Before praising Obama for his moderation, wait a few days

The difficulty in praising Obama's decisions is that when they're good it's usually just because he hasn't got around to changing them yet. Take, for example, this comment by David Brooks:

He’s done some big things right — hiring people like Dennis Ross and Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. He’s also done some less obvious things right. For example, the other day, I read that he rehired Mark Dybul as his Global AIDS Coordinator.
Dybul is one of those heroes one meets too rarely in government. He worked as an AIDS doctor in San Francisco in the 1980s and when the worst effects of the plague migrated to Africa, he did too. Then George W. Bush hired him to run the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief program before promoting him to Global AIDS Coordinator.
It must have sometimes been difficult for a gay man to work in the Bush administration, but Dybul handled it all with exceptional grace and super-human competence. I traveled through Namibia, South Africa and Mozambique with him once and was incredibly impressed.
My point is that there must be many people in the Democratic orbit who would like the job Dybul holds. There are no political rewards for rehiring someone from a past administration. But Obama bypassed them for the sake of the program. It was a pure merit choice, and typical of a lot of the moves he has made.

This lasted for a few days. Then Obama heard from those "people in the Democratic orbit." Or, Another example:

In the current issue of Time, Joe Klein writes a paean to President Obama, saying in part:

[Obama] could have planted solar panels and a wind turbine on the White House roof or blasted the Bush Administration as he signed an Executive Order banning torture or lacerated the bankers who got us into the economic mess. But that's not his style, apparently. He has reversed the tactical, win-the-news-cycle sensibility of recent presidencies. During his first week in office, at least, he opted for strategy and substance over showbiz.

What unfortunate timing. In today's New York Times we read this:

President Obama branded Wall Street bankers "shameful" on Thursday . . . It was a pointed - if calculated - flash of anger from the president, who frequently railed against excesses in executive compensation on the campaign trails. Mr. Obama was reacting to a report by the New York State comptroller that found financial executives had received an estimated $18.4 billion in bonuses for 2008. "That is the height of irresponsibility," Mr. Obama said. It is shameful."

For good measure, Vice President Biden added, "I'd like to throw these guys in the brig."

Of course, Joe Klein is such an idiot that his list of things of things proving Obama's greatness will probably take a little longer for Obama to reverse himself. So celebrate Obama's substance in that he hasn't turned the White House into a wind turbine. In fact, on this issue, Obama has reached the pinnacle of substance over style: hypocrisy.

What a moderate, substance-over-style guy Obama is. Also, Joe Klein is such an intellectual force. Maybe when Obama is done not putting solar panels on the roof, he can award Joe Klein something. That would show what a great man Obama is.