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Obama's Centrists

Les Gelb looks at the new administration's second-tier foreign policy players--people like Donilon, Steinberg, Flournoy, Blinken--and concludes:

[A]ll are middle-of-the-roaders who are somewhat to the right or conservative side of the Democratic Party as a whole on foreign and national-security policy. They are all pragmatists and problem-solvers by intellectual temperament, and they are not political risk-takers. They will handle most hard problems with consummate skill, but will be reluctant to seek high-risk policy solutions. I hasten to add that their caution is a disease common to almost all who inhabit and aspire to high government office.

--Michael Crowley