Peter Beinart: Team of Hawks. Worth checking out re: Obama's national security team.

[beachmom]

I know, I know. Peter Beinart of TNR fame. Still, I think he has a compelling argument for why Obama has surrounded himself with hawks and Republicans. Of course, only time will tell on whether he is right. But it is an interesting theory echoed by Andrew Sullivan a couple of weeks ago. It is also substantively the best case for why Kerry is positioned as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, not Secretary of State. Again, feel free to disagree, but at least this is a real argument on the merits, instead of useless gossip.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1862446,00.html

In liberal blogland, reports that Barack Obama will probably choose Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and retired general James Jones as National Security Adviser and retain Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense have prompted a chorus of groans. "I feel incredibly frustrated," wrote Chris Bowers on OpenLeft.com "Progressives are being entirely left out."

A word of advice: cheer up. It's precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he's surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home. When George W. Bush wanted to sell the Iraq war, he trotted out Colin Powell--because Powell was nobody's idea of a hawk. Now Obama may be preparing to do the reverse. To give himself cover for a withdrawal from Iraq and a diplomatic push with Iran, he's surrounding himself with people like Gates, Clinton and Jones, who can't be lampooned as doves.

To grasp the logic of this strategy, start with the fact that Obama's likely national-security picks don't actually disagree very much with the foreign policy he laid out during the campaign. Jones is on record calling the Iraq war a "debacle" and urging that the detention center at Guantánamo Bay be closed "tomorrow." Gates has also reportedly pushed for closing Gitmo and for faster withdrawals from Iraq. He has called a military strike against Iran a "strategic calamity," urged diplomacy with Tehran's mullahs and denounced the "creeping militarization" of U.S. foreign policy. (You don't hear that from a Defense Secretary every day.) For her part, Hillary Clinton during the presidential campaign embraced an Iraq-withdrawal position virtually identical to Obama's. And although they fought a sound-bite war over sitting down with the leaders of countries like Iran, the two candidates' actual Iran policies were pretty much the same. Both wanted intensive diplomacy; both wanted to start it at lower levels and work up from there.

On key policy issues, Jones, Gates and Clinton aren't significantly more hawkish than Obama. What they are is more hawkish symbolically. Gates is a Republican; Jones is a Marine general who once worked for John McCain; Clinton, as Senator from New York, has gained credibility with hawkish pro-Israel groups. In other words, what distinguishes Gates, Jones and Clinton isn't their desire to shift Obama's policies to the right; it's their ability to persuade the right to give Obama's policies a chance.

The rest of the article at the link.

First off, there is a bit of a strawman argument at the beginning. Most liberal blogs seem fine with the nominations, or at least are giving it a wait and see attitude. Still, I think a lot of people are thinking what Chris Bowers has been writing and wondering what is up. IF Beinart is right (a big if that we will learn if it is true in the next year or so), then it is actually an argument for why John Kerry would not be Secretary of State. Kerry comes with a remarkable record of bringing peace for this country. He helped end the Vietnam War and he crafted the Iraq withdrawal plan which initially only got 13 votes in the Senate, which now Obama's team of hawks is going to implement (or at least is supposed to per Obama's campaign promise). What we know is incredible insight and political courage is to others "Baggage". Not to me, of course, but to a lot of Americans, he's the guy who protested the Vietnam War. In the article, Beinart sites some poll numbers that still show Americans stubbornly clinging to the Republicans being better for national security. So this is not an imagined weakness; it is real.

The other side of the coin to this argument is that Obama is going to indeed pursue a progressive agenda foreign policy wise. If that is so, then new ideas need to continue to be churned out toward that goal. They also need to be independently "floated" so if the Establishment is not ready for them, President Obama won't take any hits. Then as time goes by, and people start to accept those ideas, Obama can run with them. That is precisely what happened with the Kerry/Feingold amendment. It was "radical" in June '06. The closing argument for Democrats in October '06. "Bipartisan" in the Iraq Study Group report in December '06. And now accepted as the policy of the land starting in January '09, while already being agreed to by Iraqis in December '08. Not a bad run, eh?

I am excited to see what Kerry does with the Chairmanship next year. But I am still upset about two things: Dodd keeping his options open at the SFRC and the way Kerry was treated in the press and by "Some Democrats" during the SoS vetting process. Still, I think Kerry is going to be a very powerful Senator and will be an instrumental influence on the Obama Administration.

[Mass]

1. Peter Beinart would be more credible if he did not have different arguments depending

on the media he writes in.

Here, his argument is that Hillary's fame and supporters within the Beltway will make her a more powerful SoS than Kerry or Richardson that would be too light against Biden or Jones, and more able than other to triangulate when talking to others (I paraphrase, obviously).

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2008-12-01/obama-was-right-about-hillary/

While I am fine with Kerry where he is, as he will have his hand freer for pushing the topics he is interested in while not necessarily deferring to the White House vision (though I would assume he is largely in agreement with Obama on most things), the fact is that Beinart is too chicken to admit that he is fine with a bunch of hawks, and nobody there to defend a vision of foreign policy that is on the other side of Biden and Obama. I am not surprised Beinart is happy with this vision, particularly considering he has never been bothered by the Clinton media circus. While I like Biden and Obama, I do not think reassuring there is no balance on the other side, pushing for a less hawkish and more internationalist vision of foreign policy.

Now, I agree I am bothered by how some media (largely the DC media and the RW) treated Kerry, and even more by the fact that some of these "leaks" seem to come from Dems in some quarters. When it comes to Dodd, I am less than bothered by what is rumored on some blogs. We'll see what happens in two years, but I would not expect Dodd to state he will never ask for this chairmanship. I have never seen him answer the question, so who knows who answered it (a staffer who would love the position?).

[beachmom]

2. Actually, he restated the same argument here:

3) She has a domestic base. When it comes to foreign policy, Obama seems determined to do some pretty controversial things: Step up withdrawals from Iraq, launch a diplomatic push with Iran, perhaps shift resources from America’s military to the diplomatic corps. All these things will require a secretary of state who knows how to sell policies in Peoria, and on Capitol Hill. That’s one of Hillary’s big advantages. She thinks like a politician, not a career diplomat, which is crucial since Obama’s Middle East policies will likely require a kind of political campaign at home, so the right can’t successfully paint him as soft on America’s foes.

I don't know about #2. I guess I am not savvy enough to know how much insider allies in DC means. What I do know is that Kerry has a much firmer grasp of foreign policy than Hillary. So the idea that he would be weak while she would be strong is just nuts. When you know what you think and aren't afraid to say it, you are strong. That's Kerry from late 2005 on. Hillary has not had any moment of truth I am aware of.