God Save Us from Our Friends

The leftist blogosphere is ablaze with criticism of Obama, despite his stratospheric poll numbers and praise by the press and pundits for his Cabinet picks and his extraordinarily successful transition.

The liberal Nation magazine complained that Obama’s national security team had been “drawn exclusively from conservative, centrist and pro-military circles without even a single one chosen to represent the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party.”

The OpenLeft blogger Chris Bowers went off the charts with this absurd statement: “Isn’t there ever a point when we can get an actual Democratic administration?”

Daily Kos blasted Obama for not forcing Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) out of the Democratic Party. They hammered him for his stand on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Gee, gang, cut him a little slack! And just what is it about “One America” that you don’t understand? Now if you believed all that silliness about Obama being a left-wing radical, “palling around with terrorists,” that he is a true-blue socialist, you weren’t listening to his speeches. You weren’t looking at his record, you weren’t paying much attention to his campaign.

I think it is healthy to have a debate on many of the issues that we have to face in the coming months. I don’t agree with President-elect Obama on everything — who does? — but many of us saw this “liberal sniping” coming. Most Democratic presidents — JFK; Clinton, even — were the targets of the far left during their early days.

Hopefully, many of us are making more of this than actually exists. Hopefully, a few disgruntled malcontents does not a movement make. But it would be a real shame for the start of the Obama administration to have to contend with so-called supporters who undermine the agenda.

Maybe the liberals who are angry now should consider John Kennedy’s definition of a liberal as a “pragmatic idealist.” Maybe then I would not have to hearken back to the old admonition of “God save us from our friends!”