robert Kennedy Jr. to the EPA! Let's see SOMEBODY who is not a direct link into the past. If we are talking about needing people with experience, how about choosing those with a DIFFERENT experience--those who were NOT a part of the past failures. ###

Keep in mind this guy is a politician. That is all you need to know. They all are bought and sold by the corporations.

I never did trust the guy, but I thought that at least he would be easier to watch and listen to than that bumbling mumbling brush-wacker Bush, but after only three weeks I have to shut off the tv or radio when he starts articulating his neoconniving lies.

Still rather have Obama than McCain. It's premature to bash him until he actually takes power. If nothing changes after Jan 21st, I'll be bashing him, but not before.

Obama is simply following the dictates of the corporations that financed his campaign. The notion that Obama is a progressive is belied by the reactionaries that are filling his advisory posts. The only change going on in Washington is that a different group of corporations will be calling the shots.

He is just another con artist that has sucked in desparate voters hoping for enlightemed leadership. How sad this nation's future is!

If he doesn't clean up this mess we are all screwed.

Yeah, clean up the mess so the top 1% can continue the Song & Dance while the rest of us
99 per centers pay the piper. The only tune this band can play is being written in Tel Aviv.

"strongly defended his decision to choose more experienced, centrist aides for his inner circle, arguing that the nation needs sure hands in a time of turmoil"

Again, why are these people being billed as "centrist" when they're anything but? Sure, they may not be as far right as the neo-cons, but they're close enough.

So he's going for "experience" is he? Experience in what? Promoting Empire! Globalization! Corporatization! In other words, the same Clinton Era bastards that set the stage for BushCo.

it has been a pleasure to come to commondreams in recent month, did i find you all late? and read about how horrible barack obama is. the idea that he is good in any way was so adroitly refuted here, thank goodness. ralph nader for hope and change in 2012.

I am always surprised that people actually believed in a mainstream politician. He must be a better pr man than what I observed or felt. To me, he was a slick politician.

The very fact that there is so much discussion and shock that it turns out his campaign promises may have been false--What is that about? When have people become so naive? When did people begin to believe campaign dreck?

I personally believe it appears to be a cult-like situation going on here. Maybe "Change we can believe in" was just such a great slogan, that people couldn't help but believe. I think he is right out of central casting. But maybe that is my own issue. Who knows.

Many Obama apologists are rich. I say make some bets about what the 100 days will bring and squeeze some money out of his faithful supporters when they are proven wrong.

And if the naysayers are wrong
then can be glad about Obama even as they have to start a charity fund to pay off the bet.
:)

It may work out differently, but, as of now, all the fine words and promises Obama offered during his campaign seem destined to be revealed as the shallow, unsubstantial appeasement they were. Of course, Bush et al will control the financial debacle even as those from Reagan onward engineered the looting. It doesn't seem likely that, after Jan 20, much different is likely to unfold...except perhaps in degree of severity and hardship and panic. Nor does it seem likely that Obama will behave differently than what, at the core, he is: an apologist and facilitator of of militaristic and corporate interests.

It's all about money and the attendant power, and Obama isn't immune to these intoxicants just because he talks a good game. Expect issues like resource depletion (peak oil) and climate change to be quietly shoved to the background as the money crisis intensifies. Say nothing of health care, education, infrastructure and those social niceities we like so much. The times, indeed, are changing, and I fear, like ezeflyer, that the changes will be ones we won't much like.

Competent militarists are what the country needs, huh? I'm amazed at so-called liberals who ask that such competence be given a chance. Competence or incompetence cannot be divorced from the policy to which it is attached.

Nader was right...Business as usual, the corporatists win again and the wars will continue...what a huge farce!
I hope all you Obamaniacs are happy!

I seem to recall that somewhere in the news conference, Obama said something about if he had appointed someone from out side the belt-way, MSM would be all
over the appointees re, their "lack of experience" Before we condemn Obama for
his choices, lets see what the first 100 brings.

I don't know what he is doing but I don't have to know. If he doesn't clean up this mess we are all screwed. I'm hoping against hope that HE knows what he is doing.

Those who have created the mess will be living a form of penance, if you will. They will be there as the majority of the electorate continue to pressure and push while the effects of the bloddy mess will come home to roost with the only alternative being profound change. Our work has only just begun.

By nominating his neocon, militarist and conservative corporatist extremists to his cabinet, Bush was extremely successful in pushing through his agenda.

Obama could learn from it that to push his agenda he needs to surround himself with like minds.

The frightening part is that maybe he has.