This morning the Post's Dan Balz assesses the choice of Bill Daley as "another significant step in the post-election evolution of President Obama," noting that Daley "has a reputation for shooting straight, playing hard, talking bluntly and, above all, remaining calm in a crisis."
Indeed, the Beltway consensus is that Daley is pragmatic, thoughtful, damn smart, diplomatic, effective, loyal and philosophically mature -- all in all he's a judicious choice, one that will serve the administration well and frustrate the Republican noise machine.
So, naturally, with the notable exception of Howard Dean, who has responded as a model of reason, the activist progressive community launched into orbital unhingement over the Daley pick.
Gloomily representative of what's become their orthodox overreaction to most everything Obama was the Torquemada of ProgThink, Adam Green, who said in a statement: "This was a real mistake by the White House. Bill Daley consistently urges the Democratic Party to pursue a corporate agenda that alienates both independent and Democratic voters."
Yes, just another White House "mistake," coming on the heels of those other mistakes which Obama's progressive comrades warned of early and consistently and frenetically, such as rescuing the nation from the Great Depression II, securing universal health care, pulling DADT's repeal out of a hopeless hat, saving the domestic auto industry, and so on, and so on, and so on.
As for Green's addendum that Daley "consistently urges ... a corporate agenda that alienates both independent and Democratic voters," that's a cookie-cutter progressive view that uncourageously disregards the realities of economic power and pluralistic politics, and at any rate shows a peculiar if not an egregious misunderstanding of what constitutes a center-left coalition's "alienation."
But back to the more serious-minded and grownup world of Dan Balz, who approaches an observational contradiction when he follows Daley's selection as a "significant step in the post-election evolution of President Obama" with, "If the administration moves to the middle, it will be because of the president, not his chief of staff."
That initial line about "evolution" seems to imply an external imposition of presidential views, while the second passage reflects the severe admonition of Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who has repeatedly corrected his journalistic brethren: Don't make the mistake of thinking that Obama's decisions come from those around him; unlike, say, George W. Bush, he is his own man.
In short, the Daley choice probably means less than all its attendant commotion suggests, which is rather par for most any presidential-appointment course. He will likely talk less "bluntly" than Beltway Balz anticipates, but on the other hand he won't auction White House advertising rights to Qualcomm -- the latter of which, especially, will vastly disappoint progressive activists, who have yet to get anything right.