Change you think yo ucan believe in

Ezra Klein has two pieces this morning on food policy and the invocation at one of the inaugural balls that both illustrate the emerging Rovian tendency in the Obama folks that most worries me.

The crux of the problem is that change seems to be little more than a slogan. Rove was the master of surveying the landscape, identifying the big single (or small number of) issue groups, doing the math, and then giving the leaders of each a piece of the pie in return for delivering their constituents. Obama has flipped it a little by using the internet to cut out the traditional movement leaders.

But fundamentally it increasingly looks like most of what he does is a calculated SYMBOLIC move. Worried about selling your stimulus package, trickle it out in pieces with each one to either the right or left of what you want so that you can look like you are giving everyone something in the negotiations. A bunch of folks have rallied around Michael Pollan's book, give him a shout out in an interview and talk about setting up a White House vegetable garden. Evangelicals are feeling nervous, call in Rick Warren. Now the gays are a little nervous, call in Gene Robinson. Just imagine if the Voodoo community could get CNN to give them 5 seconds - the Illinois ball would probably be led off by a shaman.

In the end it looks increasingly to me like another four years of the same old just done by slightly smarter marketers. Change tastes like pretty weak tea.