I see that several of the much-rumored cabinet appointments were officially announced today. I haven't followed every rumor and announcement, but I've kept watch enough to have a vague sense of what's going on appointment-wise.

What's interesting to me is neither the "team of rivals" theme nor the fact that Obama seems to be collecting a centrist and moderate team. The latter is unsurprising to me since he's been saying all through the campaign that he's a centrist, big-tent Democrat eager to work with everyone. I guess certain progressives imagined he is really more like one of them but only pretending to be moderate for the sake of the election. What that's based on, I'm not sure ... wishful thinking, I suppose. Curiously, a group of Obama opponents on the right imagined the exact same thing, as a result of whatever's the opposite of wishful thinking. Now that Obama is starting to put together a moderate-looking team, everyone on both sides who thought he was only faking it during the campaign are surprised to discover that maybe he meant what he said.

As for "team of rivals", ugh. Why won't this story die? In 1860 Lincoln filled his cabinet with all his opponents from a hard-fought Republican primary: Seward as secretary of state, Chase as treasury secretary, Cameron as war secretary, Bates as attorney general. For good measure, he also put Edwin Stanton, not a candidate but a prominent politician (Buchanan's attorney general) who opposed Lincoln, in the War Department where he later took over for Cameron.

With Obama we have just Hillary and no one else. No Edwards, no Richardson, no Dodd, no Kucinich. Team of rival. If you're generous you can count Biden, but then the Lincoln parallel falls apart. Lincoln's running-mate (Hannibal Hamlin) was a good orator and stout abolitionist but he had no designs on the top office, and once in the number two slot he was marginalized from decision-making. Choosing a primary rival like Biden as running-mate doesn't emulate Lincoln; it follows a common pattern from recent years — Kerry-Edwards, Dole-Kemp, Reagan-Bush.

No, what intrigues me is the factor that is conspicuously absent from Obama's selections so far: loyalty. Yes, there are some friends and allies mixed in there (Napolitano, Daschle) but nothing close to what I would expect from pretty much any other president-elect. Whatever goals Obama may have in choosing his team, rewarding those who have supported him isn't very high on the list.

The encouraging implication is that loyalty won't be a reason to keep any of them either. One of the significant failings of the Bush administration has been the President's consistent pattern of rewarding loyalty more than competence. A guy can be doing a great job, but if he strays from the party line he's out. Another guy can be a total screw-up but so long as he's loyal to the president he gets to stick around and keep screwing up for years to come.

That's something I'd love to see changed.

11:06:32 PM  [permalink]  comment []