Obama, why all the leaks?

I am not sure about everyone out there, but all the recent leaks out of the Obama-Biden Transition Team are quite frightening. Can they be indicative of the future to come when it comes to leaks? I sincerely hope not.

President-Elect Barack Obama has made it clear to his team in recent days that he is not happy with all the leaks. Obama was primarily talking about leaks related to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and of the financial disclosure of former President Bill Clinton and his overseas dealings. News broke last week that Obama has planned to name Hillary Clinton as his pick for Secretary of State. The media has been on target so far at calling exactly who President-Elect Obama wants in the highest cabinet positions. Also announced over the weekend was that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson would be chosen as Commerce Secretary, a position he was not all that thrilled about, considering his strong support for Obama during the campaign season.

The Obama-Biden Transition Team cannot afford to be leaked all the way to the press every time an announcement is to be made. These leaks take away from the creditability of the team as a whole to keep a unified message. It also brings into question if there is true unity within the boardrooms of Chicago and in the offices in Washington.

Will the media call every single position before the team announces? I have faith that this will be the case this year and that may be troubling to the transition team; as it may be an indicator of a larger problem for an Obama Administration. Who are these sources that keep leaking this information and how can Obama stop put it to an end?

Firstly, the transition team needs to do a better job at keeping these selections known to only the highest levels as possible on the team, then and only then can Obama and the rest of the team stop the leaks before they get out (or at least know where they are coming from). It is not a good sign for any transitioning team to watch the internal discussions between the team and the Clinton’s on national television; these are private and serious matters.

There has been much discussion about Obama’s cabinet picks. Many of the pundits have said that the change Barack Obama promised during the campaign may not be change after all; that there are too many veterans from the Clinton Administration. As history reminds us, the Clinton years were a time of great social and economic prosperity for the United States; we as a nation have been trying to chase those years for the last eight and have yet to succeed. Whether or not, one was a fan of Bill Clinton, history does not lie.

There is, however, one problem with these criticisms of the transition team. How can these assumptions be made when Obama has not even been sworn in as President? We must remember not to prejudge the administration on these serious issues before it actually becomes an administration. We are not certain what will be done in Iraq and the economy is one that will take much longer time to fix, longer than anyone of us could have ever imagined.

We must instead focus on the policies that Obama chooses to set forth and how he dictates that to his cabinet’ after all he will be the Commander-In-Chief and only time will tell us just how much change we should expect to see. When leaks broke that Obama had tapped Timothy Geithner, President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank, the markets rallied. Geithner certainly is no rookie to the game, but his announcement brought some much needed calm to the markets.

Obama’s top-level cabinet members will enact the policies that only Obama wishes and that may put this country on a tremendously different path than the current one. Change does not happen overnight, so we must all be patient and give it time. The team after all is not yet complete.

Indeed, some new faces will appear and so will all the questions.