Run Away! Run Away! The Activists are Coming!
To some staunch conservatives watching President Bush relinquish the reins of power to President-elect Barack Obama, a few too many ardent liberals are now crashing the gates.
Some well-known Democratic activists are advising Obama on how to steer federal agencies, including a few whom conservative Republicans fought hard to keep out of power in the Clinton administration. They include Roberta Achtenberg, a gay activist whose confirmation as an assistant housing secretary was famously held up by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (N.C.), and Bill Lann Lee, who was hotly opposed by foes of affirmative action and temporarily blocked from the government's top civil rights job.
Of course, being rejected by a racist right-wing nut job like Jesse Helms is probably an indication of a potential appointee's competence.
Conservatives fear that some of these Obama transition advisers are too far left on the political spectrum and are a sign of radical policies to come.
Don't you sense how this criticism teeters on the edge of the bugbear that Obama's appointees will be socialists.
"It is disturbing," said Roger Clegg, a conservative opponent of Lee's appointment who is now watching the Obama advisers at the Justice Department. "The transition team as described to me was made up of nothing but people on the far left. Though Obama is more moderate, that makes you wonder what kind of advice the president is given, and what range of choices he'll be given when it comes time to make appointments."
Far left? LMAO! Are they Bolsheviks? This is pure fear mongering.
Oh, but it could be that the contrast between the outgoing and incoming administration is set in sharp relief because the former itself is partly comprised by extremists:
But some government experts argue that in this particular transition, a wider-than-usual ideological gap separates the outgoing Bush administration and the incoming Obama team and that both sides are likely to view the other as extreme.
"The incoming Bush people were all about stopping regulation. The Obama people will do their best to accelerate regulation that they think protects the environment, workers, airline safety, et cetera," said Paul Light, a New York University professor of government who has served as a consultant on the transition to The Washington Post. "That's not barbarians at the gate. It's a difference of philosophy."
It's more than a difference of power. It's a difference between those who do nothing with the auspices of government to better conditions for the populace and those who realize that the authority and reach of government is particularly situated to do good. It's a difference between the philosophical lazies and the philosophical activists.
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