Obama readies to name national security team

Today is a big day for President-elect Barack Obama as he rolls out his national security team.

Liberal bloggers are up in arms over some of the choices, hoping he would appoint major anti-war bureaucrats to critical positions, but I guess many of them forget that the person at the top calls the shots, and everyone else works for him.

Secretary of State. After being satisfied that President Bill Clinton will open his books to reveals donors to his presidential campaign, Obama has tapped Sen. Hillary Clinton for the job. Choosing her takes two huge rivals off the stage - her and her husband - and puts them in a position to report to him.

UN ambassador. Susan Rice will become the first Black woman, and only second African American, to hold the position (Andrew Young was the first when he was named by President Jimmy Carter). Rice was Obama's national security adviser during the campaign,and she's a strong choice for the job.

Defense secretary. Obama will keep Robert Gates, who currently holds the job under President George W. Bush. I like Gates after getting to know him when he was president of Texas A&M University. He is considered a hawk, but Gates and Obama will likely see eye-to-eye on many issues than folks realize.

Attorney general. Eric Holder will become the first African American to hold the job. He was the number two law enforcement officer under President Bill Clinton, but now he gets to run the show himself.

National security adviser. Retired Marine Gen. Jim Jones campaign for Sen. John McCain, but Obama wants him at his side. He is former NATO commander and is widely respected at the Pentagon. Such trust in Jones allows the top generals to be more receptive to Obama's military plans.

Secretary of Homeland Security. Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano will fill the gig. She has had to deal with immigration issues in her state, and that will be a major issue for her office. She was also an early supporter of Obama, and led to several other female governors backing him.

At the end of the day, Obama cares about getting stuff done. The last thing he wants to do is revisit the horrible first few months of President Clinton, where the issue of gays in the military and three appointments to attorney general made his team look inept.

Comments

[Wanza Leftwich]

Roland,
I enjoy your comments on CNN Election night. The look on your face was awesome as you spoke about being a part of history.

Is there anyway I can receive this blog in my inbox. I'd like to follow this blog daily.

Thanks for keeping us informed.

[Monique]

Obama has proven again that he is brilliant and his national security team shows that he has respect for and has earned the respect of all the important men and women standing by his side.

He continues to make me so proud to be an african american living abroad. We should all hold are heads up high and never let anyone stop us for securing our dreams

[Informed and enlighted]

Welcome back. Those Rice sistahs are doing their thang. They make sistahs proud everywhere. The only problem I have is, would Hiliary gave Obama a job if she was President. I just heard the news conference he was great!!! GO OBAMA GO>

[will]

I don't think it wise at all to appoint Clintonista's to his cabinet and then put Billary back in the loop. The Clinton's did not agree to a subordinate position without ulterior motives. Their is always a method to the madness when it comes to the Clinton machine.

[will]

"The Rice sistahs make us so proud", let's all pretend Coondoleeza did not pave the way for women like them. Informed and Enlightened your drool cup overfloweth. Rice didn't know enough to "advise" Obama that Russia has veto power on the U.N. security council before he publicly revealed his ignorance on such matters. It would be too much to ask that he make the sensible choice and reinstate John Bolton.

[Indie Liberal]

Obama is putting together a nice team. However, it only reinforces the line that besides, Obama/Biden, that the Clintons are the only Democrats that care about the interest of Black America, the Black community and the American people.

Sigh.

[Informed and enlighted]

The only problem I have is Obama would have been still waiting by the phone for Hiliary 3:00am phone call for a job.

[SaintDiva1]

Well, this shows that he is the bigger person. He is not holding grudges. He is turning the other cheek. I applaud him for not letting his ego get in the way of good decisions.

Forgiveness is always the best choice. Unforgiveness only ruins your own life. The other person or persons are going on about their business living their lives while you are holding them in your little mini prisons hoping they suffer. It does not work. He made the right decision. Forgiveness is for you so that you can move on with your life and prosper.

[iawill]

Welcome Back Roland from a much deserved vacation.

While I initially had my own personal issues with Hillary (and Bill) serving as Secretary of State, listening to the various political commentators has helped me see why this is a good choice. Having her on President-Elect Obama's team means that she can cause him less trouble than if she remained a Senator who could challenge him at every turn.

It is good to see that President-Elect Obama is honoring his word of having a diverse cabinet - I mean that not only in qualifed gender and racial lines but in crossing party lines by appointing Jones as his National Security Advisor and reappointing Gates as the Secretary of Defense. Mr. Bush campaigned that he would do so but never did!

[Sheila]

I have been so impressed with the choice President-elect Obama has made in selecting his new cabinet. Hillary knows who is the boss and she will act accordingly because she wants to do more than just be Secretary of State she has future plans and she isn't going to mess her future up by undermining the incoming president.

[Roland S. Martin]

Susan Rice and Condoleezza Rice are not related.

[Louise]

What people in the know understand is that these people do the day-to-day job of running the government. The President physically and mentally, can only cognitively deal with so many things. He is concerned with very broad issues and themes. They are concerned with specificity and details. They are where the rubber "meets the road." They select what and who he sees, frames the issues and solutions within their departments, and in a vast bureaucracy make millions of day-to-day decisions that impact the lives of people, decisions that the President will never know about. That is why we worry. We feel comfortable with the decisions of Obama people, we don't with the others.

[will]

Susan Rice and Reality:

This naive, incoherent multiculturalist and her boss are about to meet head on with reality and its going to expose them both to the world as the phonies we've already known they are.

For one thing, we are told Rice is a fierce advocate for human rights–yet she opposed the war to liberate Iraq, which overthrew one of the most sadistic figures in the last half-century, an architect of genocide, and the aggressor in wars against Iran and Kuwait. If Ms. Rice had had her way, Iraq would still be ruled by Saddam, rather than be on the road to self-government. And if Ms. Rice and President-elect Obama had both had their way, the surge would never have happened, all American combat troops would have been withdrawn from Iraq by March of this year, and Iraq would have slid into a civil war and experienced mass death and perhaps genocide.

We read Ms. Rice is an “unapologetic proponent of multilateralism”–yet it is a commitment to multilateralism that so often hamstrings nations from acting to stop genocide in nations like Sudan, Rwanda, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Multilateralism has its benefits, but it also has some striking drawbacks. Among them is that in trying to assemble a large coalition, often the consequence is that nations like Russia and China, as in the case of Darfur, will create obstacles to effective action. The more nations that are involved, the greater the possibility is of foot-dragging, delay, and outright obstructionism.

[Elle]

Will,
Have you done any research or know any history about Saddam and Iraq? You are aware that WE (the US) funded both Iraq and Saddam back in the day, we are the ones who allowed him to rise to power and we supplied his military forces for years, right? Only when he wasn't a workable part of our agenda did he turn into "the enemy". He had been killing and torturing Iraqis for YEARS before we invaded. Why not help before? Because we could've cared less, that's why. Invading Iraq was not about helping Iraq, it was about helping ourselves and trying to kill Bush's "enemy" Saddam. Oh yea, and the oil was just a plus.