President-elect Obama has chosen an economic team that while not slices of brilliance, have reassured Wall Street that they will not be financial collectivists.
Like the majority of his Cabinet picks to date, they are retreads from prior administrations and hardly the surprising and innovative picks that many who supported his candidacy expected.
With many future Cabinet officers offering some reassurance that taxes will not be raised in the coming 18 months to two years, coupled with a known quantity at the Treasury department the stock market seems to be able to look downward and perceive a bottom.
Whether this perception is correct or not remains to be seen as careful examination of Mr. Obama speeches show that they are very light on specifics or true numbers and heavy on rhetorical flourishes and shopworn phrasing.
If the economy does settle out to some extent it may be shocked to see that government growth in the private sector has been exponential and while many worried about the state of individual businesses and bail out procedures; government has slowly choked down the options for the private sector as well as its flexibility.
Meanwhile, at the State Department, Obama has unaccountably indicated that he will choose Hillary Clinton as his chief foreign-policy agent in the form of the Secretary of State.
This will be a combination of politicians in these two jobs that has been unheard of in the last 90 years as neither has any foreign-policy experience. In the past, presidents lacking expertise in that area always selected a Secretary of State well-versed in foreign affairs. Whether it be Truman with George Marshall or Reagan with Alexander Haig and James Baker.
In this situation we have two senators, neither of home have ever served on a foreign-policy body or interacted in any meaningful way other than receiving flowers on airplane runways.
Couple that with the idea that Hillary Clinton is very possibly a primary candidate in opposition to Mr. Obama should anything at all go awry with his presidency. She would certainly use any Secretary of State credentials she might acquire to bolster her case to be president in 2012 and would most likely be very nonsupportive should public opinion turn on Mr. Obama based on foreign-policy decisions.
His choice of Mrs. Clinton makes many wonder what could possibly be going on in Mr. Obama's Clintons head or if some sort of Rube Goldberg scheme was hatched by the Clinton's and agreed to by Mr. Obama prior to the election. Presumably to garner Bill Clinton's support and encourage Hillary to push her voting block towards Obama.
Our guess here is that should there be some foreign-policy debacle-- Mr. Obama will find Mrs. Clinton sticking firmly from between his shoulder blades.
