Friday, November 21, 2008

Change I can believe in...

At first, the cynical, no-good side of me was thinking Barack Obama might have been building Hillary Clinton up for another humiliation as a rejected job seeker. But it looks pretty final now that she will become Secretary of State. Maybe Ms. Clinton can do a better job than was evidenced by the President Clinton's foreign policy team failings in places like Rwanda and al Qaeda land. But I am inclined to equate Obama's idea of creating a "team of rivals... that would be modeled after that of President Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War" with a desire to have ready scapegoats at hand.

I guess a lot of people will be fighting to have their agenda on President Obama's desk; one wonders how much will actually get done. I do not yet have an idea of a man with his own clear sense of direction. But then I always figured "the One we've been waiting for" wasn't the Messiah. Too bad for the Kos kids.
Clinton to accept top diplomat job

1 comment:

Eowyn said...

Truepeers, in another world, Obama would probably have offered Sen. Clinton some kind of nowhere-leading gesture of an appointment, at best, and ignored her, at worst. In today's climate of economic worry, however, he can't afford not to pull as many of her people -- including herself -- on board. He simply doesn't have the infrastructure in place, politically, to accomplish what he knows he has to accomplish: Relief, and quick action. A Faustian bargain, to be sure, but I see Obama in a position of checkmate if he doesn't utilize the Clintonista resources.

Having said that ... we're all now heading down the slippery slope of not only the sleaze that came with the Clinton administration (not the least of which is the former president himself, who has been busy doing sweetheart deals with other countries under the radar since leaving office), but also the Chicago sleaze the president-elect brings in on his own. NO ONE gets elected in Chicago, nor indeed, in Illinois itself, without doing deals with the Mob.

Ugh. On the one hand, I'm willing to keep hope alive -- but on the other, I see lots of huge obstacles ahead.

We'll see what plays out, I guess.