A week and a half ago, I published an article in the Washington Post in which I reviewed the reasons for progressives to be concerned about Barack Obama's first rounds of appointments (Clinton, Gates, Summers, etc.) and noted that the president-elect seemed to be pursuing a change-by-cooption strategy. He was, I speculated, recruiting centrists and conventional members of the Establishment to advance a left-of-center policy agenda.

That might still be the case. But what to make of Obama's decision to hand over a slice of his inauguration to Rick Warren, the best-selling evangelical leader?

Warren is not your father's fundamentalist. He has talked much about addressing climate change, poverty, and AIDS. But he does share with his fellow fundamentalists a passionate aversion to homosexuality and gay rights (and, of course, opposes abortion). He has fiercely opposed gay marriage. According to People for the American Way, he has compared homosexuality to incest and pedophilia. (Warren also has said that nonbelievers are indeed going straight to H-E-double hockey sticks.) It's no surprise that some progressives are mighty ticked off.

They have a right to be.

As I noted in the previous posting, the "Outlook" section of Sunday's Washington Post featured a piece in which I evaluated Barack Obama's staffing decisions to date. I noted how several key picks had been either disappointing, upsetting or puzzling to some progressives. But I added that it was my hunch that Obama had adopted a change-by-cooption strategy, in which he will try to use centrist-oriented members of the Establishment to implement a left-of-center policy agenda.

And--boy!--how the responses have poured in. From the left, the right, and the in-between. On the left, the replies have been generally divided between those who are somewhat concerned by Obama's opening moves and those who say that they still believe he's a progressive leader and are hoping for the best but waiting to see what he can pull off with the team he is assembling. Those who claim to be moderates (or recovering Republicans) who supported Obama note that they did not vote for a president who would govern from the left, and they inform me that they are tickled pink that the candidate who promised to rise about partisan politics has loaded his White House and Cabinet with centrists. If he moves too much to the left, they warn, he will lose them.

Then there's the conservatives. They declare either that Obama is an empty suit and that progressives should not be surprised he is (as they put it) screwing them. Liberals should have realized, they argue, that there is nothing solid at this man's center and that he's a crass opportunist. You've been duped, they exclaim (somewhat joyfully). As one put it indelicately, "I don't blame you and the rest of the leftie idiots for having your nose out of joint. Obama used you and is now happily screwing you without even taking the time to kiss you first." Other rightwingers proclaim that Obama is a socialist, and none of his appointments can hide that. Once he starts this country on the road to socialism, they say, the citizenry will rise up against him--and he and the liberals will be vanquished in the next election.

That's some range of opinions. Reading through these emails, it occurred to me that Obama will be a Rorschach president. Citizens, voters, and, yes, pundits will see in him (or not see in him) what they want. I suppose this happens with most presidents. But given that Obama has been on the national stage a relatively short time, that he's a young black (or biracial) guy, and that he does indeed represent change more than your average president, it may be that he will be more Rorschach-y than most chief executives.

During the Bush years, there was never much debate over what Bush stood for or the meaning of Bush. Sure, there were lots of fights over his policies and whether he was up to the job. With Obama, I wonder if his supporters and foes will spend the next few years arguing over what's at his core. If so, that certainly will keep politics interesting and pundits employed.

I'm scheduled to do Hardball on Monday. And if you want to follow me on Twitter.com, you can. Go to Twitter.com/DavidCornDC.

All the talk is Hillary, Hillary, Hillary. As President-elect Barack Obama announced his national security team on Monday morning, the headliner was indeed the junior senator from New York State. While this move remains a surprise and perhaps even a gamble--I've had my say on this--it could be that the more important pick of the day is retired General James Jones to be Barack Obama's national security adviser.

One of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney's many accomplishments was to wreck the national security apparatus of the United States government--with key assists from Condi Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz. For years, Foggy Bottom and the CIA were at war with the Pentagon and the White House, while the national security adviser (that would be Rice) became not a policy broker (as the job requires) but an enabler. She allowed ideologues to run wild and to trump expertise. She made sure that dissenting opinions were not placed front and center before the president. Foreign policy became the territory of a small band of arrogant know-it-alls who, it turned out, did not know nearly enough.

On Bush and Cheney's watch, the system broke down--by design. It's imperative that the foreign policy machinery of the US government be revived and restored. There needs to be a working balance between the intelligence community, the military, and the diplomats. There needs to be a free flow of ideas. The views of true experts inside and outside the government ought to be factored into major decision-making. And it is the job of the national security adviser to ensure this happens.

That mission will fall to Jones. At a press conference on Monday morning, Obama said that Jones

I know everyone is waiting for me to weigh in on the big question of the week: Hillary to State, yea or nay? Well, I offered some thoughts on this matter at MotherJones.com. And here they are:

I was agnostic on the matter of Hillary Clinton's possible appointment as secretary of state--until last night.

If Barack Obama, the president-elect, wanted to pull a Team of Rivals play, that had seemed fine to me. And placing Clinton in Foggy Bottom would remove her from the dicey business of passing health care reform. Would it unite the party? Well, judging from the election results, the party is pretty darn united already. Despite the griping of a few Hillaryites at the Democratic convention, her voters certainly swung behind Obama in the general election (see Pennsylvania), after HRC and WJC campaigned for BHO in the fall. Unless an explicit deal was made between Obama and Hillary Clinton, it did not seem that Obama, after bypassing her for veep, had to appoint her anything for the party's sake. Still, if Obama and his savvy band of advisers thought that handing her one of the best jobs in the Cabinet would generate political benefits they could use to advance their agenda, I, as a non-fan of Hillary Clinton, was willing to say, okay--for what that was worth.

But then this happened: the presidential transition of no-drama Obama became infected by the never-ending soap opera of the Clintons. And it really is time to turn that program off. There are plenty of policy and political reasons for a progressive not to fancy Hillary. She served on the Wal-Mart board when the mega-firm was fighting unions; she screwed up health care reform for almost a generation; she voted wrong on the Iraq war and then refused to acknowledge she had erred. But, worst of all, as the cliché goes, with the Clintons, it always does seem to be about the Clintons.

So we've had a week of will-she-or-won't-she and what-about-him. Couldn't this have been handled with a little more grace? Maybe not, since it involves the Clintons.

I don't know how the Obama camp approached the issue. But before Obama met last week with Hillary to talk about this, his team should have done a pre-vetting of Bill. And then Obama, at this meeting, ought to have said something like this to her: