Boztopia.com

One thing I think people forget about the idea of the change Obama brings is that it’s not just a change forward. In employing many former Clinton officials at every level of the Cabinet, Obama is also signaling he’s making some changes back. Now, this is by no means a bad thing–I grew up in the Clinton years, and compared to now, they were the halcyon days. They’re also Obama’s only real options to find people who have the requisite policy experience who aren’t Bush cronies or hacks–that’s a mark of how much damage Bush and his cabal have done in terms of “burrowing” their ideologues into the government that Obama has to reach back almost twenty years to find people both competent and ideologically open to working with him.

But bringing on people who have dealt with the crises we now face before doesn’t automatically guarantee they’ll be successful this time. The odious Larry Summers, who’s been given a plush chairmanship at the National Economic Council as a consolation for getting pwned out of the Treasury slot, not only has a bad habit of sticking his foot in his mouth, but of not recognizing crises until they’re literally up in his grill shouting “BOO YAH!” (Maybe he should be Fed chair, in that case, as that seems to be a critierion for the role these days.) And Tim Geithner, although universally lauded as a competent lifetime public servant who can handle the Herculean task before him, also has a bad tendency to adopt the same “throw cash and hope for the best” policies as Hank Paulson.

I have a lot more confidence in Obama’s choices for domestic policy thus far, as these are areas that desperately need new vision and the commitment to improving the many social ills that plague our country. But it also strikes me very much as a “tell” about Obama’s policy and how he plans to govern–a mixture of progressive social policy mixed with some very neoliberal/center-left economic policy. Can he effectively govern by forward thinking on social issues when he’s surrounded by advisors who come from the same schools of thought that got us into the mess we’re in? How much change can we really enact when his inner circle is full of the same people who supported the policies of unrestrained capitalism that have brought us to ruin?

Ultimately, Obama is looking for people that complement his own worldview–those who believe in putting pragmatism over ideology, and results over power struggles. Whether he’s found those people by reaching back to the Clinton era (literally, if Hillary is made Secretary of State) is up for debate. But again, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that this is how he rolls. One of the many mistakes Bush made was valuing personal loyalty to him above all else, leading to an inner circle full of sycophants, hacks, wankers, cronies, and ass-kissers who refused to discuss the brutal truths for fear of being ostracized by Dear Leader. We see where that got us. Obama has a monumental clean-up effort ahead of him, and he’s going to rely on people who have faced these circumstances before. As much as it may upset people on the left AND right that so many Clinton faces are making a return, this is the situation we have to deal with.

The real challenge will come when Obama puts forth plans that conflict with the status quo mindset of many of the Clinton-era personnel. Then again, Obama didn’t need anyone’s help to fold on FISA, nor does he need any help, it seems, to walk back his promise to let the Bush tax cuts expire. So maybe we’d better gird ourselves to fight for what we want to see happen once again.

I make no apologies about voting for, supporting, and donating to Obama. But that also means I own a measure of his failures as well as his successes, and I bear a measure of responsibility to push him to adopt truly forward-thinking policies, rather than just recycling what came before.