‘Partisan’ Seeks a Prefix: Bi- or Post-
By JOHN HARWOOD
NYT
Washington — Six weeks before taking office, President-elect Barack Obama can already boast one striking accomplishment: persuading partisan, ideological adversaries to see him in a less partisan, less ideological light.
The reappraisal runs deeper than Mr. Obama’s photo-op pleasantries with Senator John McCain. Derided during the campaign as a purveyor of “socialism” who was guilty of “palling around with terrorists,” he has since won praise from conservatives for retaining Robert Gates as defense secretary, for naming Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser and for selecting the moderate Timothy F. Geithner, who helped draw up the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout plan, as his Treasury secretary.
Karl Rove has called Mr. Obama’s economic team “reassuring,” and other Bush alumni agree. “Obama is doing something marvelously right,” Michael Gerson, President Bush’s onetime senior speechwriter, wrote in The Washington Post. “He is disappointing the ideologues.”
More remarkably, Mr. Obama has reaped those plaudits without seeming to abandon his commitment to the same policies that conservatives routinely attacked during the campaign — his pledge to expand health care coverage, to withdraw troops from Iraq and to increase government spending on infrastructure and alternative energy projects. On the contrary, Mr. Obama has indicated that he will follow his belief in activist government with an economic stimulus package much larger than what he proposed in the campaign. And there has been, so far, very little grumbling from conservatives.
(More here.)
NYT
Washington — Six weeks before taking office, President-elect Barack Obama can already boast one striking accomplishment: persuading partisan, ideological adversaries to see him in a less partisan, less ideological light.
The reappraisal runs deeper than Mr. Obama’s photo-op pleasantries with Senator John McCain. Derided during the campaign as a purveyor of “socialism” who was guilty of “palling around with terrorists,” he has since won praise from conservatives for retaining Robert Gates as defense secretary, for naming Gen. James L. Jones as his national security adviser and for selecting the moderate Timothy F. Geithner, who helped draw up the Bush administration’s Wall Street bailout plan, as his Treasury secretary.
Karl Rove has called Mr. Obama’s economic team “reassuring,” and other Bush alumni agree. “Obama is doing something marvelously right,” Michael Gerson, President Bush’s onetime senior speechwriter, wrote in The Washington Post. “He is disappointing the ideologues.”
More remarkably, Mr. Obama has reaped those plaudits without seeming to abandon his commitment to the same policies that conservatives routinely attacked during the campaign — his pledge to expand health care coverage, to withdraw troops from Iraq and to increase government spending on infrastructure and alternative energy projects. On the contrary, Mr. Obama has indicated that he will follow his belief in activist government with an economic stimulus package much larger than what he proposed in the campaign. And there has been, so far, very little grumbling from conservatives.
(More here.)
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