Now that Barack Obama has been elected president he must do 10 things right now!

1) Push ups.  He won't stay the most in-shape politician in the country without doing push-ups.

2)  Eat.  He must not starve to death.

3)  Drink plenty of fluids.  He must not become dangerously dehydrated.

4)  Not drink so much that he drowns.

5)  Read this list of things that he must do!  Otherwise, how will he know?

6)  Do the things on this list!  Reading is not enough.

7)  Realize that there is no 7th thing.

8) Skip to the 8th thing because there is no 7th thing.

9)  Get Michelle Obama to do all these things too.

10)  Do, like, a hundred other things.

Glad I could be of service.  Without this list, this presidency will be a shambles.

It's been suggested a few times already that Barack Obama should hand over some, or at least one, cabinet posts over to Republicans.  Retaining Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense is one idea and it's the most, er, defensible since there's a war on and there's something to be said for not changing everything at once when we have troops deployed.  Also, Bill Clinton set this precedent by appointing Republican William Cohen to the post and Cohen went on to reasonable successes in Kosovo.  If Gates isn't retained, I've seen Chuck Hagel's name floated as a possibility.  This would basically duplicate Clinton's move with Cohen.

Dean Baker suggested that Republican Sheila Bair take over the Treasury.  She is Bush's appointed head of the FDIC.  Jason Everett Miller, a frequent poster at TPM, has praised these ideas because the people being floated for the jobs are undeniably competent and he sees this as a way of building unity across parties.  I don't want to present a week version of Jason's argument here: he is for competence above all but also believes that Obama needs to make some unifying, bipartisan moves.

As you can tell by the headline to my post, I hate this idea, even though the names floated are reasonably competent for the jobs they might do.  In my experience, the Republican party does not graciously accept attempts at unity.  Bill Clinton gave some cabinet appointment to Republicans and the Republicans still tried to destroy his presidency.  Having people like Cohen and David Gergen on the Clinton team did not create a climate of bipartisan cooperation -- Republicans engaged in the "politics of personal destruction" in spite of Clinton's efforts.

Further, George W. Bush squeaked into the White House twice and yet claimed such a mandate that he virtually shut the Democrats out of the national discussion until he was forced to pretend to listen to them in 2006.  Obama's victory was far more decisive.  So why are we talking about making gestures towards unity that, if the experiences of the Clinton administration is to be our guide, won't work anyway?  The people have elected a Democratic government in the White House and both legislative chambers.  So let's have a Democratic government.

One might object that this is just the old spoils system at work and that these jobs should go to the most qualified candidates, regardless of party.  But I see holding a few cabinet posts open for Republicans is akin to the very kind of affirmative action that Republicans hate. There is no cabinet position open where you can't find a Democrat who is most qualified to do the job.  Are we really to believe that Robert Gates is more qualified to be Secretary of Defense than any Democrat in the country who would accept the position?  I'd at least need to be convinced of that, and I'm not.

I understand that people have strong feelings about names being floated for various Obama posts.  So do I.  Maybe, in some cases, Obama is looking at the wrong Democrat.  Josh Marshall, Dean Baker and Jim Sleeper all think Larry Summers isn't the right Democrat.  Fine, I think I agree.  But that doesn't mean that a Republican is the answer.

Can we find the right Democrats, or at least demonstrate that they don't exist.  I really want Obama's administration to start some new job programs, but should we really be focusing on employing Republicans first?

So an aide for Joe Lieberman wants to absurdly claim that if the Democrats don't give Traitor Joe his committee chairmanship in the next congress that they're putting politics before national security.  Forget whether or not the presence or absence of Joe Lieberman affects our national security in any way.  The real problem with this argument is that there's nothing wrong with putting politics ahead of national security.

Indeed, that is the natural order of things.

Through our political process we determine what our national security needs are and how they should best be dealt with.  The last time somebody told me not to put politics ahead of national security we were on the road to invading Iraq.  That the Iraq War even happened was a failure of politics.  It represents exactly the kind of security blunder that the deliberative bodies of our government are meant to prevent.

I'm through using the term "politics" as a pejorative.  Good, responsible politicking is the way that we're going to clean up the messes caused during the last 8 years of impulse.  The American system relies on checks and balances to prevent tyranny.  Those checks and balances only work if people practice politics proudly.

A good start would be to deny a committee chair to an inscrutable incompetent who feels entitled to it.