During an interview last Friday on PBS with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) host Bill Moyers asked Feingold what he wanted from the upcoming Obama administration. “I would like the new president to do exactly what he said he’s going to do,” Feingold said, such as bringing the country together, ending the Iraq war and closing Guantanamo.

Feingold also told Moyers that in his inaugural address, Obama should “renounce the extreme claims of executive power”:

FEINGOLD: Well, of course, the new president, minutes after he’s sworn in, in this wonderful moment — it will be cold out there. It will be short speech. But included in the speech, I would hope, would be some attempt by this new, wonderful president to renounce the extreme claims of executive power. To simply renounce these claims that were made by the Bush administration.

Watch it:

Indeed, since his election as president, Obama has reiterated his promises to close Guantanamo and end the Iraq war. But in a Daily Kos diary published one day after his interview with Moyers, Feingold expounded on why Obama needs to the condemn Bush’s abuses of executive power as soon as he takes office:

[F]ailing to act swiftly to reverse the damage could essentially legitimize that conduct and the extreme legal theories on which it was based. That is why it is critically important for President-elect Obama to unequivocally renounce President Bush’s extreme claims of executive authority. As I mentioned in the interview yesterday, stating this position clearly in the inaugural address would affirm to the nation, and the world, that respect for the rule of law has returned to the Oval Office.

In a speech on the Senate floor last September, Feingold outlined a series of expert recommendations “on what should be done to restore the rule of law” that focus on four key areas: “[T]he separation of powers among the branches, government secrecy, detention and interrogation policy, and protecting the privacy of law-abiding Americans.”

“I am hopeful that with the election of Barack Obama, the assault on our Constitution will end,” Feingold said.

Politico reports that Barack Obama’s personnel selections are causing some consternation amongst progressives: “Liberals are growing increasingly nervous – and some just flat-out angry – that President-elect Barack Obama seems to be stiffing them on Cabinet jobs and policy choices.”

Attempting to diffuse the nervousness, Obama’s top campaign field operative Steve Hildebrand pens a response in the Huffington Post, warning that now is “not a time for the left wing” to be drawing conclusions. (Hildebrand’s argument has stirred reactions from many bloggers.)

This morning, ThinkProgress spoke with Gov. Jon Corzine (D-NJ), who was reportedly under consideration for a cabinet post. We asked Gov. Corzine if he had any concerns that Obama’s choices were not progressive enough:

I think President-elect Obama has done an outstanding job of picking very good people who have the ability to be pragmatists with a progressive agenda. […]

It would be hard to not say that there is an attention to a progressive agenda. But there is a recognition that governing means that you have constraints and resource constraints that have to be attended to as you go forward.

I’m a committed liberal. I’m a committed progressive myself, but I also understand that has to be balanced with what you have the capacity to do at a given point in time. And I think that’s all that’s reflected in the appointments. I think he’s selected extraordinary people.

Corzine pointed to Bill Richardson and John Podesta as evidence of progressives who surround Obama.

Our guest blogger is Peter Juul, a research associate at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

In the Brookings Institution’s recently released Middle East strategy report, Stephen Biddle, Michael O’Hanlon, and Kenneth Pollack again advocate a policy of beginning U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq in 2010 rather than as soon as practical. But the realities of Iraqi politics — such as the recently concluded Status of Forces Agreement (pdf) — have rendered moot academic proposals that depend on fine-tuning American force levels and postures in Iraq. Unlike the Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack proposal for tens of thousands of American troops performing a variety of missions in Iraq beyond 2011, the SOFA calls for all American forces to withdraw from populated areas by June 30 of next year and all U.S. troops to be out by the end of 2011. Simply put, the SOFA and Iraqi domestic politics have outpaced Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack’s plan.

Other proposed Iraq plans –- such as the Center for a New American Security’s “conditional engagement” strategy, which we have criticized here previously –- fall victim to the same trap. “Conditional engagement” presumed the United States held leverage over the Maliki government because the Iraqis strongly desired continued U.S. military engagement in Iraq. But the SOFA negotiations demonstrated how little leverage the United States has over Iraqi political actors. Rather than forcing Maliki to make political accommodations, Maliki forced the United States to bow to popular pressure for a withdrawal timetable. Like Biddle, O’Hanlon, and Pollack’s proposal, “conditional engagement” has become irrelevant in the face of the SOFA’s limitations on U.S. military action in Iraq, and its firm timetable for withdrawal.

The common flaw in these strategies is that they rest on a distorted vision of American power in Iraq. They suggest that by subtly altering U.S. force levels and posture, the United States can achieve its political objectives in Iraq. However, reporters on the ground note that United States military power is becoming “increasingly irrelevant” in Iraq. This focus on eroding military power leads advocates of these strategies to ignore or misinterpret Iraqi politics, where agreeing to a SOFA with anything less than a timetable for withdrawal would prove politically fatal. Even the agreement on the table now may not be acceptable; Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the top Shi’a cleric in Iraq, has voiced reservations about the SOFA. The agreement itself is slated to go before the Iraqi people in a July 30 referendum. If the SOFA fails to win popular approval, then U.S. forces would have a year from its failure to leave Iraq.

Since the election of Barack Obama, who pledged to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in 16 months, and passage of the SOFA through the Iraqi parliament, Iraqi and American political leaders now appear to be on the same page. The President-elect called Prime Minister Maliki to assure him of the new administration’s support for the SOFA, and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has indicated he is on board with Obama’s Iraq policy. These leaders have recognized the need to acknowledge Iraqi political realities and have moved to reset United States policy in Iraq and the Middle East. Clinging to abstract theories of conditional engagement or force level tinkering in the face of the new U.S.-Iraqi political consensus for a new strategic relationship is irresponsible and foolhardy.