I Bet Joe the Builder Could Build a Heck of a Cabinet

I think a characteristic of Obama's cabinet picks so far has been picking people who are inarguably qualified to do the jobs they are picked to do, as well as an ability to put together a diverse cabinet without leaving any scent of affirmative action (see first part of the sentence for why). Amongst the 4 picks that have been announced or rumored, 1 is a black man (AG), 2 are women (SoS and Homeland Security) and one is a whitey white old white guy (Daschle). Hell, if you want to include his close staff, he's even got a jewish guy thrown into the mix as his chief of staff (note to all the crazies out there who questioned Obama's commitment to Israel, check out Rahm Emmanuel's Wikipedia entry and then tell me Obama might be soft on the issue of the U.S.'s relationship with Israel). If Hillary falls through for SoS for whatever reason, he's likely to put Richardson, a hispanic, in there. It should be interesting when he gets to make Supreme Court picks one day. I find it unlikely that he'd get to make two picks and put 2 white guys on there as Bush did.

To return to an earlier point made about how Obama's cabinet picks hadn't really represented "change," I think that he's in a tough position on that issue. Democrats had a two term presidency only 8 years ago, so a lot of people who are qualified to take top positions now inevitably had some position in the Clinton administration (Emmanuel, Holder, Hillary Clinton) or, if they didn't, were Senators recently (Daschle, Clinton). Napolitano breaks that mold somewhat and I think we can expect to see more mold breaking picks going forward, but I think that what Obama's picks so far tell us, consistent with his behavior ever since he started his campaign for President and before that, is that he's not interested in being just a "movement" candidate or a "movement" President. He actually has things he wants to get done and these are the people who will know how to make sure that those things get done (universal health care, weening us off foreign oil while "going green" at the same time, etc.) I always took the "change" mantra to be more about changing the tone of politics and the vicious tit for tat and "perpetual campaign" types of things more than anything else. I think this is what frustrates many on the right. Obama's views are fairly conventionally Democratic, but he at the same time manages to be a non-conventional Democrat and politician in general because of his tone and because of what I believe to be his pragmatism. He may hold more liberal viewpoints than 60% of the country, but I think he wants to get things done and therefore is going to play more towards the middle than the left. That's in stark contrast to President Bush who, at least since 9/11, has almost uniformly played to the right instead of the center.