The hope and change continues at OMB
posted at 3:30 pm on November 26, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Paul McCartney famously remarked to his soon-to-be nemesis Allen Klein, “If you are screwing us, I don’t see how.” Conservatives may have the same feeling about Barack Obama’s appointments, which have been notable for their Establishment, centrist bent after a campaign of Leftist populism. The latest headscratcher comes at the Office of Management and Budget in the selection of Peter Orszag, who got praise from conservative stalwart Rob Portman, one of his predecessors:
Former Rep. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who served for several years as director of the Office of Management and Budget for President George W. Bush, today enthusiastically praised President-elect Obama’s pick for the job, Peter Orszag, the current director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Portman told me in an email that Orszag is a “good man” and a “solid choice.”
“He has demonstrated courage in addressing the unsustainable growth in entitlement spending and health care costs while at the CBO,” Portman wrote. “He will now have a bigger platform to continue those efforts.”
Not everyone feels so sanguine about Obama’s economic team, as RJ Matson expresses in his St. Louis Dispatch cartoon (via TMV):
King Banaian says he can’t complain, either. John Hinderaker thinks that Obama will mostly follow the Bush model in economic policy, and speculates that this is more evidence that Obama himself was the entire scope of the change he promised, and that he alone is “the One we have been waiting for”. Thus far, given the lack of change at Defense, the inclusion of so many Clinton-era officials in his incoming administration, a Scowcroftian foreign policy, and a Greenspan-admiring economic team, it’s hard to see how Obama is screwing us.
In fact, the only ones who got screwed thus far were the far-Left groups that bought into the Hope and Change populism and thought Obama would start a new Golden Age of Progressivism. They’re going to see another round of DLC leadership instead, or the Clinton Era II — with the Clintons included.
Of course, things changed for McCartney and Klein, and they’ll change with Obama, too. At least that’s what he promised.
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Sometimes I feel like I won this election.
lorien1973 on November 26, 2008 at 3:32 PM
Lets not count the chickens before they hatch. Obama is a snake and has clearly lied to someone. We hope he lied to the leftists, but it may be that he is just proceeding cautiously. My guess is that he has lied to everyone.
sharrukin on November 26, 2008 at 3:36 PM
I voted for McCain, but so far I’m relieved I’m not having to defend the “maverick” for doing things I disagree with personally.
Of course, it’s not 1/20/09 yet. We’ll have to see if we think Obama is governing as a “centrist” 2-3 years from now. I kinda doubt it, myself.
cs89 on November 26, 2008 at 3:36 PM
flotsam and jetsam . . . . flotsam and jetsam
TheMightyQuinn on November 26, 2008 at 3:37 PM
This is the honeymoon folks…
Firebird on November 26, 2008 at 3:39 PM
If only Obama had men the caliber of C. Montgomery Burns on his team…
pseudonominus on November 26, 2008 at 3:43 PM
I NEVER feel like I won the election. There is so much ick-factor in the crowd coming into authority that it’s hard to stomach. Drama that affects my safety is not entertainment.
Obama has been very consistent throughout his career: a man of modest talent and intelligence, self-promoting and astutely manipulative and opportunistic in that pursuit. Conservatives ignore past history at their peril. He’s choosing from the Clinton crowd because he’s never done anything and has no posse of his own. People change only at the margins of their personality and propensities – he won’t either. He’s an a-moral narcissist who believes he can control his environment. Most people experience the Peter Principle at least once in their life, so I think he will as well. I’d just as soon that growth experience not include my, my family or my savings accounts.
And – I don’t expect that he’ll be a regular at any church – that’s an activity has served its purpose.
wtis02575 on November 26, 2008 at 3:46 PM
+1
+10
fiscallyconservative on November 26, 2008 at 3:52 PM
Oh God….we’re so screwed.
NeoKong on November 26, 2008 at 3:52 PM
Scott McLellan for Smithers?
Flyover Country on November 26, 2008 at 3:56 PM
“Pay not attention to the former Clinton administration behind the curtain.”
geckomon on November 26, 2008 at 3:56 PM
watch me carefully.
which shell is the pea under now :-)
I’m sure Mr Obama, after 20 years of ridid adherance to the furthest left politics available in the world today, will operate a nice middle-of-the-road administration.
oops. nice try, but the pea is actually under that shell. For $2 you can play again.
notagool on November 26, 2008 at 4:01 PM
Although they shamelessly and unprofessionally continue to spew the Hope and Change nonsense. They are, after all, deeply committed.
rocksandbroncs on November 26, 2008 at 4:04 PM
Don’t be lulled into complacency folks. Obama HAS to put people with these “tendencies” in charge of the immediate economy. He (and I can’t believe I’m thinking this) KNOWS that his redistribute the wealth crap won’t work right away. He needs people feeling better about the economy before he can totally put the screws to the folks who actually pay income tax in this country. He’s biding his time. Don’t worry. The lunatic left will not be disappointed in the social changes he starts working on as soon as he’s sworn in.
Sugar Land on November 26, 2008 at 4:07 PM
His idea of balance…fiscal middle road, where most of the voters will at least accept him.
Liberal social…where a lot of Rino’s will accept him because of the fiscal, but his far left will love him.
The far left social cares little about the economy, and the Rino’s care less about social problems.
right2bright on November 26, 2008 at 4:13 PM
Look at it this way: for a while you can indulge in a good dose of ODS (as payback for 8 years of BDS) while watching the far-left liberal nutroots indulge their wrath, for being deceived, in a good dose of ODS.
Team shirts need to be issued so that someone can keep score.
Yoop on November 26, 2008 at 4:16 PM
I like the cartoon.
rob verdi on November 26, 2008 at 4:16 PM
Psst! Obama’s real dad was Dwight Eisenhower. Spread the rumor.
MB4 on November 26, 2008 at 4:17 PM
FTFY.
He is bringing the fiscal centrism of Clinton-with-a-conservative-congress, only with a radical leftist congress, for reasons that I can’t really figure out since it pretty much argues against everything he has ever said or done.
Maybe he lied to himself, too. He obviously lied to the nitwits at Kos and DU, much to my joy. But I suspect that he was telling conservatives the truth with his infanticide-based social platform.
Jaibones on November 26, 2008 at 4:19 PM
The far-left has been thrown under the bus. After they worked so hard for him in the primaries.
Sweet.
lodge on November 26, 2008 at 4:22 PM
He would never would have dreamt of depriving them of their moment of triumph. Alas, a moment was all he could spare.
PercyB on November 26, 2008 at 4:26 PM
He hasn’t served a day in office. We don’t know who he is or what he will do. It will be months before we have any evidence one way or the other. We do know what he has done when given the chance and this included gun bans, extreme positions on abortion, and hanging around with some very nasty people.
I would hold off celebrating as the KosKidz may have the last laugh.
sharrukin on November 26, 2008 at 4:31 PM
Remember that the corrolary to the Peter Principle is that if by some chance you rise above your level of incompetence, your rise is both rapid and unlimited. Obama, by his own admission, was incompetent as a community organizer.
There’s so much more room under Air Force One than there ever was under the campaign bus.
NeighborhoodCatLady on November 26, 2008 at 4:32 PM
Oh, every Judas once loved a Jesus
But finally treason will seize us
And only fools follow golden rules
We all are caught in the middle
Of one long treacherous riddle
Of who trusts who…
Maybe I’ll trust you..
But can you trust me?
Wait and see….
PercyB on November 26, 2008 at 4:32 PM
Peter Orszag aside, since Obama’s White House is packed with Clintonistas I’m thinking that will mean reverting to Clintonian tax rates and that is nothing to celebrate. As such I remain merely cautious and not ready to be cautiously optimistic.
Buy Danish on November 26, 2008 at 4:45 PM
I didn’t like this crew the first time around.
ddrintn on November 26, 2008 at 4:51 PM
I’m not worried about the people in the spotlights……it’s the people that will be coming and going in the dark that worry me.
WHO will he be listening to that we will NOT see?
Talon on November 26, 2008 at 5:17 PM
Meh. Orszag had a blind spot about the risk level of the GSEs:
He’s got a good CV, though.
Looks like the Clinton Administration without the Burning Sensation.
DrSteve on November 26, 2008 at 5:41 PM
This is not a suprise. I’ve said many a time the only consistent thing about Obama is that he used this current office to run for the next office. With no higher office to achieve he is going to consolidate power and try not to piss anyone off too much. The Clinton model. A lurch to the left would end his honeymoon but quick and the center right that voted for him will be drawn towards Republicans. Clinton had a tech bubble, Hopenchange does not, and he can’t reinflate the bubble with endless money printing. This we will find out the hard way.
Theworldisnotenough on November 26, 2008 at 5:42 PM
Correct me if I’m wrong, folks, but he can change his appointments at any time can’t he – say, around the end of 2010?
OldEnglish on November 26, 2008 at 5:52 PM
Give Obama the benefit of the doubt. Let’s see what happens.
clorensen on November 26, 2008 at 5:53 PM
Good guess. But first he had to lie to himself.
That’s impossible. I won this election.
manwithblackhat on November 26, 2008 at 6:00 PM
“it’s hard to see how Obama is screwing us.”
Only if you welcome the return of our old Clintonista overlords.
The folks who thought Obama was going to fill high profile positions with a pack of flaming lefties need to get out of the punditry business. You’ll find that crowd in his Dept. of Edu., but for the rest, did you just not notice his advisors? Did you not hear the clip of him claiming to have more Clinton people on board than Clinton did? Did you think he’d accidentally commit political suicide? When did the right start handing out points for temperament and looking presidential? Sheesh.
JM Hanes on November 26, 2008 at 6:04 PM
The fact is that Obama isn’t likely to govern much further from the center than McCain would have. On foreign policy, he was less political leeway to move to the “left” than McCain would have.
alex342 on November 26, 2008 at 6:06 PM
It could be that Obama used his radical roots to gin up the leftist base, and plans to govern from the center. Or this newfound “centrism” could be one huge head-fake while he is President-Elect while Bush is still in power, who could undermine him if he telegraphs a hard-left shift too early.
