Susan Rice as UN Ambassador

If the news is accurate and Susan Rice does end up as US Ambassador to the UN, it will again illustrate that President-elect Obama is committed to including a diverse range of voices in his foreign policy team. Rice was a key early Obama supporter and has been quite critical of aspects of the Clinton foreign policy approach. She was a key spokeswoman for Obama during the primaries and general election and my outsider take is that she closely shares Obama's foreign policy vision. If this happens, I will be pretty happy.

Obama Economic Team to be Announced Today

I suspect all the news shows will cover it. Here are a few details.

Is the Clinton Pick about Israel cont.

Steve Clemons certainly thinks so:

Obama wants to change the strategic game on Iran, Israel-Palestine, Syria, Cuba, Russia and other challenges, he will need partners who are perceived as tough, smart, shrewd and even skeptical of the deals he wants to do. Clinton is all of these.

Clinton may be the bad cop to Obama's good cop. Because she is trusted by Pentagon-hugging national security conservatives, she may legitimize his desire to respond to this pivot point in American history with bold strokes rather than incremental ones.

He also makes an important point about Obama as his own Secretary of State:

Obama seems like he has no intention of doing something similar. He intends to, in part, be his own secretary of state, focused on re-sculpting America's global social contract and working in partnership with a diverse team of hard-edged policy players like Clinton to make even his rivals do his direct bidding.

This could be a kind of proactive agenda-setting in foreign policy we haven't seen in decades. Obama does not want an ad hoc, reactive presidency -- and he wants to succeed.

HH is feeling it:

The team of Barack “Grandpa Was a Muslim” Obama, Hillary “I’m a Clinton” Clinton, and Rahm “Israel” Emanuel (that’s his real middle name! and he was a volunteer with the I.D.F. during the 1991 Gulf War!), with Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pitching in as necessary, would put the new Administration in an extremely powerful position to apply the kind of pressure that would give Israeli politicians the political cover they need to reach a settlement with the Palestinians. Everyone knows what the deal would look like, including Ehud Olmert. It’s a question of having the political strength and exerting the will to make it happen.

I hope that there is some basis for such a hope....I do however feel that Bill Richardson is the type of negotiator that may be needed in an Obama Administration - the question is how do you get him in?

Holder as AG and Napolitano at DHS Suggests Competency you can believe in

It is interesting to see some of the reaction to President elect Obama's emerging team. I have noticed a couple of talking heads murmuring about retreads and the restoration of the Clinton years. Let me make one point in response to that - a guy like Eric Holder worked in the Clinton Administration as deputy AG but that does not make him a Clinton guy. Holder has been with Obama from the early stages of the campaign, co-ran his VP search and will make history as the first African American AG. More than that however, he is a low key professional who can fix a Department of Justice that is in serious trouble.

If Holder is joined by Napolitano, I think that we will see another first timer at the top of an important agency that needs a competent professional to straighten things out.

Competence at DOJ and DHS - that is change I can believe in.

Lieberman and Clinton Moves Suggest a Big Agenda

My take on the recent moves by the Obama campaign are that they illustrate a desire to push an incredibly ambitious agenda over the course of the next 4-8 years. I am sure that there were some high up in Team Obama who were very frustrated with Lieberman and perhaps wished that they could strip him off his chairmanship of Homeland Security. However, they decide to let him back into the caucus because - I believe - the agenda they want to push is better served by drawing Joe in closer. Similarly, the choice of Clinton for State gives him a powerful figure to help push his foreign policy (but remember she will be one of several powerful figures around the President including the Veep), while ensuring that he has full control of the Congressional agenda.

Team Obama has given up a few cheap, but important political points, for a shot at a massively ambitious agenda. That is my take - what do you think?

Creating a Torture Commission

I have been a proponent of a Torture Commission for a few years and am pleased to see that Obama is looking at the possibility of creating one seriously. Salon describes the current thinking as follows:

"The Obama plan, first revealed by Salon in August, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington as Obama advisors begin to coordinate with Democrats in Congress on the proposal. The plan would not rule out future prosecutions, but would delay a decision on that matter until all essential facts can be unearthed. Between the time necessary for the investigative process and the daunting array of policy problems Obama will face upon taking office, any decision on prosecutions probably would not come until a second Obama presidential term, should there be one."

This is a smart approach. There will be some analysts who believe that the next Administration needs to go further quicker but I think that this is right - remember we have to use get the American people used to the idea that torture is NOT good thing and that it does not make us safer....yes we have fallen far under Bush.

Obama to Meet McCain Today

I chuckled when I read this paragraph of a WSJ article on the meeting between President elect Obama and Sen. McCain:

One senior McCain adviser said he suspects Sen. McCain will use Monday's meeting to press Mr. Obama not to withdraw U.S. forces precipitously from Iraq. The adviser added it would be "very damaging" to Mr. Obama to have Sen. McCain "out there as a critic" on national security and foreign policy.

It strikes me that the aide to Sen. McCain did not get the memo - Obama's view on national security prevailed during this election cycle. The country agrees with him on both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now, I am impressed that this meeting is happening so quickly and think that this has a lot to do with issues such as energy/environment in particular as well as immigration reform further down the road - the country needs bipartisan work on these issues and Obama is clearly building support for such action.