The Obama Express

While some pundits have pointed to the centrists who have been announced as part of Barack Obama's administration as evidence that he will tack a pragmatic course, Charles Krauthammer points out that those appointees tend to be found in areas that are not important to the President elect's ambitious plan to remake government. In fact, Mr. Krauthammer argues that conditions are ripe for Mr. Obama to push hard with a leftist agenda:

Ironically, when the economy tanked in mid-September, it was assumed that both presidential candidates could simply forget about their domestic agendas because with $700 billion drained by financial system rescues, not a penny would be left to spend on anything else.

On the contrary. With the country clamoring for action and with all psychological barriers to government intervention obliterated (by the conservative party, no less), the stage is set for a young, ambitious, supremely confident president -- who sees himself as a world-historical figure before even having been sworn in -- to begin a restructuring of the American economy and the forging of a new relationship between government and people.

Unfortunately, Mr. Krauthammer is likely correct. As an example, while many analysts have assumed that budgetary constraints will limit health care reform in the short term to low hanging fruit such as expanding SCHIP, my sources tell me that the new administration and its congressional allies plan to move full speed ahead with massive reform.