Obama’s team: A right-wing cabinet for a government of big business
By Patrick Martin

In advance of his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama has assembled a cabinet drawn from the upper echelons of American society and the right-wing of the Democratic Party. Despite his invocations of “change,” his appeals to antiwar sentiment and to young people in the course of nearly two years of campaigning, there is not a single figure in the leading personnel of the Obama administration drawn from the more liberal elements of the Democratic Party, let alone anyone representative of the broad masses of working people and youth.

The right-wing character of Obama’s nominees is described by the media under the approving labels of “centrist,” “moderate,” and—most of all—“pragmatic.” This terminology signifies that the incoming Obama team consists entirely of individuals who pass muster with the corporate-financial elite. There is not a whiff of genuine oppositional sentiment, let alone political radicalism, among the lot of them.

It is a remarkable fact that if Hillary Clinton had won the Democratic nomination and the presidency instead of Obama, there would be virtually no change in the cabinet selections. The Washington Post noted Sunday, in its overview of the transition process, that Obama staffers have a running joke: “If you wanted Obama to win for president, you should have worked on his campaign, but if you wanted to work for him, you should have worked for Hillary.”

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