A matter of trust

Hey Charles,

Now it's my turn to apologize. I'll attribute my lack of contributions to the blog to simply being busy, but more so to the burnout factor. Watching Keith Olbermann was already getting tedious, before Election Day. Now even the delightful Rachel Maddow--and even my favorite Jon Stewart--is getting difficult.

I suppose the "I'm too exhausted to write" excuse wouldn't fly if I was actually doing this for a place like Time or Newsweek, but I have had such a hard time mustering the energy to get excited about all this Cabinet stuff, as important as it may be.

Nevertheless, like John F. Kerry, I must report for duty. So without further adieu ...

1. Hillary as Secretary of State. You said it best. We elected Obama to govern and to bring some drastically needed change to the culture of Washington. And I'd say it's quite a dramatic change for a president to do what he thinks is best for the country and to surround himself by, as Maureen Dowd pointed out in a recent column, "other smart, strong people." We could argue the merits of Hillary over Kerry or Bill Richardson, but, like you, I'm willing to give Barack the benefit of the doubt.

That being said, one of my Republican friends was gloating yesterday about this story, which describes the unease among antiwar groups and liberal activists about Obama's potentially "hawkish" Cabinet. The article quotes Sam Husseini of the Institute for Public Accuracy lamenting the fact that none of the 23 senators who voted against the 2002 Iraq War resolution are apparently being considered for secretary of state. We probably won't ever know how seriously any of these folks were considered, but I don't see a strong contender here, maybe outside of Jack Reed, whom I still see more as a strategic defense guru than the ambassador/negotiatior type.

I also am not sure I'd call a Cabinet that features Hillary or Kerry or Richardson "hawkish." Perhaps that reputation sticks with Hillary because she refused to say she regretted her vote. But this is a far, far cry from Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Rice.

Or Joe Lieberman, for that matter.

2. Joe-the-Still-Chairman: Speaking of Joe, I know a lot of people back in my home state of Connecticut are furious that Joe got what amounts to a light slap on the wrist this week. They aren't willing to forgive him for accepting Ned Lamont's victory in the 2006 Connecticut Democratic primary, for kissing George Bush before Bush's State of the Union address, for throwing his support behind his good buddy John McCain, and, most of all, for his remarks at this year's GOP convention when he famously remarked that "eloquence is no substitute for a record," "[Obama] has not reached across party lines to accomplish anything significant," and Obama voted "to cut off funding for our American troops on the battlefield."

For them, 2012 can't come soon enough.

For me, once again, I'm willing to give Barack the benefit of the doubt, if, indeed, it was our president-elect who urged Senate Democrats not to strip Lieberman of his chairmanship of the Homeland Security Committee. Again, we elected Obama because he promised a new brand of politics and believed that Americans were not concerned about the whole (I can't believe I'm going to quote Sarah Palin here) "inside baseball" of Washington. We elected him because he believed Americans were demanding that our leaders work together to fix some of these enormous problems we're up against. If he believes the country benefits from having Joe (and Hillary) on board, I'm willing to back him.

That said, I do worry about Obama trusting people whose records of telling the truth might make them better fits with the outgoing administration. Let's not forget that Lieberman begged Obama to campaign with him during his '06 primary, which went a long way to Lieberman surviving that election, and actually told Obama to "go for it" when Obama was deciding whether to run for president. Let's not forget his criticism of Barack being less experienced that John McCain, as he stood beside Sarah Palin at rally after rally this fall.

And it goes without saying that we could devote an entire blog to false statements Hillary and her team, including Bill Clinton, made about Obama.

Maybe in the end, as this posting points out, our opinions about Hillary and Joe should hinge on how we feel about Obama and whether we believe he is truly committed to using the mandate he received a few weeks ago to addressing the nation's most pressing issues. The alternative, of course, is to view him as just another politician.

My own cynicism about Washington and personal feelings about Hillary and Joe aside, I'm not ready to give up on Obama before he even starts. Getting past our own cynicism, trusting that change could actually come to Washington, and not looking backward, wasn't that was this election was mostly about?

Ryan