Team of centrists for Obama

The high-profile national security team Barack Obama
formally announced on Monday continues a trend in which the president-elect has
shifted toward the center.

Besides picking Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) as
his secretary of State nominee, the foreign policy team includes a Republican
in Defense Secretary Robert Gates, whom Obama has asked to remain at the helm
at the Pentagon. 

{mosads}In picking retired Gen. Jim Jones as the next national
security adviser, Obama selected a seasoned military man who attended campaign
events with both Obama and Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain
(Ariz.) during the general election.

The team seems to represent a departure from Obama’s
rhetoric during the campaign, when he called for complete withdrawal of U.S.
forces from Iraq within 16 months of his inauguration. During the primary
campaign, advisers to Clinton, Obama’s main opponent, said any firm date for withdrawal
would be irresponsible, and the candidate herself spoke of continuing certain
combat missions in Iraq. Gates said earlier this year that the Pentagon is
making withdrawal plans, but has warned against a precipitous exit.

Obama had already taken steps that could be seen as moves
to the center. 

As his running mate, Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden
(D-Del.), who like Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq war. 

Obama’s economic team includes a number of officials with
ties to former President Bill Clinton’s administration. His choice to lead the
Treasury Department, Timothy Geithner, had a heavy hand in decisions President
Bush’s economic team has made during the financial crisis. 

Obama also picked a centrist, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.)
to serve as his chief of staff. 

Possibly with an eye on deflecting criticism from the
left, Obama emphasized that he, and not his Cabinet, would be calling the
shots. 

“I’m going to be welcoming a vigorous debate inside the
White House. But understand that I will be setting policy,” he said during a
Chicago press conference where he made the announcements.

At the same time, he said Clinton, Gates and Jones
“would not have agreed to be part of my administration, and I would not
have asked them to be a part of my administration, if we did not share a core
vision.”

Asked whether Gates’s reappointment to head the Pentagon
satisfied his requirement for including a Republican in his Cabinet, Obama said
Gates’s party affiliation had nothing to do with his qualifications. 

“The point here is that I didn’t go around checking
people’s political registration,” Obama joked. 

So far, liberals who supported troop withdrawals from
Iraq are accepting Obama’s promises that the buck stops with him.

Top writers at DailyKos, MyDD, OpenLeft and other
well-trafficked sites have barely addressed the nominations aside from pasting
news clips, while some, including Markos Moulitsas, founder of DailyKos, have
even pushed back against assertions that they aren’t happy with the Clinton
pick.

Retired Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, who has called for troop
withdrawals, said the job of a Cabinet is to set forth options for the
president, who still makes the final decisions. 

Cabinet officers should “have an ability to listen.
They have analytical skills. They seek options, not just confirmation of their
predispositions, and they judge accordingly,” said Gard, head of the
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. “The team that was
announced by the president-elect this morning, I think they have that.”