Campaign Diaries

Few people were taking the threat seriously, but it is worth noting nonetheless to reassure those who were burned by Bush v. Gore: One of the last potential obstacles (if we can even call it that) to Barack Obama’s inauguration was tossed out today when the Supreme Court declined to hear Donforio vs. Wells, a challenge to Obama’s natural-born citizenship.

The suit - filed by Leo Donforio, a resident of New Jersey - but contended that Obama had dual nationality at birth (American and British, since his father was Kenyan and Kenya was under British rule) and that this clashed with the Constitution’s natural-born clause no matter where Obama was born.

There are other suits against Obama’s eligibility, some channeling the theories that Obama was not Hawaii despite state officials confirming that Obama’s birth certificate is valid. (The most high-profile of these challenges is that of Philip Berg, a Philadelphia attorney.) Donforio’s suit attracted more attention last week when Justice Thomas referred the case to the entire court after Justice Souter had rejected it outright.

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Meanwhile, Steve Hildebrand - the deputy campaign manager of Obama’s presidential campaign and a name we grew familiar with over the course of the past year - published an essay in the Huffington Post in which he hit “the left wing of our Party” for criticizing Obama’s Cabinet.

Hildebrand did not ask that progressives wait for actual policy decisions - the most common response we hear to critics; rather, he defended Obama’s centrist (and, in the case of national security, openly right-wing) choices using the President-elect’s familiar post-partisan argument and warning that Obama will not govern from the left. Quite the contrary, Hildebrand writes, Obama will not get to the Left’s concerns until after he has started to “get our economy moving, bring our troops home safely, fix health care, end climate change and restore our place in the world:”

This is not a time for the left wing of our Party to draw conclusions about the Cabinet and White House appointments that President-Elect Obama is making. Some believe the appointments generally aren’t progressive enough. Having worked with former Senator Obama for the last two years, I can tell you, that isn’t the way he thinks and it’s not likely the way he will lead. The problems I mentioned above and the many I didn’t, suggest that our president surround himself with the most qualified people to address these challenges. After all, he was elected to be the president of all the people — not just those on the left.

First of all, it is important to note that Hildebrand no longer works for Obama as he declined moving to Washington. His essay should thus not be interpreted as the official position of Obama’s team and we should as always remember that policy decisions starting on January 20th will be far more important than what Obama’s former deputy campaign manager has to say.

That said, this essay has attracted enough attention to warrant a response. My problem with Hildebrand’s argument is not that he is defending centrist appointments but that he is doing so in a gratuitous and deceptive manner. Gratuitous, first: Progressives have not been very vocal against Obama’s picks, generally giving him the benefit of the doubt and many even arguing that Obama’s bi-partisan team would give him cover to implement a more liberal agenda (an argument I summarized here).

Gratuitous, also, because there is no need for a Democrat - and one who proclaims himself a “liberal member of our Party,” though Hildebrand appears to carefully distinguish the “liberal wing” from the “left wing” - to hit on members of his party’s left, and in the process fueling Republican talking-points that portray the left as out of touch with reality. Whether Obama intends to govern as a liberal or as a centrist, he will need the left to not be discredited to implement card checks or health care reform.

Deceptive, finally: Obama never ran on a radical platform nor as a left-winger so I for one never expected him to be a committed progressive. But if he wants to govern from the center, there is no need to couch it in meaningless post-partisan rhetoric.

Gates, Jones and Summer are all highly intelligent men who thankfully have opinions on how to protect the country or improve the economy. It makes no sense to suggest that Obama’s appointees were not designated based on what their prior decisions, actions and writing reveal about their approach to the country’s problem - experiences that has provided them with ideas and opinion, a more or less hawkish or dovish, neo-liberal or progressive profile.

Now, the discussion on whether Obama is building cover for progressive governance or whether he is more comfortable with a centrist entourage can live on, but let’s not pretend that his appointments are not relevant to debates on his ideological commitments (unless we accept that most qualified people just happen to be centrists, and what would that reveal about the way Obama views the left?).

Let’s not pretend that the people Obama is tapping have no prior opinion on the appropriate use of force, on how trade regulations can impact productivity or on how to balance civil liberties and national security - opinions that are well-documented, well-known and that are bound to impact their future decision-making.

For that matter, Obama’s team is less shy about acknowledging ideological motivations when it taps a progressive - for instance Jared Barnstein’s becoming Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser is being presented as a sign that labor will have Biden’s ear and a voice at Obama’s economic table.

Whether Hildebrand likes it or not, centrist politicians are also driven by ideological reasons, by which I mean that they come to particular problems with a framework within which to place them and preconceived ideas (formed by their prior experiences, economic and military theory and their understanding of history) on how to address them. They might think that a balanced budget is important or that the use of military force is justified in some contexts.

Frankly, to suggest that Obama’s thinking that Gates, Jones, Clinton, Richardson, Summers and Geithner are the most qualified for the job has nothing to do with where those men and women stand on these important questions is insulting to them and to Obama.