Anyone has to be better than Hank “Bailouts for Buddies” Paulson. Some of Bush’s appointments astound me.

But I won’t…because even at this late date I still understand that I, too can be banned from this website.

In the meantime, that was just beautiful, Pejman.

He has the requisite credentials and the politicals skills you mentioned. But it still makes me think of appointing a respectable first mate on the Titanic — the captain is still in charge, and the ship is still going down. The first mate will be helpful in making the pumps work a little better and in getting the women and children into the lifeboats a little faster, but that’s all.

Like you, I’m hopeful; Geithner has a reputation for being a strong free trader, so this may mean that protectionism is now less of a threat (take that, Nancy!) More recently, he’s advocated for a strong dollar, also a hopeful sign.

Two things I’ll look for early on (next 60 days) to see if Obama is moving from a pure-leftist idelogical approach, to a more sensible pragmatic one:

1. abandon calls to increase the Capital Gains tax; and better yet, announce plans to reduce it by half to 7.5%. Given that the most urgent need right now is to get capital flowing to the economy again, this seems like a no-brainer. This would eventually eliminate the need for the government to infuse capital from the “Tarp”, and get back to private capital/equity financing.

2. call for approval of the Colombia/Panama/South Korea free trade agreements. In a recession as severe as this one, walking away from new FTA’s just to pacify labor unions is unconscionable.

I have one concern which I hope ends up being unfounded: a report Friday by John Harwood on CNBC, that Summers’ job as head of the Economic Council will be a holding pattern, where he will stay until Bernanke steps down. This would be the stupidest thing Obama could do, and any beneficial impact from the Giethner appointment would evaporate pretty quickly.

Finally, I see one add’l upside from these appointments. Gietnner and Summers’ pragmatism and common sense will likely trump Pelosi’s ideological, knee-jerk liberalism, and especially her servitude to the greenies and the labor unions. This could open up fissures between Democrat centrists and liberals; their “unity” is already showing signs of stress. Darn; what a pity.

Obama is an equivocator, who takes several sides to every issue, hoping to keep all factions happy. This is ultimately fatal in the Democrat Party, where the loony left and cetrists have been at war for decades. The Kennedy-Carter fight in 1980 is the best example. And liberals flocked to Obama in droves this year, feeling that the Clintons were much too far to the right

Examples of Obama’s gutlessness are plentiful; just a couple of my favorites:

1. “I think we should take a look at offshore drilling”, even as transition chief Podesta informed us that one of his first executive orders will be to reinstate the ban on offshore drilling

2. “I will take a hammer to NAFTA….”, even as (last March) he dispatched Austan Goolsby to tell the Canadians that he didn’t really mean it, that he was a committed free trader.

So to your question, there’s no way to tell which way he’ll govern. But history tells us that Presidents who try to be all things to all people, e.g., Carter, Bush Sr., Ford, end up being one termers. They end up with no constituency of their own, and plenty of enemies on the other side.

As to alternative energy, it’s a big joke. Even the liberal think-tanks estimate that under the rosiest scenario, wind and solar will only comprise 5% of our energy needs by the year 2030. Idiots like Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm babble about the need for electric cars. But with a Democrat Party opposed to both coal and nuclear power, where does she think the electricity is going to come from? And when Obama starts to talk about energy independence, it’s hard to keep a straight face, given his oppostiion to offshore drilling, nat gas drilling, coal, and nuclear power. Get serious, Barry…

As to alternative energy stocks, I’d probably avoid them as long as the price of crude continues to decline and/or stays low. Oil stocks and solar company stocks tend to move in tandem—yet another indicator that Barack will have trouble generating interest in the greenies’ agenda, at least for the next couple of years.