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Team Building: Obama's Cabinet Diverse, Centrist

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By PETER NICHOLAS and JIM TANKERSLEY

Los Angeles Times

Published: January 11, 2009

WASHINGTON - The Cabinet nominated by President-elect Barack Obama is a largely centrist and pragmatic collection of politicians and technocrats without a pronounced ideological bent. Liberals are satisfied but not delighted. Conservatives say the nominees aren't as leftist as they had feared. Powerful interest groups with conflicting agendas are appeased.

Compared with what comes next, though, assembling the 15-member team was easy. Obama wants this Cabinet to market and put in place the most dramatic policy changes in the country since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal: a mammoth program to improve roads and bridges; a health care system that covers more sick people at less cost; limits on fossil fuels and greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming; big investments in energy efficiency; middle class tax cuts along with a tax increase on the wealthy. In the short term, Obama's Cabinet nominations strengthen him politically. Even Capitol Hill Republicans say they are reassured.

"His appointments overall are such that he's lived up to the best expectations of his rhetoric," said U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "He's choosing intellectuals and scientists and other notables. ... He's going to get the benefit of the doubt based on his appointments in many areas."

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