Who needs an opposition party? We’ve got Democrats

Roosevelt As long as I could recall, we Democrats have prided ourselves on being the “Big Tent” party. This probably stems from a combination of deft political maneuvering by FDR and a singular hatred of the Republicans after the stock market crash of 1929. The downside of the big tent is that nobody inside agrees on much. Here is an article by Peter Baker and David Herszenhorn of the New York Times that talks about how allies in the U.S. Senate are criticizing President-elect Obama and his team about a stimulus package that they claim looks a little too much like trickle-down economics. Everyone agrees that we need more jobs created. Even Republicans! But nobody agrees on how to go about it. President Bush was the darling of the party (not to mention their leader), and was able to set the agenda. But he certainly did that with a lot of support from Republican congressional leaders. Obama doesn’t seem to be doing the same.

This does not bode well for the next administration. If Democrats form a circular firing squad, as they did in 1994, we can expect a Republican Congress just two years from now.

A Question I keep getting asked: What do you think of Obama?

President-elect Barack Obama As an American living abroad, very few people ever asked me what I thought of President Bush. They all have their opinions, it seems. And while few Swiss generally share their opinions with me, they are very intrigued about my own opinion of the incoming president. To this question, I’ve developed a pretty stock answer: “I don’t know. Ask me in a few years.”

President-elect Obama has demonstrated thoughtfulness in the few times I have heard him speak extemporaneuously. He also seems to have assembled a very competent cabinet with vast amounts of political experience. This can be put another way- it’s the same old faces we’ve come to know. Another young president did his best to put together a superstar team, and it led us to the war in Vietnam. All this says is that brain power isn’t everything.

President Carter is perhaps one of the smartest men in the world, and yet his presidency is generally views as a failure. It took President Bush to eclipse him in that department, showing that failure is not limited to one party or another.

Given the choice between having brain power and experience and not having it, clearly I’d rather have it. But something more is required: wisdom. While it’s easy to demonstrate a lack of wisdom, I’m not sure how easy it is to demonstrate that one has it. Again, the thoughtfulness that he has applied to complex issues leads me to hope, but that’s the best I can do for now.

Bamford’s latest update on the NSA

James Bamford is well known for his revealing of the National Security Agency in The Puzzle Palace, published in 1983. He has written two updates since then, Body of Secrets and The Shadow Factory, the latest one covering the Bush Administration in some detail. Bamford’s technical details in The Shadow Factory are nowhere near as good as they were in The Puzzle Palace, which is something that really attracted me to his writing. Also, in this book, Bamford seems to play both sides of the fence, at one point arguing that the attacks on 9/11 were an intelligence failure, while at the same time arguing that we must safeguard our civil liberties. This works, mostly because he successfully argues (in my opinion) that the government had all the power it needed to stop the attacks, but that incompetence ruled the day.

To be sure there are a few points I would take issue with. For one, although I despise the name, it was probably a good idea to roll together many agencies into the Department of Homeland Security. But quite frankly even that was done ineptly, as we have seen from auditor reports, again and again.

Returning to the Shadow Factory, in this update Bamford highlights the role of the Internet and the change in the nature of communications, where many communications have moved from sattelite to fiber, and from simple voice circuits to voice over IP. He talks about certain organizations wanting to hire Cisco employees simply to reverse engineer IOS and find ways to install back doors. I have no way of knowing if that has happened.

Bamford retreads much of the story about the illegal spying the NSA did within the United States, and how James Comey would not recertify the program. While it makes my blood boil to think that anyone in government would think that such a program was legal (certified by the attorney general or not), that part of the story isn’t so much about the NSA as it is about Dick Cheney and David Attington. Quite frankly I think Bob Woordward has covered that ground as well as could be covered.

Were I to give advice to Mr. Bamford it would be simply this: it is difficult to read just one of the three books he’s written, as either the earliest is woefully out of date, or the latest doesn’t stand on its own without having read the earliest. A consolidated update that combines all three seems in order.

Obama’s team, thus far

President-elect Obama has selected key members of his cabinet to be nominated. Here is the list of which I am aware, in order of succession.

Secretary of State: Hilary Clinton
Secretary of the Treasury: Timothy Geithner
Secretary of Defense: Robert Gates
Attorney General: Eric Holder
Secretary of Commerce: Bill Richardson
Secretary of Homeland Security: Janet Nepalitano

Here are some key members of his staff he has named:

Director of OMB: Lawrence Summers
National Security Advisor: James Jones
Press Secretary: Robert Gibbs
Ellen Moran

These choices do not reflect a radical shift from the Clinton era but rather a subtle change. This is probably a good thing, since Clinton seemed to have gotten it mostly right. The most provocative choices, of course, are Senator Clinton and Ellen Moran.

Ellen Moran, coming from Emily’s List sends a strong message that the issues that group holds dear will be front and center in an Obama administration. The right will certainly not be pleased with such a choice.

And it’s not clear who should be pleased with Mrs Clinton as a choice for Secretary of State, aside from perhaps President Clinton, as she has very limited foreign policy experience, and clearly does not see eye to eye with the President-elect regarding Iraq. Worse, she has her hands dirty with her vote to go to war, having perhaps lost a primary over that very issue.

In the meantime, the President-elect is very busily cleaning out southwester governors’ mansions with the choices of Janet Nepolitano and Bill Richardson. Perhaps he will name Arnold Schwarzenegger back to his old job as head of the President’s Council on Health and Fitness.

Vetting Bill Clinton?

Here is the most bizarre story I’ve heard in a while. Apparently President-elect Obama is considering Senator Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. While I wonder whether this is a good choice alone on its merits, what really gets me is how people in the press seem to believe that Bill Clinton, a former president who received millions of votes twice, somehow needs to be vetted. It’s not as if the media has cut him a break.

The reason behind all of this might be best put as the calm before the storm. Right now there is no news, and so a vacuum must be filled. With names being bantered about like Clinton and Richardson, who knows who the real nominee will be?