When pod people talk foreign policy...

Yes, the pod people from Fomalhaut b are at it again!

This time it's ostensibly liberal pundit E.J. Dionne in Obama's Bush Doctrine Washington Post 11/28/08:

In electing Barack Obama, the country traded the foreign policy of the second President Bush for the foreign policy of the first President Bush.

That is the meaning of Obama's apparent decision to keep Robert Gates on as defense secretary and also to select Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

Say what? In what way is Obama's foreign policy like that of Old Man Bush? Well, when he talked about the Iraq War in a speech Dionne heard or read, he made mention of unfavorable practical consequences of the disaster known as the Iraq War. And other people associated with Obama's foreign policy team also talk about the practical consequences of foreign policies.

So, gee whiz! That means his foreign policy is like Old Man Bush's!

Does this mean that Obama is going to send troops to Somalia for no apparent reason? That he's facing international problems analogous to the end of the Warsaw Pact, the democratizing of eastern Europe and the fall of the Soviet Union?

Uh, no, not in PunditWorld. There, it means that Democratic liberals are grumpy and losers and that Obama has to govern like a Republican:

Obama's national security choices are already causing grumbling from parts of the antiwar left, even if Obama made clear six years ago that while he was with them on Iraq, he was not one of them.

Ironically, Obama is likely to show more fidelity to George H.W. Bush's approach to foreign affairs than did the former president's own son. That's change, maybe even change we can believe in, but it's not the change so many expected.

Oh, and Obama talks to Old Man Bush's and Colin Powell's crony Brent Scowcroft, who also talks about the negative practical consequences of the Iraq War.

But actual policies that compare to Old Man Bush's? Why talk about that when you can gossip about how Obama has been talking to?

It's true that Old Man Bush's foreign policy was more sober-minded and realistic than Bush Junior's. But, good grief, so was every other President's that I can think of! Yhis whole column reads as though it was constructed to be a vehicle for those last two paragraphs quoted.

In the real world, we could look at the appointment of Samantha Power as head of Clinton's State Department transition team and saw - more plausibly - that Obama's administration is likely to have a liberal internationalist and maybe even humanitarian interventionist outlook. Which was more the policy of the Clinton administration. And Obama's Secretary of State is going to be, uh, Hillary Clinton.

One difficulty for our Big Pundits is relating the Samantha Power story is that Power was the one who had to formally resign from the campaign for once calling Clinton a "monster". And in the pundit Clinton Derangement Syndrome, Vile Hillary is mean, ruthless and vindictive. Which if she really was that, she probably would not be putting Power in charge of her transition team.

In understanding how superficial Dionne's approach is, Gleen Greenwald's Ideology vs. pragmatism: Is one more important than the other? Salon 11/24/08 is helpful.

Also, the Big Pundits love the narrative that says liberals are upset with Obama's appointments. And there has been some criticism from activist Democrats about Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Hillary Clinton. But personally I haven't been terribly impressed with what I've seen of that criticism. And I don't get the sense that there's really a lot of liberals, even dirty blogging hippies, that are really upset over any of Obama's appointments so far.

I'm still hoping that Obama doesn't make the Gates appointment as Secretary of Defense. I worry that it will come back to bite him, and sooner rather than later. For instance, Gates may try to slow the Iraq withdrawal. And when the military kicks up some dispute to establish their general negotiating position with Obama (like Colin Powell as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff did with gays in the military during the Clinton transition in 1992-93), I would prefer he had someone more loyal to his program to have his back at Defense. Wesley Clark would be my favorite.

But even there, the staunchly liberal Joe Conason is willing to defend the Gates choice. He returned to the subject in The Gates Debate New York Observer 11/27/08. So this story the high-end press are reciting about how liberal Democrats are all discouraged and angry about Obama's appointments is more imagination than reality, at this point. As the Establishment press conventional wisdom so often is. Or, when Bill or Hillary Clinton is involved, even completely divorced from reality.

Tags: barack obama, brent scowcroft, hillary clinton, samantha power