It’s not easy for a presidential administration to be singled out as an unusually dark one for the CIA — given its past of shock experiments, assassination plots, Iran-Contra, etc. etc. But for the authorization of torture, warrantless wiretapping and failure to bring down Al Qaeda, the Bush administration Central Intelligence Agency has been both inhumane and ineffectual.

So it was disheartening to see the Wall Street Journal headline today: "Intelligence Policy to Stay Largely Intact." The article, by Siobhan Gorman, suggests that the Obama administration will have a centrist approach to intelligence matters, whatever that means.  One expert asserts that Obama may backtrack on his approach to interrogations, though during the campaign he said that CIA interrogators should be limited to the same techniques allowed by the U.S. Army field manual.  And Obama appears to be open to domestic spying without a warrant since, after all, he voted for it as a Senator.

The article, though, is not exactly asserting that Obama will be unwilling to reverse the Bush administration. The truth is that Obama right now doesn’t know what the administration has been doing. We’ll have to wait and see about what happens with the CIA.-MB

The Wall Street Journal’s Yochi Dreazen reports that two Barack Obama advisers have said that the president-elect may keep Robert Gates as Defense Secretary. Gates took over from Donald Rumsfeld two years ago and has been widely rumored to stay on, at least temporarily, as SecDef.

Compared with the arrogant, ignorant, bullying and torture-authorizing Rumsfeld, Gates has been terrific. And for his commitment to get the Army better prepared for counterinsurgency wars and humanitarian missions, policy wonks on both sides of the aisle have sung his praises.

Still, Gates doesn’t want a timetable for troop withdrawal in Iraq. And Obama became a credible opponent of Hillary Clinton by his early opposition to the Iraq War and establishment during the campaign season of a firm timetable. In other words, this is an elemental part of why America elected him.

Obama may yet go forward with a withdrawal timetable. But it seems a bit more than a healthy disagreement to have a Secretary of Defense who’s opposed to one.-MB

It’s a good thing Sarah Palin probably doesn’t read the Washington Post’s "federal page." In his In the Loop column this morning, Al Kamen writes that Barack Obama will create a White House Office of Urban Policy to "coordinate federal efforts to help cities nationwide." 

During the presidential campaign, Palin’s paeans to small-town America as the "real America" seemed a not so subtle dig at Obama’s past as a Chicago community organizer. But it’s not fair here to gang up on Palin: both parties have tried to appropriate the utterly weird idea that rural America is more authentic or "American" than urban America. This attitude has had its biggest impact on the campaign trail but it has also impacted policy. When was the last time the federal government talked about wholesale improvements of urban transit or more equitable urban schools? Or the changing race relations and types of employment in cities?

If the Obama administration tackled these issues, it would be a not inconsequential change in our national politics.-MB

That’s the argument made by New York University professor and federal bureaucracy expert Paul Light: that Barack Obama is up against a trend of presidents making fewer domestic and economic proposals. Democrat Lyndon Johnson sent 91 proposed bills to a Democratic Congress. But Democrat Bill Clinton sent 33 bills to Congress during his two full terms (in two of those years Congress was majority Democratic).

Light plainly states that the federal government has less of a capacity now to change society. It must repair past mistakes instead of creating new programs. Senators are more into themselves than deal-making. The bureaucracy has managed to be both under-resourced and bloated with the wrong people doing the wrong jobs. Political appointees will invariably be insiders, hired from K Street, Congressional staffs or revolving door think tanks.

These are all salient points, but I’m not sure if they damn Barack Obama to incremental changes. Congress might be inclined to do some deal-making in the name of its own self-interest: with a Democrat in the White House legislators can no longer allow themselves to be a "do-nothing Congress." Obama will have to "repair" a lot instead of start anew. But tackling global warming, the U.S. addiction to foreign oil, health insurance for all, and trying terrorist detainees in a legit legal system are all things the government has never tried before.

LBJ was, in my opinion, a great domestic policy president. But the times more or less necessitated he do something about civil rights. Once he accomplished that incredible feat, slightly less incredible achievements — like Medicare — fell into place. Perhaps it will be the same with Obama and global warming or finding a solution to Guantanamo: once a seemingly impossible task is meaningfully responded to, the realm of possibilities expand.-MB