FTR: I’m an Obama fan
January 23rd, 2009
Someone at work saw photos of President Obama pop up on my computer’s screen saver and commented “I take it you’re a fan.” Yes, I’m a fan. For the first time in 8 years, our nation has a President who speaks English properly. And, you know I appreciate an adult with good language skills. (Plus, Obama’s undoing some of the dumb stuff Bush did, such as, for example, closing the detention center at Guantanamo, Cuba.)
And today, another friend of mine sent me a link to the St. Petersburg Times web site’s “Obameter” – which says it will keep track of over 500 promises that Obama made during his presidential campaign.
Here’s their analysis of one of the promises he has already kept:
One, maybe two
Updated: Tuesday, January 13th, 2009
By our reading, Obama only needed to appoint one Republican to his cabinet to satisfy this promise – and he did.
In a Dec. 1, 2008, press conference to announce his national security team, Obama said he asked Robert Gates to continue as Secretary of Defense. Gates has served under several Republican administrations, including as national security advisor and then director of central intelligence under the elder Bush, George H. W. Bush.
At the press conference, Obama said of Gates, “He knows that we need a sustainable national security strategy — and that includes a bipartisan consensus at home.”
Case closed? Not so fast.
Although numerous media outlets have identified Gates as a Republican, he actually is not registered with either party.
In a Pentagon press conference on Dec. 2, 2008, Gates was asked to “clear up” his party affiliation.
“I felt, when I was at CIA, that as a professional intelligence officer, like a military officer, I should be apolitical, and so I didn’t register with a party,” Gates explained. “I consider myself a Republican. Until yesterday, all of my senior appointments have been under Republican presidents.”
While that still left Obama technically one shy of a Republican on his cabinet, he put the issue to rest on Dec. 19, when he nominated Ray LaHood, a former congressman from Illinois, to serve as his Secretary of Transportation.
LaHood is a no-doubt-about-it Republican. In fact, he presided over the impeachment vote against President Bill Clinton. Heck, his son, Sam LaHood, worked on the McCain campaign.
“When I began this appointment process I said I was committed to finding the best person for the job regardless of party,” Obama said at the Dec. 19 press conference. “Ray’s appointment reflects that bipartisan spirit, the spirit we need to reclaim in the country to make progress for the American people, and a spirit that Ray has embodied in all of his years in public service.”
Whether Obama has embraced a “bipartisan spirit” in his cabinet picks is certainly debatable. It is overwhelmingly Democratic. But he only promised at least one Republican. And by our count it’s at least one, plus one with an asterisk. Promise kept.
Sources:
U.S. Department of Defense, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4325, Media Roundtable with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates from the Pentagon Briefing Room, Arlington, Va., Dec. 2, 2008
Change.gov, the Office of the President-Elect, http://change.gov/newsroom/entry/the_national_security_team/, Obama's National Security Team press conference, Dec. 1, 2008
CNN, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/19/cnr.06.html, "Transcript: Obama Nominates Transportation & Labor Secretaries," Dec. 19, 2008
Wall Street Journal, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123181265719876193.html, "Obama Will be Hands-On Chief," Jan. 13, 2009
It takes a lot more than just speaking well and fulfilling a handful of campaign promises to make a good president, though, doesn’t it? I know many people have high hopes for our new president, but some others are disappointed that he won the election, and I’ve also talked to a couple people who are glad he won, but who are still going to apply a critical ear to what he says and a critical eye to what he does. And that’s how it should be. Just because he won the vote doesn’t make him perfect. Just because he is in our favorite political party doesn’t make him right all the time.
What I’m looking forward to in President Obama’s administration is a return to public discourse here at home and a better reputation abroad. When he promised “transparency” in government, I didn’t think that he meant we’ll have a web cam on the administration 24/7, or that the government would blog every detail of its work…. What I hope will happen is that, unlike the Bush administration, people will begin to understand why some actions are taken, and understand why some policies are written, and will begin to develop a better vocabulary for discussing social issues where they overlap with political ones.
Instead, under the Bush administration, we often ran into a complete dearth of understanding of what the government was doing, but just had to trust Bush, lest we be cast to one side or the other in the false dichotomy of “either you’re for us, or you’re against us” line in the sand he drew. How many times, in the past 8 years, did you get into a so-called political discussion with a friend or family member, when one or the other grew frustrated and just said “we’ll have to agree to disagree”, and that ended the discussion?
What I hope for, under Obama, is a growth in the number of citizens who actively engage in government by getting involved in discussions that don’t center on proving the other party wrong. What I think can happen is that we will begin to not only understand what our government is doing, but understand each other better, so that we can better shape our government. It is meant to represent us, not rule us. But, as one of my favorite undergraduate professors used to say, “If you can’t say it, you haven’t thought it.” Let’s get back to talking, civilly, and thinking, broadly.
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