I’m obviously not the first to point this out. President-elect Barack Obama’s recent administrative assemblage has been the source of growing complaints, namely, that 2009 is shaping up to look a lot like 1994 all over again.
It’s not so much the new-hires themselves that have some worked up over a possible return to the Clinton years. On the contrary, a cursory roll call reveals a powerhouse team with enough economic and diplomatic credentials to give hopeful reprieve from our current list of disasters.
It’s their metaphoric umph, the message the cabinet sends, their incidental symbolism which has elicited concern. Many who pulled the lever for Obama on Nov. 4 may now find themselves making a double-take at this surreal administrative reflection from yesteryear. In response, Obama must make a concerted communications effort to separate the objectives of his upcoming administration from those of the past, lest his platform of change be relabeled a historic rewind. He should assuage his supporters – and conservative pundits already on the pounce – that his new cabinet is more than a recycling of the Clinton years.
Perhaps it doesn’t help that John Podesta, the leading force in Obama’s transition team, was once Clinton’s former White House chief of staff. And of course we have Hillary herself, who as secretary of state will serve as the nation’s top diplomat, a notion Obama balked at repeatedly when he derided the former first lady’s foreign policy abilities during the debates earlier this year.
It’s a theme that plays out all the way down the political pyramid. We have future chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, who as the new Whitehouse “gatekeeper” also served as Clinton’s senior advisor for five years. There’s attorney general Eric Holder, whom Clinton nominated deputy attorney general under Janet Reno. We have deputy chief of staff Mona Sutphen, a member of the national security council during the Clinton years. Secretary of homeland security will be Arizona governor Janet Napolitano, formerly appointed United States attorney for Arizona by Clinton. New Mexico Gov. (and former Presidential candidate) Bill Richardson has been nominated secretary of commerce. He was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Clinton, and was also secretary of energy during the Clinton administration. Future UN ambassador Susan Rice was assistant secretary of state for African affairs during the Clinton years, and treasury secretary Timothy Geithner worked in the international affairs division of the U.S. Treasury Department during the Bush I and Clinton years.
These picks have been – and no doubt will continue to be – used as fodder against Obama. If you know anything about a.m. radio, you’re aware that nothing gets the jowls of conservative pundits flapping like the name ‘Clinton.’ If you’ve given yourself the, uh, “pleasure” of tuning in to Rush Limbaugh’s program in the last week, you might get the feeling his current hit-list reads like a time capsule dug up from early 90s.
Actions speak louder than words. They can also clean the slate, showing many guilty-by-association criticisms to be misguided or unfounded. Obama would do well to hit the gate running in January, proving himself immune from the rollover mentality that plagued the Clinton administration and arguably set the stage for the great GOP takeover of 1994. He could also learn from Clinton’s mistakes by allowing concepts like accountability and transparency to enter his administrative repertoire. Actions like these alone will render many detractors' criticisms baseless.
In one way, Obama has sent a positive message with this band of new-hires. Bringing these Clinton old-timers back into the fold – as well as retaining Bush’s Robert Gates as defense secretary – shows that he values loyalty. In PR terms, this familial cabinet is a welcome communicative contrast from Bush’s perennially changing staff of irregulars. In the end however, a smooth economic recovery, renewed foreign diplomacy and a low staff turnover rate will be the ultimate indicators whether Obama picked the right people for the job.
