New team of Daley and Sperling -- what does it mean?

Obama's appointments of his new chief of staff, William Daley, and his top economic adviser, Gene Sperling, have garnered both praise and concern. Does this mean a further move toward the center? It certainly can't be said to further progressive causes. Or is it merely another example of Obama's pragmatism?

Matt Bai, political writer for the New York Times writes:

It's certainly fair to say that Mr. Obama seems to be repudiating the progressive theory of the election [*] rather than go to war with Republicans and big business. Mr. Obama intends to reset both relationships. And yet, if the appointments of Mr. Daley and Mr. Sperling portend some kind of ideological break from where the Obama White House has been the last two years, then it isn't entirely clear how.

[* By "the progressive theory of the election," Bai refers to progressives' belief that the midterm elections were lost for lack of populist conviction.]

Mr. Daley's politics are essentially indistinguishable from those of the man he replaces. . . . Both men are said to be pragmatists who care less about political theory than about getting things done, and progressives were never any happier with Mr. Emanuel than they are with the choice of his successor.

Similarly Mr. Sperling, who worked for Goldman Sachs before joining the Obama administration, may fairly be called a centrist theorist, but he's certainly no more of a centrist than his immediate predecessor, Lawrence H. Summers. . .

Mr. Bai asserts that the appointments' apparent shift "has less to do with ideology than with a theory of presidential power and how to use it."

E. J. Dionne said on NPR yesterday that Sperling could be thought of as a "progressive centrist," whatever that might mean. I'd like to think it means that his ideals are progressive, and he leavens his idealism with pragmatism, meaning in the current climate operating from a centrist position out of necessity, but willing to move in more progressive directions when possible. I like that.

Sheryl Gay Stolburg, also writing in the Times, says of Daley that he is "Blunt, yet charming, he is a skilled negotiator and smoother around the edges than . . . his predecessor, Rham Emanuel." Although Obama may have been seeking to improve his relations with business by choosing a top executive at JPMorgan Chase, those who know both the president and Mr. Daley well say that he is more pragmatist than ideologue.

Here's my guess: Obama has sized up the position he is in vis a vis Congress and has made the decision to follow Bill Clinton's playbook: move to the center and become more bold. So we should not expect to see any decisive progressive causes championed for the next two years, but we might see more decisive wielding of presidential power in dealing with Congress.

And, as Bai points out, this is a signal that Obama will take "his legislative priorities directly to the American people."

Or, to put it another way: the ideology may move a bit more to the center but it will be a stronger voice than we heard before. And it will be followed by more decisive action, more efficiency, less adversarial relationships with Congress, and a clearer position articulated.

Both Howard Dean and Joe Biden praise the Daley appointment. That helps. And many of us thought Bill Clinton's presidency was successful, given his similar "shellacking" in the midterm elections. Daley was Clinton's Secretary of Commerce; Sperling was Clinton's National Economic Adviser.

That's the positive side. On the other hand there are worries that they will pull the administration too far away from center-left toward the center, if not center-right. Daley opposed the health care reform, at least in the form it was passed. And Sperling was part of the negotiating team that gutted the Glass-Stegall Act in 1999, a change that many credit with leading directly to our current financial disaster.

It comes down to this: at this point, with this congress and this president and this economic climate and this level of unemployment, the best we can hope for is pragmatism that is really effective and doesn't move us away from the possibility of more progressive changes in the future. This might be enough to earn Obama a second term; and, with success as a pragmatist, and hoping for continuing internal chaos confusing the right, perhaps even gains in congress in 2012 -- we could set the stage for a better second term.

Ralph