Centrist Obama

Is President-elect really a centrist? So far his appointments have not shown a leftward slant and that's making the progressive Netroots anxious. His choice for Treasury Secretary, State Secterary, and Defense Secretary have been praised by Republicans and Democrats alike. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard starts to wonder: Is Obama a secret centrist?

Maybe we are starting to really see how effective a politician Obama is. I'm starting to wonder if during the campaign, Obama and his team played the left in order to get the support to secure the Democrat Party's nomination. Since he was going up against Hillary, a liberal politician who's shown to be open to a centrist platform, Obama veered to the left in order to distinguish himself from her. And by doing such he gathered the steam and momentum from the far left crowd who have been waiting for years to see a candidate they like. Now that he's president-elect, his cabinet choices have been disappointing the progressive left who have supported him the most.

However, it's entirely possible that he's just setting everything up for the long four years in the White House. Maybe he thinks being a centrist would get things done quicker in the early years, to settle things down. And when the dust settles, he can start going left, very left. After all, his campaign promises of bloated government programs and faux tax cuts would guarantee applause from the Netroots.