Ice Cream for Crow

I anticipated that hacks like Gerson would lament that liberals aren't outraged by Obama's pragmatic Cabinet picks. But no! Instead, he invents a strawman as evidence of their outrage.

It is tempting for conservatives to crow -- or liberals to lament -- that Barack Obama's victory has somehow produced John McCain's administration. But this partisan reaction trivializes some developments that, while early and tentative, are significant.

He points to no specific liberals doing any such lamenting. Not even when it comes to specific picks, where surely he could have found someone to make his case.

But in true Gerson fashion, he cautions conservatives not to crow...then goes on to do just that.

Second, Obama's appointments reveal something important about current Bush policies. Though Obama's campaign savaged the administration as incompetent and radical, Obama's personnel decisions have effectively ratified Bush's defense and economic approaches during the past few years. At the Pentagon, Obama rehired the architects of President Bush's current military strategy -- Gates, Gen. David Petraeus and Gen. Raymond Odierno. At the Treasury Department, Obama has hired one of the main architects of Bush's current economic approach.

This continuity does not make Obama an ideological traitor. It indicates that Bush has been pursuing centrist, bipartisan policies -- without getting much bipartisan support. The transition between Bush and Obama is smoother than some expected, not merely because Obama has moderate instincts but because Bush does as well. Particularly on the economy, Bush has never been a libertarian; he has always matched a commitment to free markets with a willingness to intervene when markets stumble.

Crow he may, but he's deluded. Where to start? Maybe with the fact that while Obama has no desire to disrupt military operations by changing commanders before the inauguration, he's made clear to Petraeus that, while he values his advice, the president is the C-in-C, something Bush delegated, originally to Rumsfeld, then to Petraeus. And Gates, it's clear, never bought in to Rumsfeld's defense policies, and it's also clear that big changes are coming to the Pentagon.

And hiring the "main architect of Bush's current economic approach"? Um, I think not.

Gerson has simply never learned that wishing doesn't make it so.