Counterpunch Weekend Edition
November 21 / 23, 2008
Changing With Retreads
The Third Clinton Administration
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.
Ralph Nader is the author of The Seventeen Traditions.
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