In response to my entry on closing Guantanamo, a reader wrote, "Give the guy a few days to think on this, OK? He's still more than a month from taking the oath of office." My post wasn't really a pre-critique of Obama...ok, maybe a little...but this is the great debate of the blogosphere post-election: how much do we game out Obama's possible first moves and then judge them?

It's a silly exercise, and if Obama has shown us anything it's that he cares little for what the Netroots have to say. He often says and does the things the liberal blogosphere has advocated, but when he does it's convergent, not causal: a lot of smart, liberal people arriving at the same conclusion. But I, for one, can't stop - can't stop the obsessing, the anxiety over every report about what he might be planning: whom he'll pick for Treasury, how he'll deal with Guantanamo detainees, whether he'll rein in Bush's intel activities. Because liberals have been let down so many times before. Just as we couldn't believe Obama was going to win until it was certified, we now fear disappointment in Obama's first decisions. We know it's coming; we just don't know how soon.

But I think it's important to make a distinction between two types of what I'll call Obama pre-criticism: image criticism and substance criticism.

David Kurtz, talking about a WSJ story suggesting Obama may keep Bob Gates on as Defense Secretary, makes a good point, similar to one I made in my Guantanamo post about how much we read into current reporting:

Fair enough, but the underlying assumption here seems to be that the primary motivation in keeping Gates on is to show moderation and bipartisanship. But as Spencer Ackerman points out, Gates has been sounding more and more like Obama in his speeches lately - suggesting that diplomacy and allies have to play stronger roles in foreign policy, and that the Pentagon can't do its job if the State Department isn't equipped and allowed to do its. What if Gates is actually the best guy for the job, at least in the near term?

Meanwhile, John Heilemann, whom I usually like, comes at the partisanship from the opposite direction. If Kurtz sees potential mindless anti-partisanship in the consideration of Republicans for top posts, Heilemann see mindless partisanship where there is genuine concern over cabinet candidates' qualifications. In a particularly grumpy column out this week encouraging Obama to ignore the storm on the left over his possible appointment of Larry Summers as Treasury Secretary, Heilemann writes:

 

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that those of us concerned about the return of a man responsible for Clintonomics were just "carpers and ankle-biters." There are, of course, those who are concerned primarily about the symbolism of Summers - like NOW president Kim Gandy, whom Heilemann quotes saying that Summers shouldn't get the post because of his past comments about women's intrinsic ineptitude at math a science. I think those comments were stupid, but they're as good a reason for Summers not to get Treasury as Chuck Hagel's views on abortion are for him not to get Defense or State.

I'm no economist - and I've heard several people say that Summers has changed his tune recently. Great. But I think it's pretty reasonable to be skeptical of the ability to get us out of this mess of a man who laid the foundation for it. Heilemann can pick a fight with Gandy, et al - but lots of us skeptical of Summers aren't just hostage to some left-wing hostility as he suggests. And even if we are just carpers and ankle-biters, I don't want any cabinet secretary getting a post so Obama can send us a message.

I want all these issues to be addressed as Obama suggested during the campaign: post-partisanly, where possible. That means that Bob Gates should stay if he can run his department well and see eye-to-eye with Obama on defense matters, not be booted just because we want a break with the Bush cabinet. That means Larry Summers should get Treasury if he's genuinely the best guy to get us out of our current economic crisis, not just to show everyone that Obama's a moderate centrist on the economy and he won't be kicked around by socialists.

And by the way, all this goes for Joe Lieberman too. Far too much of the argument over whether he should be booted from the party revolves around his attacks on Obama during the campaign. While I found those attacks disgusting, disloyal, and hurtful to the American body politic, I'm more concerned that the chair of our Homeland Security committee was willing to get behind John McCain for President - a man who had to be reminded by Lieberman in public of the difference between Sunni, Shia, and al Qaeda, and who threatened to go to war with Russia and Iran in the last year alone. I'm with Steve Clemons - I don't care if Lieberman wants to caucus with the Dems or not. I don't need him booted for a vindictive partisan feel-good moment (though it would feel good). I don't even care if he wants to chair, say, the education committee. But a Senator who put politics and personal friendship above national security ought to be stripped of his national and domestic security roles.

See? It's not about partisanship or nonpartisanship for their own sake. It's about who's qualified to do what. I don't think it's too ideologically left-leaning to ask that to be the #1 consideration of the President-Elect.