Personally, I think Obama is listening.

[The Backlash Cometh]

I know I'm going to get pilloried for this, but, it's getting harder to complain about Obama's picks, because it does appear he's been paying attention and putting some thought into it. He's certainly making the other side squeamish, which is an indication that they feel they have to prove themselves to him, and that's a good thing.

I'm basing my assumption on the fact that I'm seeing more articles like this one:

After Sharp Words on C.I.A., Obama Faces a Delicate Task


WASHINGTON — For two years on the presidential campaign trail, Barack Obama rallied crowds with strongly worded critiques of the Bush administration’s most controversial counterterrorism programs, from hiding terrorism suspects in secret Central Intelligence Agency jails to questioning them with methods he denounced as torture.

Now Mr. Obama must take charge of the C.I.A., in what is already proving to be one of the more treacherous patches of his transition to the White House.

Last week, John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama’s likeliest choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal critics attacked his alleged role in the agency’s detention and interrogation program. Mr. Brennan protested that he had been a “strong opponent” within the agency of harsh interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left.

Mr. Obama’s search for someone else and his future relationship with the agency are complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda.

Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said Mr. Obama’s decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a message that “if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted,” and had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency’s clandestine service.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/us/politics/03intel.html

[AndyA]

1. I think Obama's listening as well.

The only thing I'm not certain about is if he understands just exactly what a huge clusterf*ck mess Bush is about to drop in his lap.

And thank goodness we don't have McCain and Palin following Bush! Can you imagine? McCain would be getting tutored from Bush right now on what he needs to do. :(

I'll be so glad to have an intelligent, capable, responsible, and lawful President in the White House again. It's been a long time.

[But....]

2. It's a start...

and it's a long roadO8) I hope we're brave enough to walk it.

[merh]

3. Hell, I just don't get how folks can judge his administration before

it even begins.

I trust him enough to have given him my vote, I will trust him to form a team he can rely on and that will assist him.

He is the one I voted for and I'll wait to criticize him. I'll wait until he does something worth criticizing, I'm mean something more than hiring a staff.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. Well, Bush's eight years were all defined by the people he selected.

I think that's why everyone is jittery.

[merh]

7. there is no comparison between the man Obama and the man GWB

When Obama talks, you can tell he is thinking and not parroting.

GWB is pathetic, even now, "my biggest regret was there was no WMDs" - I mean WTF - what thinking human being says that - destroyed millions of lives on maybes or sorta sures?

[bigtree]

5. It's good that he's listening

. . . but there as false sense of security in a lot of the defenses of his own intelligent and appropriate authority as a check on his cabinet. He may well have the ability to rein in his Cabinet and manage their differences with his own policy as he's indicated he will.

I personally believe that some of the positions his Cabinet members hold and have supported in the past can hamper them when they are selling contrary positions and policy before a Congress who is very familiar with their views. Sure, they're mouthing the policy of the new president, but are they making as sincere effort as a true believer would?

And, I really think the idea that there will be some affinity with the opposition party or establishment because of their past associations is overstated. The Obama picks are already dead to the republicans who throw dissenters from their orthodoxy under their bus regularly.

Will Gates provide honest counsel to Mr. Obama from his term at CIA? Who the hell knows?

[The Backlash Cometh]

6. Gates unnerves me. However, isn't it poetic that he's being surrounded

by Obama people who will squeal if he does something autocratic in a Bush era sort of way?