Obama assembles a no-nonsense foreign policy team

4 comments November 25th, 2008

With Bob Gates staying on for a year or so as secretary of defense,  McCain-backer Gen. Jim Jones as national security adviser and Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, the incoming Obama administration may not look so much like “change we can believe in” as we thought.

The Obama I know from my several interviews with him is intellectually brilliant, calm and extremely sure of himself. He’s not going to be a pushover. I think he wants experienced professionals of equal intellect and toughness to carry out his plans and programs. And he’s signaling to Russia, China and the terrorists that Obama the president does not view the world as Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, rather as a dangerous place.

Obama knows that his first task will be to restore the economy to avoid a bad movie called Great Depression II, the i-Pod Years. To this end he will do what sinking economies always do and start spending huge money on a public works program, as did FDR. In Rockford, East and West high schools are legacies of FDR’s Works Progress Administration - the WPA. Park shelters, Levings Lake and forest preserve shelters and roads survive as examples of WPA programs, as do area roadways such as North Main Road — Illinois 2 from Rockford to Beloit.

I’m told that the Obama program will be huge, as much as $1 trillion. He wants projects submitted that can begin in 6 months, because the aim is to use public works to put people to work, stimulating the economy.

He’ll be hampered in doing this if the new president has to contend with resurgent Taliban, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or Muslim Brotherhood bombers. And a strong, no-b.s. foreign policy team will tell Mr. Kim, Mr. Chavez and the comedy team of Medvedev and Putin that just because W has left the building,  it’s still not smart to mess with the U.S.