I don't feel much of a need to comment on the Obama transition. I don't have a particular template to impose over this process to evaluate whether things are going well or poorly, and I have no interest in decoding every move as some augury of the administration to come. The country's electing Obama was the best possible outcome; it remains to be seen whether it will make a difference or whether it's too late to matter.
This country has lost its way and it's an open question whether it can find it again. So that's the bigger and more interesting question: Where are we going as a society, and how much control do we have over the direction we're taking? It's another way of asking whether this country is capable of self-rule or whether it will be ruled by events out of its control.
I expect in the short run for the same old mistakes to be made because even with the best leadership, a new habit of mind has not yet been formed on a consensus level within the leadership class that is capable to see other possibilities. There are too many people with a stake in the status quo, and they are not always or mostly bad people--just unimaginative. Why did most Americans vote for Bush in 2004? Mainly becuase most of them weren't paying attention and it was easier to go with the guy you knew than the new guy. And the new guy didn't make a compelling enough case for changing regimes.
The situation is different now because we are in crisis mode, and everybody knows that something has to give. But institutional inertia, and the inertia of group psychology requires that the old methods and thinking must be proved completely ineffective before new thinking and methods are considered or embraced. Most people are not visionaries and when they look into the future, they are capable of seeing only a continuity of the recent past and even those who want change, are not capable of convincing others until every chance is given to the old methods to fail. So we should expect more continuity than change in the next year or so.
It's all a matter of timing and having the right people in position when the timing is right for change. The wrong people were in position on 9/11, and we saw the dread consequences of that. So my hope for Obama at this juncture does not lie in his coming into the job with a laundry list of programs to change the way politics are done in Washington. I think we are in the midst of reality forcing a change and that we need somebody with intelligence and strength who understands what he's up against and will frame the best possible course of action given the realities that confront him. Either Obama is the man of the hour or he isn't. We'll know soon enough.