Fred Barnes asks a question in his latest Weekly Standard column that’s likely to roil Barack Obama’s supporters on the political Left: is Obama a secret centrist?

Last week, Obama made his choice of [Treasury Secretary designee Timothy] Geithner official. And he named
former Treasury secretary Larry Summers his top economic counselor at
the White House and chose a monetarist, Christina Romer of the
University of California at Berkeley, as the head of the Council of
Economic Advisers. The stock market rallied. This was change financial
markets could believe in.

There’s a larger point here. It’s not that Obama, despite his
unswervingly liberal record in the Senate, turns out to be a
pragmatist. The point is he’spragmatic (so far) in one direction-rightward. Who knew? 

His national security choices also underscore this point. Hillary
Clinton benefits from not being John Kerry, who desperately wants to be
secretary of state. And Obama owes Kerry for having lifted him from
obscurity and made him keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic
convention. But knowing Kerry, Obama looked elsewhere and fastened on
Clinton as his secretary of state.

Clinton, for all her shortcomings, doesn’t hail from the
surrender-at-all-costs wing of the Democratic party. Nor does retired
Marine general Jim Jones, who’s slated to be Obama’s national security
adviser. Jones, an Iraq war skeptic, is a strong supporter of offshore
drilling and other steps to increase domestic production of oil and gas.

Then there’s Bob Gates, Bush’s defense secretary. Obama wants to
keep him at the Pentagon for another year. Liberals and the media like
Gates because he replaced the man they loved to hate, Donald Rumsfeld.
But Gates is no dove and no ally of the antiwar left.

So the scoreboard looks like this: Three of the four cabinet posts
that matter most are going to those with views acceptable to the
center-right of the Democratic party. That’s Geithner, Clinton, and
Gates. The fourth, attorney general, will provoke a confirmation fight
if Obama chooses his buddy Eric Holder, famous as President Clinton’s
deputy attorney general for facilitating the pardon of Marc Rich.

Three out of four isn’t bad. Conservatives aren’t jumping for joy.
But imagine how the left wing of the Democratic party-the dominant
wing, after all-feels. Let down would be an understatement.