I have not been on Kos for several months now. I left the site because of the tendency of many Kossaks to shout people down when they put forth a controversial idea.
I popped back over because I imagined that many Kossaks blood would be boiling over with some of these appointments the last few days. I was not wrong!
Vilifying these appointees (and Obama for selecting them) due to their past association to Clinton, Bush, Wall Street, Harvard, Sesame Street, whatever is exactly what the Republicans tried to do to Obama with the William Ayers business.
The only real question should be, can this person effectively advance Obama's vision and goals in the post they are being appointed to. The obvious answer is yes to all of them.
Hillary Clinton - She has the international cache to get things done at State. This appointment has the added bonus of removing her from her independent power base. If she goes off Obama's reservation he can fire her Truman v McArthur style and look the better for it. Smart appointment for both effectiveness and poltical purposes.
Gates - Whatever you say about Bush, and there is more than one post could ever hold from me, Gates has been very good. The pentagon is running effectively once again and members pf my family in the service are better informed and prepared for their missions. keeping him on for another year is both reasonable and smart because it keeps the focus on our current domestic crisis, where it should be.
The Economic Team - Yes many of these people are Rubinists, yes the pillar of deregulation in Rubinomics is tragically and obviously flawed, yes 3 of them are tied to wall street. So what. They know how the system operates from a mechanics viewpoint. You need them to get the agenda through the system. Just because they worked for Clinton/Wall Street has no bearing on what their effectiveness will be. Besides, Summers has been ringing the alarm bells for years and years now, so he has some creditability as a reformer in his owwn right, even though he is a Rubin acolyte. The fundamental issue here is how they are instructed by Obama to prioritize their work. The key is the focus on working and middle class families. In the past their focus has always been directed to the health of the markets, Obama has made it clear that families come first in policy setting.
Rahm Emmanual - This is the one that actually has me a little concerned. Only because he learned his politics from Clinton directly and, as chief of staff, he will be the principle gate keeper for obama. But even here I ask the can he be effective in the role and the answer is clearly yes, so I am willing to give him a shot.
In the end abandoning/attacking Obama does nothing but give the right hope that the democrats will repeat the infighting of the early Clinton years. We must see what the actual early work product from these people look like before leaping to any judgment, otherwise we are doing nothing more than playing the William Ayers guilt by association game.