By DAVID E. SANGER – The New York Times

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.

Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury — suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.

The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.

But the names racing through the ether in Washington about the choices to follow also suggest that Mr. Obama continues to place a premium on deep experience. He is widely reported to be considering asking Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to stay on for a year; and he is thinking about Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant, for national security adviser, and placing Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary whom Mr. Obama considered putting back in his old post, inside the White House as a senior economic adviser.

“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign policy.”

The reason, several of Mr. Obama’s transition team members say, is that they believe that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve. With the country facing a deep recession or worse, global market turmoil, chaos in Pakistan and a worsening war in Afghanistan, “there’s going to be no time for experimentation,” a member of the Obama foreign policy team said.

That explains Mr. Obama’s first selection: Rahm Emanuel, another centrist Democrat and former member of the Clinton White House, as his chief of staff.

In some ways, the choices made so far are reminiscent of the way the last senator to be elected president, John F. Kennedy, chose a cabinet. As president-elect, Kennedy soon picked three top officials significantly more conservative than he was: Dean Rusk as secretary of state, Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense and C. Douglas Dillon, a Republican, as secretary of the Treasury. They helped him navigate the Cuban missile crisis, but also got him bogged down in Vietnam.

Of all the choices Mr. Obama has made so far, it is the selection of Mrs. Clinton that appears the biggest gamble, in part because she has never had to engage in the give-and-take of high-stakes diplomacy, and in part because no one really knows how she will mesh with the Obama White House.

In her discussion with the president-elect, several members of his transition team said, Mrs. Clinton expressed no doubt that she could be a loyal member of the Obama team — though she was reportedly deeply conflicted about giving up her Senate seat and the independent power base it afforded her.

During the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton went out of their way to point out their foreign policy differences, with Mrs. Clinton portraying herself as a hawkish Democrat and defending her decision to vote in favor of the 2002 resolution that Mr. Bush later considered an authorization to use military force against Saddam Hussein. (Later, she said she fully expected Mr. Bush to use diplomacy first — and was shocked that he did not.)

Now the question is less one of ideological differences than whether a Clinton State Department could become something like Colin L. Powell’s: an alternative, though weak, power center that made little secret of its differences with the White House.

“Anyone who tells you they really know how this is going to work out,” one senior transition official said Thursday, “is telling less than the truth.”

If Mrs. Clinton is taken from the “Team of Rivals” model, Mr. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is from the Team of Neutrals.

“He’s no liberal,” said a former colleague at the Treasury Department, where he managed the American response to the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s.

At the time Mr. Geithner developed a reputation as the ultimate pragmatist, putting together a package of more than $100 billion in aid to halt the financial contagion. That turned out to be a training session for his role, a decade later, in the bailouts of Bear Stearns, A.I.G. and the injection of nearly $350 billion in Congressionally authorized money, whose exact use has become something of a political football.

Mr. Geithner grew up in Asia — in Tokyo, New Delhi and Bangkok — and keeps his ego well in check. He asks a lot of questions, but does not have Mr. Summers’s overwhelming — some say overbearing — personality.

“He clicked with Obama,” one outside adviser said. “If you think about it, their sort of cool, distant styles are alike.”

By PAUL KRUGMAN – The New York Times

We’re now in the midst of an epic financial crisis, which ought to be at the center of the election debate. But it isn’t.

Now, I don’t expect presidential campaigns to have all the answers to our current crisis — even financial experts are scrambling to keep up with events. But I do think we’re entitled to more answers, and in particular a clearer commitment to financial reform, than we’re getting so far.

In truth, I don’t expect much from John McCain, who has both admitted not knowing much about economics and denied having ever said that. Anyway, lately he’s been busy demonstrating that he doesn’t know much about the Middle East, either.

Yet the McCain campaign’s silence on the financial crisis has disappointed even my low expectations.

And when Mr. McCain’s economic advisers do speak up about the economy’s problems, they don’t inspire confidence. For example, last week one McCain economic adviser — Kevin Hassett, the co-author of “Dow 36,000” — insisted that everything would have been fine if state and local governments hadn’t tried to limit urban sprawl. Honest.

On the Democratic side, it’s somewhat disappointing that Barack Obama, whose campaign has understandably made a point of contrasting his early opposition to the Iraq war with Hillary Clinton’s initial support, has tried to score a twofer by suggesting that the war, in addition to all its other costs, is responsible for our economic troubles.

The war is indeed a grotesque waste of resources, which will place huge long-run burdens on the American public. But it’s just wrong to blame the war for our current economic mess: in the short run, wartime spending actually stimulates the economy. Remember, the lowest unemployment rate America has experienced over the last half-century came at the height of the Vietnam War.

Hillary Clinton has not, as far as I can tell, made any comparably problematic economic claims. But she, like Mr. Obama, has been disappointingly quiet about the key issue: the need to reform our out-of-control financial system.

Let me explain.

America came out of the Great Depression with a pretty effective financial safety net, based on a fundamental quid pro quo: the government stood ready to rescue banks if they got in trouble, but only on the condition that those banks accept regulation of the risks they were allowed to take.

Over time, however, many of the roles traditionally filled by regulated banks were taken over by unregulated institutions — the “shadow banking system,” which relied on complex financial arrangements to bypass those safety regulations.

Now, the shadow banking system is facing the 21st-century equivalent of the wave of bank runs that swept America in the early 1930s. And the government is rushing in to help, with hundreds of billions from the Federal Reserve, and hundreds of billions more from government-sponsored institutions like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

Given the risks to the economy if the financial system melts down, this rescue mission is justified. But you don’t have to be an economic radical, or even a vocal reformer like Representative Barney Frank, the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, to see that what’s happening now is the quid without the quo.

