Obama's Historic Victory, Part II

"In two days, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope."
~Barack Obama, speaking to a rally in Columbus, OH on November 2, 2008.

"And there's the story of how, the night after Clinton was elected, [Rahm] Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting 'Dead! . . . Dead! . . . Dead!' and plunging the knife into the table after every name. 'When he was done, the table looked like a lunar landscape,' one campaign veteran recalls. 'It was like something out of The Godfather. But that's Rahm for you.'
~Joshua Green, "The Enforcer", Rolling Stone, Oct. 25, 2005.

OK, honestly, when I wrote my first entry yesterday, I expected Barack Obama to at least begin by doing something that would cause me to reevaluate my skepticism. Fat chance. "Change" was supposed to mean reaching across the aisle in a new spirit of bipartisanship to meet America's challenges together, and do things differently. Now, apparently "change" means bringing in the same, tired old Clintonistas famous for marginalizing, investigating and threatening their "enemies".

Not 24 hours after winning the election on this "change" platform, Obama picked Rahm Emanual as his Chief of Staff--the chief liaison between the President and the entire rest of government, including the Congress. Emanual has a well earned reputation as one of the most partisan, ill tempered, foul mouthed politicians in recent memory. Once while serving under President Clinton with scandals abounding, Emanual told British PM Tony Blair not to "f*** up" the meeting Blair was about to have with Clinton. In 2006, Paul Begala (Emanual's fellow Clintonista and no friend of the right) remarked that Emanuel's style is "a cross between a hemorrhoid and a toothache." Is this the change we need?

Expect more of the same as new appointments are announced. All in the name of "change", "hope" and "bipartisanship".