auspices and omens

inaugurate [from L. augury, divination from auspices and omens]

And what can we divine from the transition and the first week in office? Are we witnessing the dawn of a postracial, postpartisan era? Herewith a modest hypothesis, more a hunch than a data-driven prediction. I submit the heretical notion that Obama will be a conservative president.

What?! Am I insane, uninformed, or just jaded? Possibly, probably, and it depends on what you mean by 'conservative'.

I'm not talking about an ideologically narrow-minded conservatism wherein all taxes and social programs are evil, all minorities and foreigners are a threat to "our" cherished way of life, and the only civil liberties are property rights and guns.

Nor am I talking about an authoritarian neoconservatism whereby it isn't illegal if the president does it, anyone is an enemy combatant with no due process rights if the department of justice says so, and the U.S. can and should invade any country that can't prove that it isn't doing what some fabricated rumors say they might be doing.

Finally, I'm not talking about an oligarchic conservatism in which a elitist ruling class of naturally superior persons is entitled to control the wealth, manipulate the decision-making power, and change or ignore the laws that govern everybody else. Why? Because they can. Why do you ask?

What am I talking about? When I was a freshman poli sci major at Northeast Swingstate University (soon to be a transfer history-literature major at a major university up north, and then a college stop-out farther up north majoring in yoga and cross-country skiing), I had fleeting contact with a conservative political scientist who argued that FDR was a conservative president. Not in any of the senses sketched above, of course, but more broadly 'conservative' in the sense that FDR shook things up just enough in a genuine national crisis to prevent the country from flying apart at the seams. Roosevelt was not as revolutionary as the radicals thought necessary, and he wasn't as dogmatic as the reactionaries thought prudent.

For the same reason that only Nixon could go to China, Obama cannot and will not do what is needed to get to the heart of the current crisis. Nixon was a symbol that stood for McCarthy-esque anticommunist Amerikan patriotism, so no one could be righteously indignant that he would shake hands with Mao and have dinner with Chou En-lai. Because Obama is a symbol who stands for change, he will walk on eggs to avoid an offending misstep or, heaven help us, actually changing something, lest he be called radical.

There will be no restructuring of the way government does business; more likely a cautious repopulating of the same old way business does government. The players will change, but the grand old game stays the same. Prima facia evidence is all over the cabinet. Take Timothy Geithner - please - and while you're at it, take his Goldman Sachs buddies transferring their conventional wisdom from Wall Street to Washington. Take Mr. Holdover Gates at Defense. Take Ms. Payback Clinton at State.

If Obama stays true to form, he will do in the White House what he did at Harvard Law. He will walk and talk the middle course between hostile combatants in order to reconcile opposing forces and win through nonconfrontation. Then he will appoint three right-wingers for every left-winger, to the dismay of those who put him in office.

Maybe that's the good news. Plenty of symbolic moves and talk of "bold strategic initiatives" while bending over backwards to reach across the aisle to Republican ideologues who don't seem very anxious to meet anyone halfway. Some would call that kind of centrist bipartisanship "pragmatic" and professor whatshisname back at NSU would probably agree. I just hope it works.