Obama and Lincoln

 

 

Throughout his election campaign last year and this, President-elect Barack Obama promised to make US politics return to the bipartisan ethos. If his selection of people to fill the key cabinet posts is anything to go by, he has already scored here. From Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, to Economic Policy Advisor Lawrence Summers, to likely Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and to New York Federal Reserve's Timothy Geithner as the new Treasury Secretary and Commerce Secretary Bill Richardson; all are veteran Washington hands and belong to different ideologies altogether.

While Geithner has lent a hand to direct efforts to soothe financial markets and stressed that banks vital to the worldwide financial scheme should function under an integrated regulatory scaffold, Clinton has a comprehensive profile both as a political person in charge in her own right, and as the wife of a former US President. Her appointment could help Obama mend the only chink in his armour – foreign policy. The passionate and plainspeaking Lawrence Summers has previously served as Treasury Secretary in the Clinton regime and is pegged by both Republicans and Democrats as the best hand to deal with the current crisis. Bill Richardson’s potential appointment as Secretary of Commerce will not only bring the much needed experience in that department, but will also inject confidence in the Hispanic community after disillusionments of the Bush era. The appointment of Tom Daschle as Secretary Of Health And Human Services is a tactical move to make the Left fringe of his party happy.

Appointment of such a high profile leader will also boost Obama’s plans to completely revamp the healthcare system of the country – an issue close to his heart. Of the other possible contenders, retired Marine General James Jones, the previous top operational commander of NATO, is leading for White House National Security Advisor post. Similarly, names of incumbent Defence Secretary Robert Gates and Chuck Hagel, a Republican senator from Nebraska, are doing the rounds for being Secretary of Defence. Appointments of these stalwarts will mean Obama is ready to give the Republicans responsibility to deal with National Security – their forte.

Obama’s rainbow coalition reflects Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Team of Rivals’ that so successfully managed to held America together during the civil war. Talking to TSI, Richard Carwardine, an expert on bipartisan polity at Oxford, said, “The appointments reflect that Obama's Lincoln connections go deeper than what people initially thought. Obama has clearly shown that he is not the one who is afraid of surrounding himself with able people, whether they are Republicans or Democrats – which was exactly Lincoln's temperament.”

Lincoln or not; it is clearly 'one-love ' for Obama.