Last week Robert Rubin, the former Treasury secretary, declared that Mr. Frank is right about the need for expanded regulation. Mr. Rubin put it clearly: If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

But will that logic prevail politically?

Not if Mr. McCain makes it to the White House. His chief economic adviser is former Senator Phil Gramm, a fervent advocate of financial deregulation. In fact, I’d argue that aside from Alan Greenspan, nobody did as much as Mr. Gramm to make this crisis possible.

Both Democrats, by contrast, are running more or less populist campaigns. But at least so far, neither Democrat has made a clear commitment to financial reform.

Is that simply an omission? Or is it an ominous omen? Recent history offers reason to worry.

In retrospect, it’s clear that the Clinton administration went along too easily with moves to deregulate the financial industry. And it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that big contributions from Wall Street helped grease the rails.

Last year, there was no question at all about the way Wall Street’s financial contributions to the new Democratic majority in Congress helped preserve, at least for now, the tax loophole that lets hedge fund managers pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

Now, the securities and investment industry is pouring money into both Mr. Obama’s and Mrs. Clinton’s coffers. And these donors surely believe that they’re buying something in return.

Let’s hope they’re wrong.

Par Guillemette Faure (Rue89)

L’ancien maire de New York Rudolph Giuliani n’a pas toujours porté la panoplie de pompier du 11 septembre. Avant les attentats de 2001, les New-Yorkais l’ont vu à plusieurs reprises habillé en femme. Il a enfilé escarpins et bas résille pour un numéro avec les Rockettes, des danseuses de revue. Il a porté une perruque blonde et du rouge à lèvres dans un numéro de Victor-Victoria avec Julie Andrews. Et il s’est affublé de gros seins contre lesquels Donald Trump a écrasé son nez. (Voir la vidéo.) L’occasion: la soirée du “Inner Circle Dinner”, un dîner traditionnel de la presse new-yorkaise à la fin duquel les politiques font leur show. Un exercice auquel Rudy Giuliani s’est toujours plié avec bonheur, comme le prouve cette autre vidéo. (Voir la vidéo.) Ses costumes travestis font partie de ses bagages de maire de New York, une ville plus tolérante et plus à gauche que le reste du pays. Pendant ses années à la mairie, Giuliani a aussi défilé à la Gay Pride. A l’époque de sa séparation avec sa deuxième femme, l’atmosphère de leur foyer était tellement orageuse qu’il était allé se réfugier chez un couple d’amis homosexuels.Politiquement, il a défendu le droit des femmes à l’avortement, une position à laquelle il a mis un bémol depuis son entrée dans la course à la Maison Blanche, mais qu’il n’a pas cependant reniée, contrairement à son adversaire l’ex-gouverneur Mitt Romney.Un candidat républicain plus souvent en robe qu’HillaryA trois mois des primaires des prochaines élections, l’homme en tête des candidats à la succession de George Bush, côté républicain, a, comme l’a écrit un chroniqueur américain, été vu plus souvent en robe qu’Hillary Clinton.

“Le succès de Giuliani à ce stade signifie que la droite chrétienne aboie plus fort qu’elle ne mord”, nous résume Alan Wolfe du Boston College: “Les républicains qui sont en tête des sondages sont des gens qui ne plaisent pas à la droite chrétienne.” Ainsi du sénateur John McCain qui, en 2000, traitait les leaders de la droite chrétienne d”agents d’intolérance’, ou Mitt Romney, parce qu’il est mormon.

A l’inverse, observe encore Wolfe, ceux qui pourraient plaire aux évangélistes peinent à décoller dans les sondages, comme l’ancien pasteur Mike Huckabee gouverneur d’Arkansas, ou le sénateur du Kansas Sam Brownback, le chouchou de la droite conservatrice, crédité d’1% des intentions de vote.

Les conservateurs semblent se déterminer sur d’autres critères que l’opposition à l’avortement et au mariage gay. On est loin des élections de 2004, lorsque Karl Rove, l’éminence grise de George Bush, avait mobilisé les électeurs évangélistes en agitant les épouvantails du mariage homosexuel et de l’avortement.Alan Wolfe n’hésite pas ainsi à prédire:

“Giuliani plait aux électeurs conservateurs qui croient en sa force sur les questions de sécurité nationale. On se souviendra de cette élection comme de celle où les évangélistes ont perdu leur influence au sein du parti républicain.”

Professeur à George Mason University, Mark Rozell voit une autre explication:

“Beaucoup de conservateurs évangélistes sont capables de surmonter leurs différends avec Giuliani. La raison? Les trois mots de la langue anglaise qui les effraient le plus: ‘président Hillary Clinton’.

“Ils veulent que le parti républicain garde le contrôle de la Maison Blanche, et éviter à tout prix un retour des Clinton. Ils préfèrent voter pour un candidat qui puisse gagner plutôt que de soutenir un candidat qui leur semble plus pur mais qui n’ait pas de chances de gagner.”

Les groupes évangélistes envisagent de soutenir un troisième candidat

La question divise la droite chrétienne. Plusieurs grandes figures évangélistes comme James Dobson, fondateur du groupe Focus on the Family envisagent, en cas de nomination de Giuliani, de soutenir un candidat d’un troisième parti. Stratégiquement, a expliqué James Dobson sur Fox News, une victoire d’Hillary ménagerait plus le pouvoir de la droite chrétienne qu’une de Giuliani:

“Si Rudy Giuliani gagne, je vous assure que le mouvement d’opposition à l’avortement est cuit. Alors que si c’est Hillary qui gagne, il y aura une mobilisation contre tout ce qu’elle voudra faire”.