Next Obama must put his centrist Cabinet to work
The team of politicians and technocrats lacks a strong ideological bent, but they might have the technical skills to carry out his ambitious agenda.
Reporting from Washington — The Cabinet that President-elect Barack Obama completed on Friday is a largely centrist and pragmatic collection of politicians and technocrats without a pronounced ideological bent. Liberals are satisfied but not delighted. Conservatives say the nominees aren't as leftist as they'd feared. Powerful interest groups with conflicting agendas are appeased.
But compared with what comes next, assembling the 15-member team was the easy part.
Obama wants this Cabinet to market and put in place the most dramatic policy changes in the country since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal: a mammoth program to improve roads and bridges; a healthcare system that covers more sick people at less cost; limitations on fossil fuels and greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming; big investments in energy efficiency; middle-class tax cuts along with a tax hike on wealthy Americans.
For Obama to impose this ambitious agenda, he'll make some people angry. And that will strain the political coalition he has painstakingly built.
In the short term, Obama's Cabinet nominations strengthen him politically. Even Capitol Hill Republicans say they are reassured.
"His appointments overall are such that he's lived up to the best expectations of his rhetoric," said Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Vista). "He's choosing intellectuals and scientists and other notables. . . . He's going to get the benefit of the doubt based on his appointments in many areas."
Obama has picked an eclectic group. There are women, Latinos, Westerners, several President Clinton appointees, a full-fledged Clinton (Hillary), a Bush holdover, Republicans, an African American, free-traders, free-trade opponents and a Nobel Prize-winning physicist.
As a candidate, Obama often seemed reluctant to take concrete stands that might alienate important interest groups. Now that he is elected, some Washington lobbyists and officials point to emerging signs that he's willing to disappoint his political base. They cite the announcement that Saddleback Church pastor Rick Warren, who opposes abortion and gay marriage, will deliver the invocation at Obama's swearing-in ceremony. Gay rights leaders and others criticized the choice, particularly citing Warren's support for California's Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage. But Obama's willingness to endure the backlash may foreshadow battles ahead.
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