McCain Adviser "Gobsmacked" By Obama's Cabinet

Max Boot, a violently hawkish neoconservative blogger and McCain campaign staffer, professes himself surprisingly impressed by Barack Obama's staff picks:

As someone who was skeptical of Obama's moderate posturing during the campaign, I have to admit that I am gobsmacked by these appointments , most of which could just as easily have come from a President McCain. (Jim Jones is an old friend of McCain's, and McCain almost certainly would have asked Gates to stay on as well.) This all but puts an end to the 16-month timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, the unconditional summits with dictators, and other foolishness that once emanated from the Obama campaign. His appointments suggest that, if anything, his administration will have a Reapolitiker, rather than a liberal, bent, although Clinton and Steinberg at State should be powerful voices for "neo-liberalism" which is not so different in many respects from "neo-conservativism". Both, for instance, support humanitarian interventions in places like Darfur and Bosnia. ...

Only churlish partisans of both the left and the right can be unhappy with the emerging tenor of our nation's new leadership.

Michael Goldfarb, another McCain blogger, agrees. Conservative Ross Douthat predicted recently that "on an awful lot of issues, the Obama foreign policy will end cutting to the right of Bill Clinton's foreign policy, which was already more center-left than left." He also wrote that "Obama already made fans of Niall Ferguson and Eli Lake; by 2012, I wouldn't be surprised if he's converted Max Boot as well." Apparently, it didn't take nearly that long.

Comments

[kevinw]

As with most ideologues, he has no idea what real politick really means. It does not mean that you marry a philosophy and follow it off a cliff. It means that you examine every situation and after thoughtful analysis, you do the thing that gets you the result you want in the cleanest and most efficient way. That would mean that at times you do it with diplomatic meetings with Dictators. There are times you do it through allies and strategic partners. There are times that you may need to call up the military card.

The difference between neocon cowboys and pragmatic world thinkers is that you only go to war when you have to. You don't run away from it, but you do not threaten to invade when the paperboy misses your porch. Real Politick requires having an overall goal and theme. Your actions and comments always need to be moving you closer to the goal.

If the neocons had a theme, it had to be continual universal war. Regardless of the problem or situation the first comment always was that military force was not off the table. A true commanding leader does not have to tell their enemies that it is on the table.

[jhoughton1]

Nicely put. I, for one, don't think the neocon theme of universal war was or is ideological. I think it has more to do with the money to be made by the Military Industrial Complex if...if only... we can maintain the paranoid and bellicose attitude that the neocon "desire to spread democracy" (hear me puke, just too much hypocrisy to swallow) represents.

[1lalady]

Before long there will be more and more republicans in step with PRESIDENT OBAMA'S vision for our country.There are some republicans with brains thinling 21st cebtury crisises. I am so very happy we have elect a man who will be thinking about the people and the country.

[Wolf Larsen]

The neocons are incapable of hearing anything but their own voice cloaked in the same tired center-right rhetoric.

Move on....you lost.....your views are no longer representative of what the majority of Americans believe.

If it ever was that is......

You are morally bankrupt.....intellectually stunted and antiquated in your understanding of the world.

You are a joke......

[ATLOBAMACHICK]

This is what the thinking, moderate republicans who endorsed Obama prior to the election already knew. Obama is much more then just a democrat from Chicago, he is the transformational president we need in this time of crisis. Either this country changes in a fundamental way now or we will become a third world country.

[Fredo777]

Who gives a sh*t what he thinks, anyway?

[snesich]

Max Boot---a neo-fascist if there ever was one---is delusional. He doesn't understand nuance or shades of gray. To Boot, if you appoint someone with experience in the area of foreign policy, you automatically agree with them and everything they've done in the past.

I don't think Boot understands that Barack Obama is going to be the boss of all of these people. He'll set policy and he'll direct change.

Only a bozo like Boot would think that these appointments mean that Obama has abandoned his commitment to pull troops out of Iraq. But, then again, Boot is an idiot. This is the same man, who in the middle of 2006, was still talking about the "success" of Iraq. I don't regard him very seriously. But he is good comedy, now that his people are out of power.

[BeasleysMom]

I don't care why gops go along with Obama--just so they go along. Even some of the really dumb gops know that they really screwed up BAD the last eight years, and even the smart ones know they don't have a clue what to do to fix things. So as Obama does things right the gops will go along and learn to like it.

[Filegirl]

If these idiots had stopped spewing the "OMGObamascarysocialist" crap for five minutes and LISTENED to what Obama was actually saying regarding foreign policy, they would not be "gobsmacked". Oy.

[Loki11467]

I guess when you lose you need to be even more delusional.

[Skeptiqone]

I think that even Republicans are pleased that we hired someone who actually wants to work. Oh, and hire other people that actually believe in the departments that they head. I feel very optimistic.

[genia]

LOL...check out this clown......he tries to twist this into Obama doing what McCain would have done.....Now ........THAT's ...funny !!!!
These winger are a hoot...lol

[Skeptiqone]

This gobsmack is such a kerfuffle!

[hortonhearsawho]

Do you have to be ugly to be a republican, or does it just help....

[flossophy]

no, you just have to be a violently hawkish neocon blogger... who the heck writes these titles?

violently hawkish?!? Has he battered someone at the HuffPuff or something?

[majorteddy]

I don't care how he's smacked as long as somebody smacks him.

[Littlewords]

Who cares what he has to say?
He is not relevant nor is this meaningful news, onto the next story please.

[anastasiabeaverhousen]

I don't really care if he's gobsmacked. I'm much more interested in when the re-ich wing pundits get bitchslapped.

[jigisup]

Ouch! L-LOL