The above picture was taken by me a few weeks ago on a back road in rural Maine. How rural? I was with a friend a few houses down working near the road for about an hour and I don't think a car drove by. So whoever did this did it more out of pride and commitment than the hope of widespread notice. When you go to the trouble of spelling out someone's name like they did--the letters were 4-5 feet high--it's not just about pride, as with the flag, it's about something else, too, I think. "Obama" means promise, really does mean hope.
It's a cliche, but when I rounded the corner and saw the display, my heart swelled. Yes, the election was over and our guy won but just the idea that someone went to the trouble to first put the sign up and then to have left it there after the deal was done said a lot to me. All I've done is leave my bumpersticker on and keep the MSNBC election night coverage on my TiVo. It's hope, nonetheless, I guess.
But lately Obama's choices for his cabinet have given me doubts, and I would like some advice. I'm encouraged by his infrastructure jobs proposal and suspect he had a hand in getting Henry Waxman as chairman of the critical Energy and Commerce Committee (Obama named Phil Schiliro, a long-time aid to Waxman, to serve as assistant to the president for legislative affairs).
Other than that, though, I'm honestly discouraged. Obama's smart as hell and politics is his life, but I'm worried that he's being too cautious, too Beltway-centric, too pro the old thoroughly discredited DLC Democrat party "apparatchiks", as A Gnostic put it in another diary. Leaving in his seat the Quisling (and lousy chairman) Joe Lieberman, choosing Hillary, Vilsack, Gates, probably LaHood (who's also yet another Illini), have not encouraged me that Obama's going to be the real difference we need.
Some have said that Obama's throwing bones to conservatives or to the religious right with his choices. But what worries me is that he's thrown no bones to Howard Dean supporters, to say nothing of putting the good doctor in his cabinet. Where are those from the left, or even left-center? What about us? Where's my bone, Barack?
Because I have to say, those in the center and center-right that make up the nominees so far have been wrong. We left of center were right. We crashed the gates. It was they who got us into this goddamned mess and they are sure as hell NOT going to get us out of it. Geithner at Treasury? How about effing Paul Krugman? THAT would be change on the scale we need.
So, help me Kossacks. What am I missing? Is Obama himself the Progressive he hasn't nominated? Really, I want to know what others think. Because I want to believe in the Obama barn, I want to continue to hope that the monumental problems we face are to be met with vision and guts, not business as usual.