Obama - LIberal or Moderate?

This "analysis" from the AP purports to show that President Obama isn't a far-left liberate. He can't be if he has appointed Bush carry-overs. How should we react to this?

The two top posts mentioned are Fed chief Ben Bernanke and Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

The other appointees mentioned are Sheila Bair, chair of the Federal Deposit Insurance Fund; Ray LaHood, Transportation Secretary; John McHugh, Secretary of the Army and Jon Huntsman, ambassador to China. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health is also listed even thought he is not a Republican. This shows that the list is being padded.

I'm going to ignore the "other appointees" list outright. They make good windows dressing but none of these is in a position to affect policies that are important to the Obama administration.

These choices do shed a lot of light on the Obama administration and its paradoxes. Obama has aggressively pushed for major changes in some areas while keeping Bush policies and, in some cases, Bush hold-overs in others. In many cases, Obama has kept policies that he campaigned against. His Iraq policy is a continuation of Bush's. He campaigned against rendition and tribunals but has allowed both.

I think that there is a very simple explanation. Obama came to office as an ambitious but inexperienced president. He has several areas where he wants to make his mark. There are others that he campaigned on but doesn't really have strong views. That's where the seeming paradox lies. If Obama cares about something then he puts his own man in charge and puts his own stamp on it. If he doesn't really care about it then he appoints a moderate or even a Bush hold-over and lets it continue with little change.

This approach has its uses. The White House can defend itself against charges that it is radical by pointing to the moderates it has appointed. Here's an example:

The notion that he is moving the government to the left "is laughable, it's utterly laughable," said Thomas E. Mann, a government scholar at the Brookings Institution. Mann said the decision to keep Bernanke and Gates "doesn't buy him a thing with Republicans but was a sign of good judgment in both cases" because Bernanke and Gates were doing good jobs.

There are drawbacks. Many of the issues that Obama doesn't care about loom large in the eyes of his supporters. Cindy Sheehan has already pronounced Obama as bad as Bush about ending the wars. Others are upset about the continuation of rendition and the tribunals.

This will eventually come back to haunt Obama. Single-issue voters have long memories and Obama is seen to be forsaking many of them.