What Will Obama Do?

Peter Beinart thinks that, on foreign policy issues, Obama really will be what his left-wing supporters thought he would be, despite his eyebrow-raising cabinet picks:

It’s precisely because Obama intends to pursue a genuinely progressive foreign policy that he’s surrounding himself with people who can guard his right flank at home. When George W. Bush wanted to sell the Iraq war, he trotted out Colin Powell–because Powell was nobody’s idea of a hawk. Now Obama may be preparing to do the reverse. To give himself cover for a withdrawal from Iraq and a diplomatic push with Iran, he’s surrounding himself with people like Gates, Clinton and Jones, who can’t be lampooned as doves.

…because, you know, that Powell thing worked out so well the first time. I’m reminded of that line about insanity being the repetition of an action with the expectation of different results.

I have an alternative explanation for why Obama has made these picks, however. I think he knows that, even with the foreign policy debacles of the past, voters still feel more comfortable, or at least less uncomfortable, with Republican “toughness” on security and military issues. (Beinart cites some polling that backs this up.) Picking people like Clinton and Jones, and retaining Gates, is Obama’s way of asking the people not to perceive him as an out-of-touch radical on foreign policy. Bush was the radical, he seems to be saying; I’m restoring things to their natural, center-right orientation.

If, on the other hand, he is what the Left wants him to be and what Beinart thinks he is, then his foreign policy team will crash and burn in spectacular fashion. If not—and he seems smart enough to have recognized this—then he’s likely to be a relatively hands-off president on most foreign policy issues and focus intensely on domestic issues instead.