Barack Obama’s signature issue in the primaries was his “good judgment” to oppose the Iraq war. He invoked this more than any other qualification in his early battles with Hillary Clinton. She may have experience, he’d charge, but she lacked the wisdom to oppose the war. Indeed, the whole Democratic establishment was somehow corrupt or out of touch for not opposing the war, according to the Obamaphiles. So now Barack Obama is going to appoint Hillary Clinton to be the chief architect of his foreign policy. Moreover, he picked Joe Biden to be his running mate and “partner” in the White House explicitly because of his foreign policy experience and judgment. But wait: Joe Biden, too, supported the war. Meanwhile, at Defense, it looks like he will keep George W. Bush’s man, Robert Gates. Admittedly, Gates has always been more nuanced about the war than, say, Don Rumsfeld. But surely keeping Bush’s SecDef is not exactly what the anti-war Dems had in mind as “change we can believe in.” Heck, Joe Lieberman’s sitting pretty and he endorsed McCain. It will be interesting to see how long Obama’s charisma can paper over reality.
Heh. Plus, Tom Maguire on the National Security Advisor choice. More on that here.
UPDATE: Reader C.J. Burch emails: “The right bloggers should study all this. Should they form their own Kos contingent they can pretty much count on the same sort of treatment from a future Republican President.” I think that’s probably right and it’s one reason — one of several — why I think the Kos path isn’t the way to go.
ANOTHER UPDATE: So how’s this prediction looking now?
MORE: Bill Quick comments: “On the other hand, without a conservative version of the Kossacks, there may never be another Republican President.”