We're In, They're Out

People have been complaining that the Obama Administration has so many Clinton veterans in it that it might as well be considered Clinton Redux. But these people, as people so often do, miss the point.

What Obama is doing by hiring so many Clinton veterans is avoiding the very mistake Bill Clinton himself made when he became president -- that is, hire too many young staffers who had never worked at the White House before, which made the beginning of the Clinton Administration a chaotic, pizza-strewn mess. In fact, when Clinton turned over the White House to George W. Bush, he congratulated him on having an administration with so many people who had worked there before -- like Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Peggy Noonan, surprisingly enough, makes an interesting point:

It is obvious that Mr. Obama's people have learned from the experiences of Bill Clinton and will continue to try not to begin with a gays-in-the-military, my-wife-is-revolutionizing-health-care series of errors that will self-brand them as to the left of the mainstream. They do not want to do anything that will leave the middle-right saying "Uh-oh" and begin to push away. The great question, however, is: Do Mr. Obama and his people fully understand what will make the middle-right say "Uh-oh"?

It's clear that Peggy Noonan thinks she knows. I'm not so sure about that.

Obama's choices have been pretty much made for him -- at least for the first hundred days (an expression they use at the start of every administration but that actually means something this time). Our new president's priorities have to be, in order:

• 1) The economy
• 2) The economy
• 3) The economy

There isn't going to be any great liberal agenda coming out of this White House -- not any time soon, anyway. He's going to be working too hard to prop up the economy. This, ironically enough, might bring him into Carter-esque conflict with the more left-leaning members of his own party in Congress, who will want to use this opportunity to create or revive a lot of spending programs that we don't have the money for at this time.

And what will Republicans be doing all this time? Here Noonan again makes a sort of sense. She's speaking to some fictional Young Republicans (do they really exist?):

There is joy to be had in being out of power. You don't have to defend stupid decisions anymore. You get to criticize with complete abandon. This is the pleasurable side of what the donkey knows, which is that it's easier to knock over the barn than build it.

She has a point. After all, Republicans have shown that they have no clue how to govern, so they should be happy that they no longer have to try. After all bitching and moaning is what they do best -- and now they get to do it.

And I hope they get to do it for a very long time.