Phasing Out Of Transition, Its Senior Progressive Adviser Defends It

Mike Lux, who joined the Obama transition as its senior liaison to progressive and liberal interest groups, is returning to his day job -- he's got a new book, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be, to promote. In his transition capacity, Lux, a former Clinton-era director of the office of public liaison, was called upon to calm the nerves of liberals who worried about the administration's seemingly centrist tilt.

Lux acknowledges this in a letter he's posting today on OpenLeft.com: "I ...know that several of the appointees are more conservative than progressives would like, and I'm not going to minimize the importance of those appointees, because every appointee to a major cabinet-level or White House position is important. And some of the biggest jobs- Chief of Staff, Treasury, Defense - have gone to centrists."

Lux's post provides a frank assessment of the political tilt of many key Obama staffers -- from a transition insider who was privy to the internal deliberations. There are reasons, Lux writes, for progressives to be optimistic. "I still feel pretty good about things." Lux notes that the head of the Domestic Policy council worked for years for Ted Kennedy, and the guy in charge of "cutting deals" with Congress -- cutting deals is suspect verbiage in the progressive world -- is Phil Schilero, long the top aide to Henry Waxman, no shrinking violet he. The political director, Patrick Gaspard, is a "tough" veteran of SEIU.

Writes Lux: "All three of these offices are extremely powerful positions both politically and policy-wise, and all are filled with much more progressive people than their counterparts in the Clinton White House." Lux points out that Ex-Sen. Tom Daschle "never would have taken the health care job if he wasn't guaranteed that it will stay a very high priority, and the climate change team is the kind of dream team Gore would have picked."