Perhaps it’s too early sing hallelujahs but the news concerning President-elect Obama’s key appointments is music to a centrist ear.  It increases the chances this President could be a great one.  An article to take a look at in this regard is in the New York Times this morning.   It’s entitled Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas.  There’s also indications that President-elect Obama intends to nominate James L. Jones to be his national security advisor.  This is also incredibly good news.  This story can be found in the Washington Post this morning and is called Jones Would Bring Broad Experience to Security Post.

The news this morning all but offsets the somewhat disappointing developments in the U.S. House of Representatives this week.  I am particularly delighted to read of the possibility of General Jones’ appointment to the national security office in the White House.  My familiarity with the General comes from his work as the head of the Institute for 21st Century Energy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.  Such an appointment would mean that there really will be someone who has President Obama’s ear who knows something, in fact quite a lot, about energy and the national security implications of our dependence upon foreign oil.  The above-linked Washington Post article suggests that Jones would also like to expand the National Security Council’s ”role to encompass more energy matters”.  This is a tremendous idea.

It would mean that for the first time in a long time this country would have a chance of crafting a rational and balanced national energy strategy.  Republicans have traditionally excluded environmentalists from a full seat at the policy table and Democrats have traditionally excluded anyone who knows anything about energy.  This would shake things up.

I’d like to close with a excerpt from one of my first postings on this blog from back in early August.  The posting is entitled Flip-Flopping Away and Nixon in China.  While I don’t suggest that at this point that Obama should immediately go as far as opening the Arctic National Wildlife to development, I do suggest that he at least consider it with all of the relevant factors (environmental, national security, economic) on the table, not just some of them. 

Let us assume that Senator Obama is elected President and soon into his Presidency announces not only full support for offshore drilling but support for drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  What will we make of this?  The left, of course, will be outraged.  The right will have mixed feelings in that a desired policy outcome will have been achieved but at the cost of being politically outmaneuvered and losing an issue that had been solely theirs.  It is what might be called the “Nixon in China” phenomena.  When it happens we don’t expect it although we will likely soon come to regard it as the right thing to do, as it probably truly is.  The fact is that sometimes the breakthrough policies are best achieved by a President from the party not aligned historically with the policy.  It may be the only way we can make radical policy shifts in America.  This is because we never fully trust the motives of the long time advocate — detractors would claim and the public would see the merit in claims that the President is just paying back supporters.  This is what has happened with President Bush on the oil and gas development issue.  He has no environmental credentials and was, after all, an oilman.  However, the only possible explanation for a President Obama taking such a move would be that it was the right thing to do.  Why else would he do something that would risk the wrath of his own party’s supporters?  The net result would likely be that Congress and the public would have little choice but to accept it.

Given our present political environment I sometimes think that the above scenario is the only one capable achieving a significant increase in the amount of oil and natural gas produced domestically – something I clearly believe is in the country’s best interests (as long as we continue to decrease our total consumption of fossil fuels and try ever harder to find alternative energy sources).  It is another potential reason for me, who sees energy policy (including climate change) as being of the highest national importance, to vote for Obama.  Notwithstanding what the Party platforms that will emerge from Minneapolis and Denver this summer will tell us, there is an argument that an Obama Presidency would have a greater chance of solving our energy dilemma in a comprehensive way, ala Nixon in China, than would a McCain Presidency.  We’ll have to see.

Yes, indeed, we’ll have to see.  But the odds are getting better.  Hallelujah.