Monday, March 08, 2010

What a Politician Loves to Hear

I posted the other day about Robert Kagan's praising the Obama administration for its foreign policy, arguing it had mostly continued Bush policies, which was good, as he's on the right.  Today Matt Yglesias writes on foreign policy: " For a mix of good and bad reasons, the Obama administration has mostly gone in a different direction from Bush without really challenging the legitimacy of Bush-era policies as within the bounds of the American political mainstream."

In other words, people coming from different positions on the political spectrum think Obama's policies are good.  I say that's what a politician loves to hear.  In democracies, most of a politician's work is trying to persuade people he or she is on their side, assembling a majority in support of a position.  (The worst thing a politician can hear is what Secretary Vilsack is hearing these days: complaints from production agriculture about being abandoned; complaints from the greens about things not advancing fast enough.)

No comments: