‘I told you so’: Ralph Nader on President-elect Obama
Well, he did tell us what President-elect Obama’s administration would be like. So he may not be a spoiler this year, just a prophet. Here’s Ralph Nader’s post-election, in-the-midst-of-the-transition analysis of the incoming administration:
While the liberal intelligentsia was swooning over Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, I counseled “prepare to be disappointed.” His record as a Illinois state and U.S. Senator, together with the many progressive and long overdue courses of action he opposed during his campaign, rendered such a prediction unfortunate but obvious.Now this same intelligentsia is beginning to howl over Obama’s transition team and early choices to run his Administration. Having defeated Senator Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Primaries, he now is busily installing Bill Clinton’s old guard. Thirty one out of forty seven people that he has named so far for transition or appointments have ties to the Clinton Administration, according to Politico. One Clintonite is quoted in the Washington Post as saying – “This isn’t lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time.”
And he’s just getting warmed up….
November 24th, 2008 at 9:48 am
What, Nader is some kind of oracle? All presidents are going to stock their cabinet, advisory councils, etc. with people who got experience in previous administrations. Did Obama supporters think he was going to tap some naif in a community organization somewhere to run Commerce? Many of us warned the “hope and change” types that Obama would install the insider outsiders even while he was bashing McCain for having advisors with ties to Wall Street, Bush, Reagan, and assorted other lobbies.
And as soon as he turns to a novice – Gov. Napolitano for Homeland Security, the howls begin that she is inexperienced, etc. etc.
November 24th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
Napolitano is hardly a novice. She’s worked on border security issues in the state of Arizona.
I am rather disappointed that he’s picking Clinton cronies. When your campaign theme is change, you don’t go and pick people who served in the previous administration. That’s not change. Surely there are more people that have related experience.
November 24th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
But Clinton was a change president! That was his platform when he beat pappy Bush. We are going back to the good ole days of Change 8-]