"The suggestion that bringing on Clinton officials is inconsistent with change is pure bunk."

[DeepModem Mom]

Media Matters for America: When did experience become a flaw?
by Jamison Foser

....So, the history is clear: President Clinton was lambasted by the news media for not having enough old Washington hands on his staff; President Bush was praised for choosing veterans of previous Republican administrations.

Which brings us...to the present, and to the bizarre spectacle of journalists and pundits blasting Barack Obama for choosing staff members and Cabinet secretaries who are experienced and qualified....

***

That was a common theme on MSNBC, where longtime Washington insiders Chris Matthews, David Gregory, and Christopher Hitchens -- among others -- suggested that the choice of former Clinton administration officials was contrary to the idea of "change"....

***

This has been a sentiment expressed commonly in the media, nowhere more frequently than on MSNBC, but the suggestion that bringing on former Clinton administration officials -- even Clinton herself -- is inconsistent with a desire for change is pure bunk. Asserting such inconsistency requires some deeply flawed assumptions: that everyone who worked in the Clinton administration is alike; that the Clinton and Bush administrations pursued identical policies with identical effectiveness; or that the desire for "change" is simply a desire for change in the types of people who hold government jobs.

People want a change in policy and a change in effectiveness. They want a change from George W. Bush, of whom disapproval is near-universal. The idea that 67 million people voted for Barack Obama because they disliked the Clinton administration is ludicrous. It ignores the wide and deep disgust with the direction Bush has taken the nation and the stunning incompetence with which he has done so. And it overlooks the obvious fact that people voted for Barack Obama because they like him and they like his policy positions. But there is no evidence -- none -- that the nation as a whole has a deep desire to shun some of the people most qualified and experienced for administration jobs simply because they worked for Bill Clinton....

The whining from journalists about Clinton alumni in the Obama administration is even sillier when you consider that they would presumably criticize Obama if he chose people without prior White House experience, as they criticized Bill Clinton. So the only way Obama can escape criticism is if he hires a bunch of people who worked in the Reagan and Bush administrations. Perversely, after two straight elections in which the American people convincingly rejected failed Republican rule, the punditocracy would be less likely to criticize Obama for abandoning his promise of change if he retained the services of the very Bush administration officials who screwed up the country so badly in the first place.

No piece of transition news has rankled the chattering class as much as the rumored selection of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state -- not, in most cases, because they think her unqualified, but because they just don't like her. Christopher Hitchens, for one, lashed out at the news on MSNBC, leading the cable channel to treat his comments as though they were both surprising and important. They are neither. Hitchens hates the Clintons. Maybe not as much as he hates Mother Teresa, but there is little doubt that he hates them. Christopher Hitchens criticizing a Clinton is roughly as surprising as a Boston native speaking ill of New York Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter....

***

In the early stages of the last two administrations (both the result of "change" elections), the media made much of the importance of new presidents bringing on old hands with White House experience. Suddenly, they portray such moves as inconsistent with the idea of "change." There are really only two possible explanations for this inconsistency: They are blinded by their hatred of the Clintons, or are desperate for something -- anything -- to use as an excuse to criticize Obama....

http://mediamatters.org/items/200811210013?f=h_latest

[Dinger]

1. "When Did Experience Become A Flaw?"

Yeah, I was wondering that too.

[dflprincess]

6. Opps- self delete posted in wrong thread

[TankLV]

8. Not only "experience" but GOOD, PROVEN TRACK RECORD experience...

after all,

Peace, Prosperity,Surplusses and Hope were nothing to scoff at...

all this HATE for these PROVEN SUCCESSFUL people proves that some idiots are just - plain IDIOTS...

[tomp]

12. as if the clinton administration is not implicated in the current crisis. nt

[AwakeAtLast]

10. Ask a teacher with 10 or more years experience

It's been that way in education for a long time. :(

[Captain Hilts]

2. MSNBC is full of shit. nt

[midnight]

3. You tell them.......Hillary and Bill remain an asset to this country.

President Obama needs people who know how to hit the ground running. We have some serious problems just know kicking in because of the orchestrated distruction of everything we believed this country was constructed of-laws.

[DJ13]

4. In the early stages of the last two administrations ......

.....(both the result of "change" elections), the media made much of the importance of new presidents bringing on old hands with White House experience. Suddenly, they portray such moves as inconsistent with the idea of "change."


