Short Honeymoon

Most President-elects get at least a few weeks in office before they get called out by the media. The AP, at least, has only given Barack Obama a few weeks after his election.

"President-elect promised change, picking insiders" is the top AP news story on the wire this morning. While a lot of folks on the right grumbled about Rahm Emanuel as his Chief of Staff, we probably thought, secretly, that it was a good choice if Obama was going to bring a lot of new blood into the Neophyte House with him.

Instead, his cabinet choices are starting to look like a who's who of Beltway insiders. Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, Colin Powell (possibly) for Secretary of Education, Tom Daschle as Health and Human Services, and Eric Holder (a good choice, though) as Attorney General.

Many folks will brush off the critism, and compare his cabinet choices to those of George Bush who brought back half of his father and Ronald Reagan's old cabinets. The difference is Bush didn't claim he was going to change the way we do business in Washington, just the tone. His misjudgement was that the Democrats wanted a new tone.

The irony of it is that while many of his friends in Congress are working on the bail-out ideas for the Big 3 they are claiming that without a wholesale change in leadership at those entities it's going to be impossible to make them work right. Barack Obama claimed the same thing about Washington, but is bringing back the same old folks to DC who've help keep it screwed up for the last 2 decades.

So far the only "outside" name to come up as a possible Cabinet member is Penny Pritzker for Secretary of Commerce. Her claim to fame is running Obama's fund raising efforts, and being an heir to the Hyatt Hotels brand. Well, that and running Superior Bank, which lead the way in turning subprime loans into marketable securities. That bank failed with Pritzker and her family at the helm.

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Predictions For The Next Two Years

Here's a bold, against the grain prediction for the next 2 years. Barack Obama will NOT push the extreme liberal agenda many in Congress want, and supporters will demand.


Like it or not, and many on the left will be in the NOT category, Obama has a couple of problems with pushing the repressed liberal agenda through to law. It's another case of reality meeting rhetoric.


The first is the economy, stupid. He can't afford a bunch of new social spending when he's already looking at a TWO TRILLION dollar deficit for next year. That's a big number, but with the bailout, and another looming economic stimulus, and a Detroit Bailout there just isn't the money. He knows he can only raise taxes on so many, so far, and not finish killing the economy.


Second, history. In the last 32 years the Democrats have controlled both houses of congress, and 1600 Pennsylvania for a total of 6 years. They lost 2 of 3 in 1980, finally got them all back in 1992; and then lost the House in 1994, and the Senate a few years later. All of the losses are easily attributable to pushing to big a social agenda too fast and coming up with economically horrible game plans; 1994 being the best case in point of it.


If you look at the choice of John Podesta as transition coordinator; and probably senior cabinet member; and Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff Obama has grabbed a couple of Clinton advisers that not only know what was done right in those 8 years, but what was done wrong. They'll probably both work towards a somewhat moderate agenda until after the mid term elections. It's entirely possible they'll work on him, and congress, to push a close to centrist agenda until 2012, to ensure a second term and continuing majorities.


Third, it's still the economy, stupid. Some of the pet projects of Democrats are going to get held off on until the economy recovers. One of the surprises in the first 100 days will be that the union backed "card check" legislation won't get signed into law, it may not make it in the first two years.


Obama and his advisers are smart enough to know that increasing labor costs when the job pool is shrinking isn't a great idea. So it will be brought up to placate the union bosses who supported him. But then will die because of a GOP threatened filibuster in the Senate.


So what will liberals get to keep them happy? They'll see a reimportation bill pass, to allow buying drugs from Canada. They may even get some modest price controls on drug bought through medicare with a "negoiated price" on many popular drugs.


SCHIP will expand to higher income levels. It will be hard to demonize childrens health care when the unemployment rate is going up. The GOP may be able to push through a timeframe on the expansion though, or economic milestones that bring it back to the current level.


The Bush tax cuts that took 30 million off the tax rolls will get extended, and some of them will be allowed to expire, specifically say "Welcome Back!" to the death tax and marriage penalty. Capital gains may end up off the table for a while, but increasing withholding for Social Security, in some form, for incomes over $200,000 will probably happen.


Liberals will also get a "security agreement" with Iraq that will bring everyone home in a relatively short amount of time. They'll also claim any problems after they leave aren't their problem because of such an agreement. Anyone looking for a long term basing agreement such as we have with Kuwait and Bahrain will be sorely disappointed.

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McCain's Boeing Problem

John McCain has a problem, now that Boeing has been beaten out by Northrop-Grumman and EADS for an Air Force contract to build tankers.

Why is McCain in trouble because of this? He was one of the guys who pulled the rug out of a previous deal, awarded to Boeing to build those tankers. Democrats from Nancy Pelosi to Rahm Emanuel to Norm Dicks from Washington (where Boeing has a lot of plants) are screaming that it's McCain's fault.

The truth is, it's Boeing's fault. These folks railing against McCain have short, selective memories about this particular incident. You see, the reason Boeing lost the contract originally wasn't because McCain had a problem with them. They had a hiring problem, and a scandal problem.

Boeing had hired Darleen Druyun, an Air Force procurement officer illegally, actually while she was still in the Air Force. She went to jail for that. The guy responsible for her hiring, Michael Sears admitted that the hiring was illegal, and that Druyun was funneling Air Force contract money to Boeing, including helping with the original tanker deal. He went to prison for his role in the scandal.

Nearly a dozen years worth of Druyun's contract work, totalling billions of dollars, came under scrutiny, and it was found that's she'd been working pretty closely with Boeing and getting them sweethart deals.

Somehow, in Congressional Democrats minds, rebidding a contract that was fraudulently awarded is now a bad thing. These are the same folks who've been asking for, or conducting, hearings about anything and everything under the sun since Bush took office to try and find some sort of fraud.

They are the same folks who, bipartisanly, included new military procurement guidelines in the 2006 Defense Authorization Bill, because of the Boeing scandal. Now, suddenly, they are appalled at the idea that their version of an 'open and honest' contracting process didn't give them the winner they wanted.

Hopefully Congress doesn't decide that the Air Force has to rebid the contract, or just come out and order them to award it to Boeing. International defense spending is tilted pretty far in the US favor when you look at closely. There is European money being spent on the F-35, Aegis equipped destroyers, F-16's and other US equipment. It would be a shame to see those contracts come under scrutiny from the other side of the pond because suddenly we don't like doing business with European companies.

Of course if they do, Congressional Democrat's won't take responsibility for it, as always it will be someone elses fault.

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