Matters of Opinion

The lead editorial in today's Buffalo News joins the chorus of mostly positive reactions to Barack Obama's War Cabinet selections:

An assemblage that a label-seeking press has called “a team of rivals” might better be called the very thing that was disparaged by the Bush administration in its early days: The reality-based community.

We follow that with a more specific assessment of a bleak reality, the situation in Korea:

Like any good hostage negotiator, the United States will have to have the cool nerve to listen to North Korea rant and rave, make threats and issue demands, just about any fool thing it wants to say as long as it keeps talking.

Elsewhere:
- In The S.F. Chronicle, Debra J. Saunders goes all Trekkie on us and compares the change of administrations to the difference between the brash Capt. Kirk and the brainy Capt. Picard.
[Fascinating, Captain. But I am among those thinking this change is less Kirk-to-Picard than it is Kirk-to-Spock. And Obama would look cool in a goatee. Today Obama said he misses the beard on the chin of new Commerce Secy. Bill Richardson.]
- The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, evaluating the Obama team, can't help but quote Donald Rumsfeld: As we know, there are known knowns.  There are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns. That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns, the ones we don't know we don't know.
- One known unknown that The New York Times wants to know more about is Attorney General-designate Eric Holder: Mr. Holder could be an exemplary choice to face this daunting agenda, but he must answer serious questions before the Senate votes on his confirmation.
- The Chicago Sun-Times, long one of Obama's biggest boosters, says: Obama's picks all conveyed the same message -- America, as Clinton said, must seek a "common cause and higher ground" with the rest of the world -- and we liked what we heard.
- The Lexington Herald-Leader hears those who say Obama's cabinet isn't the change he promised: Turning vision into reality requires knowledge and experience, though. Obama is wise to fill his cabinet with people who have plenty of both.
- The Washington Post hopes that new Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will have more success dealing with the illegal immigration problem than her predecessors did: Unless they address the plight of these workers and forge an enforcement regime that works, the Democrat-controlled Congress and the new administration will allow a sore to fester.

-- George Pyle/Editorial Writer