The More Things Change…
By Robert Perrego, at 12:56 pm on November 24th, 2008The old saying goes “The more things change the more they stay the same.” This seems to be the case with Barack Obama’s ‘Hope and Change’ candidacy. By now you know about the legendary ‘Hope and Change’ mantra that swept Obama to electoral college victory. This was a brilliantly constructed campaign to net votes from people that just didn’t like what was currently going on around them. Obama hit this one on the screws as this strategy, which was forged to completely eliminate the other candidate from the ballot by focusing the voters choice on now vs. a hopefully changed tomorrow, did not have to shine any light on exactly how we would get to this better changed tomorrow.
What has not changed is we are now finding ourselves with the same old people from the past that are now going to be in our tomorrow. Obama’s nominations of Democrats from past administrations and of those that endorsed his campaign early on keeps growing and growing. Well, a majority of the voters voted for ‘hope and change’ and now it seems we are getting a mix of re-tread employees from the Clinton years and political payoff nominations.
Lets take a look…
Obama’s Clinton Re-Treads
- Director, White House Economic Council – Lawrence Summers, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton
- Obama’s Economic Advisory Team – Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under Clinton
- Treasury Secretary – Timothy Geithner, Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs under Clinton and said to be a protege’ of Summers and Robert Rubin (Treasury Secretary under Clinton).
- Director of the Office of Management and Budget – Peter Orszag, current Congressional Budget Director and Senior Adviser on the Council of Economic Advisers under Clinton
- Rumored to be considered for Head of the National Economic Council – Jack Lew, former Director of the United States Office of Management and Budget under Clinton
- Secretary of State – Senator Hillary Clinton, pretty self explanatory
- Co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition – John Podesta, White House Chief of Staff under Clinton
- Rumored to be considered for a Deputy job in either the Treasury or White House – Jason Furman, was Director of Economic Policy for the John Kerry Presidential campaign and a Senior Economic Adviser to the Obama campaign. Hey – no ‘Clinton’ here.
… and now for the political payoffs
- Governor Bill Richardson – U.S. Commerce Secretary nomination who created a big stir when he endorsed Obama over Hillary as he was the Energy Secretary for Clinton before becoming Governor. I wonder if this appointment has anything to do with his endorsement?
- Governor Janet Napolitano – Secretary of Homeland Security nomination who supported Obama during the primary.
…and the new players?
- Chair Council of Economic Advisers – Christina Romer, Professor of Economics at University of California Berkeley
- Obama’s Spokesman on Economic Issues – Austan Goolsbee, Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business
This is not to say these people are not good at what they do, it is just that I am having a hard time seeing any ‘change’ here. Why didn’t we just vote for Bill Clinton again? How is this group of ‘the same old story’ supposed to be the ‘Hope and Change’ America supposedly voted for? Maybe this is a program to employ all the out of work former Clinton advisers?
These people are all Democrats so we are getting none of the ‘reaching across the aisle’ we all heard about during the election campaign. Hopefully they can come up with some ideas that will change our current dire economic times, but all I see is more of the same.
