Monday, December 08, 2008

The two sides of the Obama adminstration

Being a pragmatists myself, I will always take yes for answer. With all the Clinton administration retreads named to President elect Barack Obama's cabinet, the left is a little upset, but I have been pleasantly surprised with most of picks so far. A smart political move, get the public on board with a few center-left nominees in the first month and wait for the domestic nominations. While Obama gets good press and a bit of good will from the right, he will have political cover to name some real believers to the Department of Education, EPA, Energy, Agriculture, Interior, Health and Human Services, etc.

I am starting to see a bit of a split in the new President's outlook. Let the people with foreign policy experience run the show overseas and concentrate your efforts on reshaping American domestic policy. Like I said, I'll take the former, but I am fearful of the latter.

With all the money and manpower given to the Obama campaign by the teachers unions, the AFL, service employee unions and the environmental lobby, along with dozens of other special interests, they will all want a little payback. This will start with the nominees at the cabinet level. If you think Barack Obama will name someone who has an adversarial relationship with the unions as Secretary of Labor, you are in for a surprise. Same with the other domestic posts.

If the world will just behave for the next few years and let him focus on domestic policy, President elect Obama will be as happy as a four year old at Chuck E Cheese's. That is the rub. The people who want to do us harm don't care about pushing through an open-boarders immigration policy, card check legislation to force unions into businesses or tripling the number of bugs on the endangered species list so they can shut down all the logging and mining on federal lands. The terrorists and those who want to see America's power diminished will act, and it will not be pretty.

As much as Obama may want his presidency defined by domestic and social issues, the world has its own agenda, just ask President Bush.

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