Right now, he’s President-Elect with a 51-49 Senate with an outgoing President from the other party, and needs to tread carefully. Once he’s President with a 58-42 Senate (at worst, from Obama’s point of view, if Coleman and Chambliss win), the temptation to lurch far left will be VERY strong–can a Chicago radical whose only message was vague platitudes about “change” resist such a temptation?
If Obama is smart, he’ll let his advisors guide him, and be the pretty young hopey-changey face on a center-left government, and the country will survive. If he lets his ego get the better of him, he might find his advisors’ policies too slow and prudent and fire them all, and the country will hang by the slender thread of Senate filibusters.
When voters don’t know what they’re voting for, they can get a pleasant surprise, or a Hitler.
Steve Z on November 26, 2008 at 6:22 PM
I’m not falling for any of it. Obama hasn’t drenched himself in socialist/marxist ideology from the time he was a teen, run on these principles, had dozens of audio and video interviews over the years reinforcing these ideas, written books about himself and how his world view came to be, spends years organizing the very machine he will need to overwhelm the US electorate and then…. finally gets to be the most powerful man in the world only to drift into mediocracy and conventional leadership. NO WAY NO HOW. This man, in my book is still a great danger!!
katy on November 26, 2008 at 8:10 PM
There’s still the FOCA, gun rights, judges etc that he can tack far left on while some get complacent because of these appointments. He has a congress that can push some of that so he can avoid taking complete responsibilty. And let’s not forget immigration “reform” with Mav going back to his usual ways. Hopefully Mav doesn’t treat his mantra of secure the borders first as badly as his VP was treated, with hardly a defense from him.
aikidoka on November 26, 2008 at 8:16 PM
Here’s a little more info on Obama’s ineligibility for be POTUS.
This guy is a fraud through and through and has pulled off the most remarkable scam in human history.
http://www.sonorannews.com/archives/2008/081126/FrntPgRegister.html
katy on November 26, 2008 at 8:31 PM
After mid-terms, we’ll see the rise of the O-Marxist…
TinMan13 on November 26, 2008 at 9:51 PM
Give Obama, Alexrod and Emmanuel credit here — they remember 1992-94 just like most people here, and remember Bill Clinton surviving in 1996 by adapting Dick Morris’ triangulation theory. They don’t plan to make the same mistake twice, and will try to start off the administration with the ‘95-2000 strategy and not with the special interest payoffs Clinton did as soon as he came to office in 1993.
That doesn’t mean that, eventually, the Obama Administration won’t try to push something through like Card Check or National Health Care. They’re just not going to do it right off the bat and are going to try to create as stable a situation with both the economy and foreign policy as possible before the go for the big stuff.
The question is on foreign policy is how much leeway people like Putin, Amedinejhad, Chavez, lil’ Kim, al Qaida and the leaders of China will give him,and on the domestic front how long will the left sit there and take it as DLC types and even Bush holdovers get jobs they thought would be going to people only slightly more to the right than Noam Chomsky (and if conservatives want the left to react, just start making very public statements that the netroots/Kos/DU/MoveOn types were just played for suckers by The One. They won’t be able to hold their tempers very long).
jon1979 on November 26, 2008 at 11:04 PM
I’ve already got my bumper sticker picked out.
TMK on November 27, 2008 at 1:04 AM
Maybe he just likes screwing with us. I can see that.
Doug on November 27, 2008 at 1:19 AM
At the end of the day he still makes the calls. All his advisers are there to do is ADVISE. He can then listen to the advice and say well gee you know thanks for the input guys but I still think I’m still going to do the whole raise taxes, raise spending, pull out of Iraq/Afghanistan, cut the military by 25%, ban guns, provide abortions to one and all for free thing.
angryed on November 27, 2008 at 8:38 AM
Watch the Clintonistas rise via Obamski! Oh goody. Clintons parts III and IV coming up in just a few short weeks.
johnnyU on November 27, 2008 at 8:48 AM
Excellent.
TedInATL on November 27, 2008 at 8:51 AM
I prefer Warbucks and McDuck myself, but I have to admit that Burns has the kind of skin-flint cred that I would find refreshing in government.
Count to 10 on November 27, 2008 at 11:00 AM
Keep in mind that these advisers a) amount to window dressing when it is congress that is going to pass the acutal laws, and b) are only “centrists” when what we actually need now are some hard line capitalists.
If he stays centrist, we are looking at a redux of the Carter years. If he puts our money where his mouth has been, we are back to FDR.
Count to 10 on November 27, 2008 at 11:04 AM
Who’s the brunette?
corona on November 27, 2008 at 2:26 PM
Is that Veronica of “Betty and Veronica” comics?
Err, I meant “I don’t know.”
Chuck Schick on November 27, 2008 at 3:36 PM
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