Are you excited about the Obama Adminsitration? They are one of the finest collections of Mandarins to rule us since the Kennedy Administration. Here we see 3 perspectives on the new team. At the end are links to other posts about the opening days of the Obama era.
- “The Insider’s Crusade“, David Brooks, op-ed in the New York Times, 21 November 2008,
- “Achievetrons“, Lewis H. Lapham, Harper’s Magazine, March 2009,
- And a warning from the past.
(1) Pundit Brooks barks and rolls over at the mere prospect of their arrival
“The Insider’s Crusade“, David Brooks, op-ed in the New York Times, 21 November 2008 — Excerpt:
Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).
The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law).
This truly will be an administration that looks like America, or at least that slice of America that got double 800s on their SATs. Even more than past administrations, this will be a valedictocracy – rule by those who graduate first in their high school classes. … Already the culture of the Obama administration is coming into focus. Its members are twice as smart as the poor reporters who have to cover them, three times if you include the columnists. … They’re thinking holistically — there’s a nice balance of policy wonks, governors and legislators. They’re also thinking strategically.
… Most of all, they are picking Washington insiders. Or to be more precise, they are picking the best of the Washington insiders. As a result, the team he has announced so far is more impressive than any other in recent memory. One may not agree with them on everything or even most things, but a few things are indisputably true.
- First, these are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence. …
- Second, they are admired professionals. …
- Third, they are not excessively partisan. …
- Finally, there are many people on this team with practical creativity.
(2) Not everybody shares Brook’s confidence
“Achievetrons“, Lewis H. Lapham, Harper’s Magazine, March 2009 — Excerpt, reformated slightly:
Achievetrons learn to work the system, not to change it, to punch up the PowerPoints for Citigroup and Disney and figure the exchange rate between an awkward truth and a user-friendly lie.
… Which isn’t to say
- that Hillary Clinton hasn’t read the letters of Abraham Lincoln, or
- that Tim Geithner doesn’t know how to analyze (in 3 languages and 5 currencies) a Four Seasons hotel bill;
- that Robert Gates isn’t familiar with the theory of Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, or
- that Larry Summers might make the mistake of turning to face Jerusalem instead of Mecca when begging money from a Saudi prince.
What it does suggest is that President Obama’s household staff, in accordance with the protocols observed by “the best of the Washington insiders,” can be counted upon to place their own self-interest first and foremost and to avoid fooling around with initiatives that threaten to leave a stain on the rug.
* Clinton as senator from New York in 2002 voted for the invasion of Iraq not because she knew or cared why America was embarking on a mindless war but because what was wanted was a cheerful waving of the pom-poms and the flag;
* Geithner as the president of the New York Federal Reserve Bank in the winter of 2007 neglected to address the impending trouble in the credit markets because to have done so would have upset the Wall Street achievetrons folding and refolding sets of imaginary numbers into paper hats and airplanes;
* Gates as deputy director of the CIA in the 1980s painted his portrait of the evil Soviet empire to match the one walking around in Ronald Reagan’s head, unwilling to believe that the Red Menace was mortal until the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 exposed his intelligence estimates as works of science fiction;
* Summers in 1998 as President Bill Clinton’s deputy secretary of the Treasury served as one of the principal sponsors of our current financial debacle, facilitating repeal of the Glass- Steagall Act and joining with Secretary Robert Rubin (Harvard, Yale Law) and Federal Reserve Bank Chairman Alan Greenspan (New York University) to force the resignation of Brooksley Born, chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, who urged regulation of the markets in new derivatives.
The motion to block the large-scale accumulation of toxic debt ran counter to the belief, then all the rage among the bankers at JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs as among the members of the Palm Beach Country Club, that money, deftly cultivated by its cronies, grows on trees.
… Our leading voices of informed opinion like to say that America now finds itself in a state of unprecedented crisis, the whole of our political and economic enterprise trembling on the verge of extinction. They call upon the president to be “bold,” to throw the moneychangers out of the temple, bail out the banks and the automobile industry, disgorge from the Augean stable on Capitol Hill its dungheap of cowardice and self-congratulation.
I don’t know anybody who questions President Obama’s willingness to perform the labors of Hercules, but where does he find the lionskin and the club? The redistributions of the society’s rich and poor require the hiring of domestic help willing to move the furniture. Achievetrons don’t do floors and windows. As individuals they make very good company, and at the tables down at Mory’s the magic of their singing no doubt casts its spell, but if they have paid attention to their studies, they can be trusted to know, as does the valedictocracy otherwise known as the national news media, that it’s a far, far better thing to live in comfort under a government they hold to be wrong than in discomfort under a government they hold to be right.
(3) A warning from our past
It was a glittering time. They literally swept into office, ready, moving , generating their style, their confidence. … It was an extraordinary confluence of time and men, and many people in the know quoted Lyndon Johnson’s reaction to them at the first Cabinet meeting. he, the outsider, like us, looked at them with a certain awe, which was no wonder, since they had forgotten to invite him to the meeting.
… They were all so glamorous and bright that it was hard to tell who was the most brilliant…
What was not so widely quoted in Washington (which was a shame because it was a far more prophetic comment) was the reaction of Lyndon’s great friend Sam Rayburn to Johnson’s enthusiasm about the new men.
Stunned by their glamour and intellect, he had rushed back to tell Rayburn, his great and crafty mentor, about them, about how brilliant each was, that fellow Bundy from Harvard, Rusk from Rockefeller, McNamara from Ford. On he went, naming them all. “Well, Lyndon, you may be right ant they may be every bit as intelligent as you say,” said Rayburn, “but I’d feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once.
From The Best and the Brightest, chapter 4, by David Halberstam (1969)
For more information from the FM site
To read other articles about these things, see the FM reference page on the right side menu bar. Of esp interest these days:
Posts on the FM site about Team Obama:
- Secretary Gates would be a hero – if speeches could reform DoD, 6 May 2008
- I was wrong about SecDef Gates – here is a more accurate view of him, 7 May 2008
- Biden’s gaffes are a threat to American’s complacency!, 13 September 2008
- Obama’s national security team: I hope you didn’t really believe in change?, 26 November 2008
Posts on the FM site about change:
- American history changes direction as the baton passes between our political parties, 18 May 2008 – Importance of the November 2008 political landslide.
- “Don’t Let Barack Obama Break Your Heart” by Tom Engelhardt, 21 November 2008
- Obama’s national security team: I hope you didn’t really believe in change?, 26 November 2008
- Obama supporters mugged by reality (and learn not to believe in change!), 9 December 2008
- Change you should not have believed in, 10 February 2009
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