The Third Clinton Adminstration

[Michael]

The Third Clinton Adminstration

By RALPH NADER

While the liberal intelligentsia was swooning over Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, I counseled “prepare to be disappointed.” His record as a Illinois state and U.S. Senator, together with the many progressive and long overdue courses of action he opposed during his campaign, rendered such a prediction unfortunate but obvious.

Now this same intelligentsia is beginning to howl over Obama’s transition team and early choices to run his Administration. Having defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primaries, he now is busily installing Bill Clinton’s old guard. Thirty one out of forty seven people that he has named so far for transition or appointments have ties to the Clinton Administration, according to Politico. One Clintonite is quoted in the Washington Post as saying – “This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time.”

Obama’s “foreign policy team is now dominated by the Hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990,” writes Jeremy Scahill. Obama’s transition team reviewing intelligence agencies and recommending appointments is headed by John Brennan and Jami Miscik, who worked under George Tenet when the CIA was involved in politicizing intelligence for, among other officials, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s erroneous address before the United Nations calling for war against Iraq.

Mr. Brennan, as a government official, supported warrantless wiretapping and extraordinary rendition to torturing countries. National Public Radio reported that Obama’s reversal when he voted for the revised FISA this year relied on John Brennan’s advise.

For more detail on these two advisers and others recruited by Obama from the dark old days, see Democracy Now, November 17, 2008 and Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet, Nov. 20, 2008 “This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama’s White House.”

The top choice as White House chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel—the ultimate hard-nosed corporate Democrat, military-foreign policy hawk and Clinton White House promoter of corporate globalization, as in NAFTA and the World Trade Organization.

Now, recall Obama’s words during the bucolic “hope and change” campaign months: “The American people…understand the real gamble is having the same old folks doing things over and over and over again and somehow expecting a different result.” Thunderous applause followed these remarks.

“This is more ‘Groundhog Day’ then a fresh start,” asserted Peter Wehner, a former Bush adviser who is now at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The signs are amassing that Barack Obama put a political con job over on the American people. He is now daily buying into the entrenched military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned Americans about in his farewell address.

With Robert Rubin on his side during his first photo opportunity after the election, he signaled to Wall Street that his vote for the $750 billion bailout of those speculators and crooks was no fluke (Rubin was Clinton’s financial deregulation architect in 1999 as Secretary of the Treasury before he became one of the hugely paid co-directors tanking Citigroup.)

Obama’s apologists say that his picks show he wants to get things done, so he wants people who know their way around Washington. Moreover, they say, the change comes only from the president who sets the priorities and the courses of action, not from his subordinates. This explanation assumes that a president’s appointments are not mirror images of the boss’s expected directions but only functionaries to carry out the Obama changes.

If you are inclined to believe this improbable scenario, perhaps you may wish to review Obama’s record compiled by Matt Gonzalez at Counterpunch.

[edededed]

Guess you're a Republican, then?

[Walter Joyce]

Never a shortage of naysayers and in politics, especially among the perennial losers, especially among the losers.

[Michael]

Me? No, I'm neither democrat, republican, or any other and never have been. That's just a trap. You can take political action without being obligated to a narrow ideology and a pre-defined set of opponents.

[Peacedog]

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

[Michael]

With Zbigniew in there and Volker back in another role it sure feels like it.

[TaoJoannes]

I remember the Clinton years as a time of prosperity and promise, so this is a good thing.

[Steve James]

Lol! How many people here were voting age during the Carter administration?
Better yet, what was the "best" time you remember from the last 30 years?

[Chanchu]

It looks bad to me- I think people are about to wise up fast....

no lobby people in a Obama admin.? that's what he said- gave quite a speech on it- seems he has done the exact opposite..

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/11/15/l ... tion-team/

Anyway give him a year see what happens.

[Doc Stier]

Lol! How many people here were voting age during the Carter administration?

I was of voting age during the Carter Administration, but I didn't vote for him.
Carter appeared to be a decent, good hearted man to me, but I thought he was
too passive and weak willed to be President.

Doc

[Steve James]

I didn't vote for Carter either, but I didn't vote for anybody then. It was right after Watergate, and I thought "What's the point." When Carter tried to run again, for the 80 election, he was so unpopular that he didn't even get the nomination. So, Reagan won, beating Kennedy, really easily.

Anyway, when people talk about Carter, it's like he did bad things. Compared to the guys directly preceding him, yeah, he wasn't a hawk --even though he was a Navy vet. At any rate, he wasn't very lucky, except with peace negotiations. America was in a losing mood at the time and needed a shot in the arm. Ronald Raygun, the end of the hostage situation, the hockey team, etc., were just what the doctor ordered. Those days of the 80s, big hair and Miami Vice, were a big change from the late 70s --and Death Wish. But, I don't remember the Carter years as being exceptionally bad. They were actually kind of blah, actually. I'd take them over the late 60s and early 70s with tricky dicky any day.

[Walter Joyce]

Doc,

I'd venture to say that anyone who can get elected governor of Georgia and then capture his party's nomination for the president is anything but passive and weak willed.

I'll be the first to admit I made a number of judgments about people in public life when I was younger that I laugh about now.

I think that as young people we sometimes forget that for people to achieve enough in their field to garner attention on the national stage there is probably something going on there that separates them from the pack, yet I know upon reflection that because of that sense of familiarity that mass media deludes us with we often judge the famous as if they're one of the neighborhood.

Odds are they aren't, despite appearances.

Of course it could be just me that has made that mistake.

To take it to the absurd level, I love watching professional golf, and at one point I thought of the guys who never or rarely won on tour as "losers". But until they made the tour they had to have won an awful lot of tournaments along the way, and even on their worst day on the course they'd still kick my ass on my best day.

In the same way I'd venture to repeat that Ole Jimmy was anything but weak or passive. But many Americans saw him as just that.

He was done in by the hostage crisis and the economy if I remember correctly.

[qiphlow]

i've got this feeling that the next four years will be more of the same medicine. it'll just have a better flavor.

[klonk]

I remember the Clinton years as a time of prosperity and promise, so this is a good thing.

Transdimensionally shift much?

[Doc Stier]

I don't remember the Carter years as being exceptionally bad. They were actually kind of blah. I'd take them over the late 60s and early 70s with tricky dicky any day.

Funny you should mention "Tricky Dick" Nixon. While sorting through a box of old memorabilia recently, I found a anti-Nixon election campaign button which reads "Never change Dicks in the middle of a screw...vote for Nixon in '72."

Doc