Ever since the US presidential election, advice has been showering down on president-elect Barack Obama like snowflakes in a driving blizzard.
Pundits right and left, politicians of every stripe, think tankers inside and outside Washington, lobbyists galore and not a few private citizens have been trying to instruct Obama on everything from negotiating with a rising China to dealing with an enigmatic North Korea to resolving the seemingly intractable conflict between Israel and the Arabs.
Indeed, it might not be too much to say that the US today has one president-elect and 300 million advisers who proffer policies to adopt, books and papers to read and diagrams on how to reorganize the government — all of which, in a robust democracy, may not be such a bad thing.
In particular, Obama has been deluged with the names of people who might be appointed to his Cabinet or other senior positions in his administration. Therein runs a process riddled with wondrous irony.
The president-elect ran a campaign on the theme of “change.” That he rarely defined what he proposed to change was immaterial; “change” was to be the byword of the Obama administration.
Yet the lists of candidates for high office are filled with the names of throwbacks to the era of former president Bill Clinton and of Washington’s Democratic establishment.
Obama’s regime thus seems to be shaping up as the Clinton Restoration. In the context of Democratic politics, Obama defied the establishment to win his party’s nomination and may have been as much a maverick as his Republican opponent, Senator John McCain. Now the Democrats, led by the Clinton clique, have set out to capture Obama before he moves into the White House.
IN CHARGE
In charge of the Obama transition is John Podesta, onetime chief of staff for president Clinton. Overseeing the selection of a foreign policy team is Warren Christopher, Clinton’s first secretary of state. Doing the same on defense is former senator Sam Nunn, who chaired the Armed Services Committee during the Clinton days. The new White House chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel, a staff aide to Clinton.
Amid jockeying for position inside the Beltway around Washington is said to be Clinton himself, possibly for ambassador to the UN or another highly visible job, and, of course, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.
Former vice president Al Gore is being considered for secretary of the interior where, as a Nobel Prize winner, he would influence environmental policy. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic nominee in 2004, is reported to be running hard to be secretary of state. Lawrence Summers, Treasury secretary under Clinton, may come back from Harvard.
On it goes, with scores of sub-Cabinet officers during the Clinton era angling for higher posts in the Obama administration. Fluttering out of Washington are names like Strobe Talbot, Susan Rice, Robert Zoellick, James Steinberg, Kurt Campbell, Richard Danzig and Anthony Lake, all connected one way or another with the Clinton cluster.
Perhaps most ironic is the persistent rumor that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, the widely respected Republican, will be asked to stay on, maybe even indefinitely. Obama campaigned on withdrawing US troops from Iraq promptly and on a schedule. Gates is the architect of the strategy of bringing the troops home only after the Iraqis can fight their own battles.
Dick Morris, the acerbic former Clinton adviser, wrote recently: “Obama based his innovative campaign on an emphatic and convincing commitment to change the culture of Washington and bring in new people, new ideas, and new ways of doing business. But now, Obama has definitely changed his tune.”
Morris concluded that “Obama appears to be practicing the politics of status quo, not the politics of change.”
Mr President-elect, a quiet plea from the island of your birth: Be true to your battle cry of “change” and look across the nation for fresh faces. Appoint no one else who has served in Washington for the last 16 years — no Clintonistas, no Bushies, no lobbyists, no beltway bandits, unless he or she has compelling credentials. You can always reach out, case by case, if you need counsel from former insiders.
In Chicago where you learned your politics, there was an old saying: “Throw the rascals out.”
You might sandpaper that to: “Keep the rascals out.”
Richard Halloran is a writer based in Hawaii.
Two weeks ago, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) raised hackles in Taiwan by posting to her 2.6 million Instagram followers that she was visiting “Taipei, China.” Yeoh’s post continues a long-standing trend of Chinese propaganda that spreads disinformation about Taiwan’s political status and geography, aimed at deceiving the world into supporting its illegitimate claims to Taiwan, which is not and has never been part of China. Taiwan must respond to this blatant act of cognitive warfare. Failure to respond merely cedes ground to China to continue its efforts to conquer Taiwan in the global consciousness to justify an invasion. Taiwan’s government
This month’s news that Taiwan ranks as Asia’s happiest place according to this year’s World Happiness Report deserves both celebration and reflection. Moving up from 31st to 27th globally and surpassing Singapore as Asia’s happiness leader is gratifying, but the true significance lies deeper than these statistics. As a society at the crossroads of Eastern tradition and Western influence, Taiwan embodies a distinctive approach to happiness worth examining more closely. The report highlights Taiwan’s exceptional habit of sharing meals — 10.1 shared meals out of 14 weekly opportunities, ranking eighth globally. This practice is not merely about food, but represents something more
In an article published on this page on Tuesday, Kaohsiung-based journalist Julien Oeuillet wrote that “legions of people worldwide would care if a disaster occurred in South Korea or Japan, but the same people would not bat an eyelid if Taiwan disappeared.” That is quite a statement. We are constantly reading about the importance of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC), hailed in Taiwan as the nation’s “silicon shield” protecting it from hostile foreign forces such as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and so crucial to the global supply chain for semiconductors that its loss would cost the global economy US$1
Concerns that the US might abandon Taiwan are often overstated. While US President Donald Trump’s handling of Ukraine raised unease in Taiwan, it is crucial to recognize that Taiwan is not Ukraine. Under Trump, the US views Ukraine largely as a European problem, whereas the Indo-Pacific region remains its primary geopolitical focus. Taipei holds immense strategic value for Washington and is unlikely to be treated as a bargaining chip in US-China relations. Trump’s vision of “making America great again” would be directly undermined by any move to abandon Taiwan. Despite the rhetoric of “America First,” the Trump administration understands the necessity of
RSS