Obama cabinet picks get kudos
In a new poll out this afternoon, 71 percent of Americans approve President-elect Barack Obama's choice of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, but only 57 percent believe she will strictly follow his orders.
The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found that when Clinton and Obama disagree on foreign policy, 41 percent believe she will follow her own policy.
Also in the poll, 43 percent said they believe former president Bill Clinton will seek to play a role in US foreign policy, even if he is not given an official job by Obama, and 24 percent said they believe his influence will be positive.
Obama's cabinet picks have widespread support -- 75 percent support them as a group, and 83 percent said they support his decision to keep on Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Despite concerns in some quarters that the number of appointees with previous Washington experience will make it more difficult for Obama to bring the change he promised, 72 percent of respondents said they can still bring change.
And while Obama has appointed former rivals, 88 percent said it is very or somewhat likely that his cabinet will be able to work together for a single set of goals and policies.
The poll, conducted Monday and Tuesday, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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I honestly don't know what people are expecting when they talk about 'change', how Obama's not bringing enough 'change'. What do they want, manna from the sky? A return to a competent government and a stable economy will be good enough for me.
I believe that with the election of his cabinet Barack Obama has made very good choices. I think that if he were to choose Bill Clinton as an ambassador that would also help him with his foriegn policy issues that he must face because a lot of the world's politicians still think very fondly of Clinton and respect him.
I believe that you guys wouldn't know a good cabinet if it fell on you. Honestly Hillary is not nearly as qualified as her last four predacessors, but that will not keep you from saying how good she is, because he promises change. Well I hope you guys are right for all our sakes, but I really dont think this is going to pan out. Good luck with your assumptions, hope it doesn't bite us in the toe.
No ones talking about Timothy. No body finds it scary that the secretary of treasury just happens to be president of the Federal Reserve bank NY? The goal of the Fed is to print money and exchange it (with interest) for Government bonds. That interest creates inflation which GUARANTEE'S the debt will never be paid which also guarantee's that our bonds are permanently in the hands of the Federal Bank.
Ive read that Obama might take out a few trillion dollar loans from the Fed over the next 2 years. How is that different from Bush? The way they spend it would definitely be different, but the end result is an utterly impoverished American dollar and people loosing their property out of heavy loan dispersants of and interest rates, like WHAT JUST HAPPENED with the housing crisis...
Change will only come with the understanding that some of the old ways of bureacratic stalling and stonewalling to gain leverage for one's personal agenda must give way to objective prioritization of common issues that can be addressed, remedied, put forward and away. President-elect Obama can achieve this by persuading a good many of the politicians who deal in these tactics to put petty differences aside for once and join a push to generate a common agenda that can be used to eliminate the most prevalent hinderances to effective government. It is fairly obvious from his many public appearances that he possesses the demeanor, charisma and candor for this undertaking.
Change is a very vague term and Obama did very little to define it during his campaign. Anything he does can be called "change" by his supporters now. Getting together to push a common agenda sounds all well and good in theory, but like it or not we don't have common priorities, much less common ground on how to deal with them. Obama was wrong throughout his campaign when he said we are not the red and blue states of America. We are. Different states tend to have different needs, values, and priorities. Trying to centralize these needs, values, and priorities under one massive government will (continue to) fail, no matter how charismatic or candid Obama is.