The thing about the Clinton administration is that Jimmy Carter’s administration ended in 1980. So if you’re going to create an economic policy team for Barack Obama your main choices are (1) “folks who worked on economic policy in the Clinton administration,” (2) “folks who worked on economic policy in the Bush administration,” and (3) “folks with little economic policy experience.” Now forced to choose between (1) and (2), I think (1) is clearly the better choice. Option (3) isn’t the worst thing in the world, lots of intelligent knowledgeable right-thinking people don’t happen to have experience in government. But it seems to me that it’s extremely prudent for a president to desire that the majority of his economic policy team be composed of people with previous executive branch economic policy experience. That means basically a lot of “Rubinites” plus various exceptions around the margin.
From Yglesias » The Eternal Return of Robert Rubin
Worth a read.
