The Final Days

"Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.)."

The list goes on.

But Brooks (University of Chicago) is actually deeply impressed by the appointments.

Is Obama headed for Mount Rushmore? Jonah Goldberg says that's a tad premature:

"Newsweek, Time, the Washington Post, 60 Minutes and, of course, The O Network (formerly known as MSNBC) have all run wild with this stuff. Depicting Obama as FDR or Lincoln has become a staple of the self-proclaimed 'objective' media. I was on Fox News the other night to throw some cold water on this Obama-as-Lincoln stuff. Alan Colmes of Hannity & Colmes chastised me, asking if we shouldn't give Obama 'a chance to actually spread his wings and fly a little bit' before disparaging him.

"Fine. I actually agree with that. Conservatives should not denounce Obama's performance before he's had a chance to, you know, perform. But, shouldn't we also hold off on comparing the guy to FDR and Lincoln before he's done anything? Obama hasn't even taken the oath of office yet, and it's already an unfair right-wing attack to say that Obama isn't on par with Lincoln and FDR. What's next? Will it be slander to say Obama's a carbon-based life form? Will the Secret Service investigate you if you're overheard saying you think Obama's merely 'OK'?"

But the New Republic wants him to leap into action right now:

"To be sure, Obama has good reasons -- both constitutional and political -- for keeping this distance [from the administration]. As Obama and his aides have been saying since the moment he became president-elect, there's 'only one president at a time.' Having been attacked for being presumptuous during the campaign, Obama now seems loath to exceed the limited authority he has at the moment. What's more, without any official power at his disposal, it would be risky for Obama to take positions on matters over which he has no real control . . .

"But this, of course, is no ordinary transition -- and Obama must not treat it like one. The cautionary lesson here comes from the Herbert Hoover-Franklin Delano Roosevelt transition of 1932-1933, during which neither man acted with any real decisiveness on economic matters and what looked like the beginnings of an economic recovery instead became the single worst stretch of the Great Depression."

The magazine says Obama should push for an auto bailout and a stimulus package.

Hillary may have her strengths as secretary of state, says Peggy Noonan. But she brings some baggage:

"The downside is equally obvious: To invite in the Clintons -- and it's always the Clintons, never a Clinton -- is to invite in, to summon, drama that will never end. Ever. This would seem to be at odds with the atmospherics of Obamaland. 'Loose cannon,' 'vetting process,' 'financial entanglements,' questions about which high-flying oligarch gave how much to Bill's presidential library, and what the implications of the gift are, including potential conflict of interest. More colorfully, and nostalgically: people screaming through the halls, being hired and fired, attacking the press, leaking, then too tightly controlling information, then leaking, and speaking in the special patois of the Clinton staff, with the famous dialogue evocative of David Mamet as rewritten by Joe Pesci.