Obama Cabinet Roundup

I've been focusing on other things lately, but The Purple Center has been following the Obama administration announcements. Publius is perhaps more optimistic about it than I am, but I think we both can agree that so far Obama is showing no signs of yanking America hard to port.

Heck, even Rush Limbaugh seems to approve of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State. But perhaps not for the right reasons.

The Chicago Way? Not Today.

President-elect Obama has supposedly told his friends in Illinois not to expect any favors:

"Part of the charge [of the budget team] is to make sure that we are proceeding on projects and investments based on national priorities and not based on politics. Now you mentioned, sort of, my friends. I want to be clear friendship doesn't come into this. That's part of the old way of doing business.

"The new way of doing business is, let's figure out what projects, what investments are going to give the American economy the most bang for the buck. How can we protect taxpayer dollars so this money is not wasted; restore a sense of confidence among taxpayers that when we spend their money, it's on things that are actually gonna improve their quality of life; create the jobs that are so desperately needed; help to spur on economic growth and business creation in the private sector? That's all part of the new way of doing business."

Good for him.

Watching as he has rolled out his administration picks, and listening to the media report it (and the lefties scream), it appears that he really does plan to be more moderate than anyone would have suspected. While I'm not terribly fond of Hillary Clinton, foreign policy is one area she's more acceptable to me than many others he might have picked. In the election she was one of the more hawkish Democrats on national defense.

I also think that ignoring the media calls for him to unveil a team and a plan immediately to stabilize the economy was a good move. He only took a week longer than they wanted, and it's obvious to me at this point that one week is not going to make a real difference. Any gains he might have made by announcing earlier would have been psychological, and would have evaporated quickly if they hadn't been backed up with real substance. What he's showing so far is caution, but not indecisiveness.

I'm still holding judgment until he gets into office, but so far I'm not frightened by anything he's doing. I even find some of what he's doing encouraging.

Lobbyist Recant?

(From MSNBC.com) Obama administration may have changed their rules on lobbyists working for the White House.

During the campaign Obama said lobbyists would not work for his White House. Now they can work there if they haven't lobbied in the last 12 months and don't work on areas of policy where they lobbied.

I'm neutral on this. If the best people for the job are disqualified for having been lobbyists, then this is good. If not, it's just changing one's mind for no good reason.