Making Nice

It's a reaching-out ritual, though I can't recall it happening this soon after an election, and it shows that Barack Obama understands the politics of symbolism.

By meeting with John McCain yesterday, Obama was attempting to show that his campaign rhetoric about dialing down the politics of partisanship wasn't just hot air. And McCain got to reinforce his old Senate reputation of being willing to reach across the aisle.

Yes, it's just a meeting, and won't mean much if Obama constantly tries to roll the Republicans through the sheer strength of Democratic numbers -- the mirror image of Bush's 50.1 percent base strategy. But the president-elect has given every indication that he doesn't plan to go down that path. (Of course, if the GOP is utterly obstructionist -- the party wouldn't provide a single vote for newly elected Bill Clinton's economic plan back in 1993, insisting, wrongly, that it would lead to a recession -- Obama may have little choice.)

Obama has seemed rather sure-footed during this transition period, making no obvious blunders and even managing to appeal to the nation's dog lovers. While everyone wants to know who's getting which job -- especially if her initials are HRC -- the level of transition coverage seems unusually intense. Perhaps it reflects, as I wrote yesterday, the intense media interest (sometimes reaching mythic proportions) in all things Obama. After all, O was named yesterday as GQ's Man of the Year. Can Time be far behind?

The Chicago Sun-Times reports: " 'The national press is tame compared to the local press,' Obama leaned over to McCain and quipped as the press filed in for a 90-second photo shoot."

(I know it was a photo op, but should the O-forces have cut off the questioning after Obama answered a harmless question but before McCain got to say more than a single word ("obviously") about working together? "You're incorrigible," Obama smilingly said to the reporters who were, uh, trying to do their job. And putting out a joint statement? Was McCain being muzzled???)

Time's Jay Carney says the meeting was a logical move:

"By meeting with McCain so shortly after the election, Obama is demonstrating both magnanimity and self-confidence. But his move is also based on self-interest. Obama is keenly aware of the fact that, despite increased Democratic majorities in both the Senate and the House, he cannot enact the kind of sweeping legislative overhaul he envisions without the help of Republicans."

Seems a tad early to be assessing Obama's personnel moves, but hey, what else have we got to do? The New Republic's Noam Scheiber says Rahm and others will end the era of No Drama Obama:

"Emanuel's hiring seemed to hint at a newfound taste for big, unruly personalities on the part of the drama-averse president-elect. In addition to being less discreet than the typical Obama staffer, Emanuel is known as one of the most volatile and profane people ever to don a congressional lapel pin. (Obama once joked that Emanuel became 'practically mute' when he lost half his middle finger in a meat-slicing accident.)

"And yet, as Obama personnel decisions go, Emanuel wasn't the first head- scratcher. In making his vice-presidential selection, Obama passed over the famously circumspect Evan Bayh for the famously undisciplined Joe Biden. Insiders expect Obama's roster of big personalities to keep growing. Larry Summers, the impolitic former president of Harvard, is by all accounts a top contender for Treasury secretary. New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, late of the view that homosexuality is a 'choice,' is a leading candidate for secretary of state. Is Obama's militantly disciplined campaign becoming your standard messy presidency? . . .

"Far from an aberration, the Biden pick reflects a side of Obama that's often overlooked: His taste in confidants runs toward the strong-willed and direct. . . . Obama, in fact, seems to crave such pushback. His years as a law professor have made Socratic dialogue his chief intellectual reflex."