Barack Obama’s Change Administration Full of Old Faces

[UnrepentantLiberal]

by Robert Schlesinger
U.S. News and World Report
November 18, 2008

There are two models for staffing the administration of a new president who rode promises of change to an electoral victory. In my lifetime (which has seen a tremendous growth in the size of the White House staff), the traditional Democratic one has not worked terribly well. Barack Obama seems to be going in the other direction. Good for him.

Over the past 36 years, Democrats and Republicans alike have come to Washington promising to change the capital city, which is, as Bill Clinton put it in 1993, "often a place of intrigue and calculation." Both Democrats and Republicans have brought a mix of new faces and old Washington hands into the White House with them, but Democrats have tended to err on the side of new faces, while Republicans love their old hands.

Ask yourself: Which party has produced more initially effective presidents?

Jimmy Carter brought the famous "Georgia Mafia" to town with him and snubbed the Washington social scene—he would be sure not to go native. He also got little done, irking should-be congressional allies in his own party and serving out a single term before heading back south.

Ronald Reagan promised change from Carter and declared government to be the enemy. But he understood that you need to know how to actually handle the levers of power before you can use them to advance your agenda. Reagan had campaigned as a bold conservative but brought moderate pragmatists into his administration to help him enact his agenda. He even mingled with the right people at Georgetown dinners.

Bill Clinton was the next change president (George H. W. Bush having run a stay the course campaign) and brought the Arkansas version of the Georgia Mafia with him. His chief of staff, Mack McLarty, was genial but ineffective. Other initial Clinton fresh faces ranged from the comically corrupt to the simply tragic. Clinton brought fresh-faced change to Washington, but his first years in office were an uneven, lurching mess. Eventually, Clinton figured out how to right the ship (including hiring Washington vet Leon Panetta to run the White House).

George W. Bush seemed to inherit his father's administration and, as a minority president, managed to pass a sweeping education overhaul and a mammoth, politically unpopular tax cut.

Do you see the pattern here?

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2008/11/18/barack-obamas-change-administration-full-of-old-faces.html

[bluestateguy]

1. An if he put in all fresh faces, he'd bitch about their lack of experience

You just can't win with these people.

[droidamus2]

2. Agreed

I think a new president has to look at accomplishing quite a bit in his first couple of years or at least his first term therefore it benefits him to have some savvy Washington insiders in place to help him do just that. Where I would look for the new faces are in the positions of 2nd or 3rd in command in a given department. These are the people that will be in position to step up during the 2nd term when a lot of the firsttermers usually step down.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

4. And that's all I'm saying

by posting this article.

I think it's good that the left hold Obama to account. I hope he doesn't turn into the "more of the same" disappointment that some are starting to fear. As for me, I'm hoping he uses these political insiders to change the way we deal with the Middle East, South America and Africa. There are some on the far left who will never be pleased. (What about this? Why doesn't he do that?) But then, I've seen them give their champions a pass for civil rights abuses while blaming all things bad on those they rail against. (I'm not knocking their passion. They bring important issues to the table. I just don't think they are as right on every issue as they believe they are.)

I don't see any ideology or group of people as all good or all bad. (Well, except for the Republican base, who seem to be mostly bad :-) .) It just that it's a crazy mixed up world filled with passionate people, no two of whom agree on every issue. I'm truly a liberal and not prone to accept a lot of bad to get a little good. But, though I'm not religious, I've been praying for eight years that we'd get someone in office with the smarts and worldliness to change the mess we made of the 20th century. (They don't "hate us for our freedom", they hate us because we screwed up their countries to make money.)

I'm going to give Obama a chance to right his ship and our ship before I declare him a horrible disappointment.

[Captain Hilts]

3. Bubba left the White House with a higher approval rating - 70% -than Reagan. The WSJ HATES that. nt