-----------


Bush 43 was hardly about "change", his was a message of (supposedly) returning to the Reagan years.

Clinton's original message in 92 was certainly "change" of a type, change away from Reagan Republicanism, and to that end he brought in new people, for the most part unsullied by traditional DC politics.

However the change Clinton spoke of wasnt a complete change from the politics of the day, it was a change back to the days of Tip O'Neal, of power party Dem political machine politics.

Obama on the other hand has campaigned on an entirely different "change" from those empty past campaign slogans.

His meaning of change was meant to embody change away from the kind of politics that has damaged our country ....away from power party Dem machine politics of the past, away from Bush's hyper pro corporate sold to the highest bidder "my way or the highway" corruption, and towards a new direction.

A realignment back towards a true inclusive administration that represents nothing of what those past administrations stood for.

The reason some are saying theres too many Clinton loyalists involved in Obama's "change" administration is due to the different nature of the "change" those people represented back when Bill became President.

Yes its the same word, but its not the same meaning.

[FrenchieCat]

7. I didn't know that Clinton campaigned on Change......

I always thought he had campaigned on Hope, and the economy.

[CreekDog]

15. "Putting People First"

I believe that was his slogan.

[1monster]

14. Sort of like, That depends on what the meaning of "is" is?

"Yes its the same word, but its not the same meaning."

The Clinton years were good, despite the Republican party's persistant, unending effots to bring down Bill AND Hillary Clinton that started BEFORE his inauguration.

The Clinton Admisitration brought us the longest period of peace and prosperity this nation has known...

If he made some mistakes, or if there was a need for later tweaks of changes of policy to keep it going, it is not Bill Clinton's fault that Bush didn't carry them out.

[Catherine Vincent]

5. They actually refer to them as "Clintonites" and not "Clinton officials". nt

[Delphinus]

9. Here's a story from AlterNet:

This Is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House

By Jeremy Scahill, AlterNet. Posted November 20, 2008.

http://www.alternet.org/audits/107666/this_is_change_20_hawks,_clintonites_and_neocons_to_watch_for_in_obama's_white_house/?page=entire

U.S. policy is not about one individual, and no matter how much faith people place in President-elect Barack Obama, the policies he enacts will be fruit of a tree with many roots. Among them: his personal politics and views, the disastrous realities his administration will inherit, and, of course, unpredictable future crises. But the best immediate indicator of what an Obama administration might look like can be found in the people he surrounds himself with and who he appoints to his Cabinet. And, frankly, when it comes to foreign policy, it is not looking good.

Obama has a momentous opportunity to do what he repeatedly promised over the course of his campaign: bring actual change. But the more we learn about who Obama is considering for top positions in his administration, the more his inner circle resembles a staff reunion of President Bill Clinton's White House. Although Obama brought some progressives on board early in his campaign, his foreign policy team is now dominated by the hawkish, old-guard Democrats of the 1990s. This has been particularly true since Hillary Clinton conceded defeat in the Democratic primary, freeing many of her top advisors to join Obama's team.

"What happened to all this talk about change?" a member of the Clinton foreign policy team recently asked the Washington Post. "This isn't lightly flavored with Clintons. This is all Clintons, all the time."

Amid the euphoria over Obama's election and the end of the Bush era, it is critical to recall what 1990s U.S. foreign policy actually looked like. Bill Clinton's boiled down to a one-two punch from the hidden hand of the free market, backed up by the iron fist of U.S. militarism. Clinton took office and almost immediately bombed Iraq (ostensibly in retaliation for an alleged plot by Saddam Hussein to assassinate former President George H.W. Bush). He presided over a ruthless regime of economic sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and under the guise of the so-called No-Fly Zones in northern and southern Iraq, authorized the longest sustained U.S. bombing campaign since Vietnam.

(rest at link above)

[JerseygirlCT]

11. I've been thinking the same

They're looking at this in an awfully micro way.

It's not about the personnel, it's about the direction the country will take.

And the president is going to determine that, not any one or four appts he makes.

[high density]

13. MSNBC seems eager to piss away their left-leaning audience

I suspect in six months they'll be back solidly in third place, unless they turn it around fast.