Battle of the All-Star Cabinets

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - 3:44 AM Share

Ezra Klein and Megan McArdle have divergent takes on the caliber of Obama's incoming cabinet vs. Bush's incoming cabinet back in 2000. Intriguingly, on this issue they go against their ideological predilections. Klein first:

"Isn’t it amazing," asks Krugman, "just how impressive the people being named to key positions in the Obama administration seem? Bye-bye hacks and cronies, hello people who actually know what they’re doing. For a bunch of people who were written off as a permanent minority four years ago, the Democrats look remarkably like the natural governing party these days, with a deep bench of talent." That certainly feels true. But the Bush administration started out with a fairly deep bench. Colin Powell as Secretary of State. Paul O'Neill --a former deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget and a past chairman of the RAND Corporation -- as Secretary of the Treasury. Columbia's Glenn Hubbard as chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice providing foreign policy expertise. Indeed, the Bush team was lauded for being such a natural entity of governance: These were figures from the Nixon and Ford and Bush administrations, and they were backed by graybeards like Baker and Scowcroft and Greenspan. What could go wrong?

McArdle dissents:

Obama's got a much, much better economics team than Bush started out with. I agree with his endorsement of Glenn Hubbard. But Paul O'Neill wasn't exactly an a-lister even before he turned out to have fantastic(ally entertaining!) verbal impulse control problems. And Larry Lindsay did not match up to Larry Summers in stature, though of course what he got fired for was not being incompetent, but telling the truth. Bush's second term team has actually been pretty stellar, but his first term left a lot to be desired.

I actually think they're both right. Klein is correct that, John Ashcroft excepted, Bush's first cabinet was viewed at the time in largely glowing terms. Remember when everyone thought Tommy Thompson was the perfect guy to take over HHS? When Bush deciding to keep George Tenet and Norm Mineta in his cabinet were acts of statesmanlike bipartisanship? Ironically, Ashcroft is likely the only first-term cabinet member whose reputation has gone up in retrospect. At the same time, McArdle is correct that the economic team was not considered the strength of the cabinet -- the national security team had the all-stars in Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, etc. The simple fact is that what matters in any organization is the leadership from the top. George W. Bush put together a group of strong-willed individuals, but displayed little interest in refereeing disputes among them. Will Obama do better? I'm cautiously optimistic, but we won't know for a while.

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BALOK

12:50 PM ET

November 26, 2008

"... but displayed little

"... but displayed little interest in refereeing disputes..." - the implication seems to be that Bush wasn't smart enough to compete against the ambitious big brains around him but because Obama is a bright guy he'll do better - but it wasn't just Bush that was out played, Rice was and so was Powell, not exactly simpletons. People put too much emphasis on intelligence - I've known plenty of Phds who I wouldn't trust or a second with my life. Savvy, cunning, a certain ruthlessness, the gift of good instincts and the wisdom that comes of hard experience are often more important qualities for a leader to possess. So it is I can look at Obama right now, at his emphatic move to the center in direct contradiction of the rhetoric that brought him to power, and I can say: this is good, he's a cunning bastard, I want that in a leader; or, this is bad, he's weak, he's afraid of power and is relinquishing control to the Clintonites. How smart he may or may not be does not especially factor in.

DAN

1:13 PM ET

November 26, 2008

Balok: Actually, no, I'm not

Balok: Actually, no, I'm not saying that Bush wasn't smart enough to referee (his intelligence has by and large been underestimated by commentators). I'm saying he wasn't interested in setting up a proper decision-making process. He tended to decide on things quickly and never revisit his decisions. That's not about a lack of intelligence -- it's about a lack of curiosity.

JUSTIN

2:25 PM ET

November 26, 2008

Obama seems to have an

Obama seems to have an aversion to making decisions (re: voting present, or maintaining any policy stance). If his cabinet members disagree frequently, it's going to be an interesting free-for-all.

ZATHRAS

3:44 PM ET

November 26, 2008

Bush did set up a

Bush did set up a decision-making process. I don't know why Dan contends he didn't, just because the one Bush used had never been tried before.

In Bush's administration, the de facto last word in resolving interagency disputes was delegated by the President to the Vice President. The Vice President saw all paperwork going into the Oval Office, while staffers working directly for the President did not see everything that went through or came out of the OVP. The last word the President heard about decisions had to make in his first term always belonged to the Vice President, who met frequently with Bush without others in the room. Even White House contact with legislators was done more often through the Vice President's office than through the President's.

Now, one can't say Bush's Vice President (or his indispensable ally, the Secretary of Defense) didn't know what they were doing, even if Bush sometimes did not know what they were doing. It's just that relative assessments of Bush's and Obama's top appointments can't be made without a comparison of the way Bush made decisions with the way Obama will. Without making any extraordinary claims for Obama, I think it likely that his administration will more closely resemble earlier administrations than it will George Bush's -- an administration with an unusually weak President at its core, that compensated for that weakness in a way not attempted by any administration in over 200 years.

Incidentally, a lot of people here in Wisconsin never agreed with the appointment of Tommy Thompson as Secretary of HHS. HHS is an enormous, sprawling department that needs a coordinator as Secretary. Thompson was a boss, and should have been sent to a department, like Transportation, that needed a boss. It's a moot point in retrospect, since Thompson had strong views on Transportation policy, policymaking in Bush's administration was centralized in the White House, and Thompson would have ended up losing any disputes; the inoffensive Norm Mineta, who Bush appointed instead to get a token Democrat in his Cabinet, avoided such disputes and lasted out Bush's first term.

ECONTECH » DREZNER FORGETS HE WAS SMOKING IN THE EARLY 2000S

11:27 PM ET

November 26, 2008

[...] Battle of the All-Star

[...] Battle of the All-Star Cabinets [...]

DISMAL

5:12 PM ET

November 27, 2008

One thing is certain. Obama

One thing is certain. Obama will be declared a success, just like W was declared a failure, quite apart from what he did.

So Obama retains Gates, doesn't close Gitmo, and doesn't repeal the Bush tax cuts? Despite a two-year breathless campaign about hope and change, alleged Bush administration war crimes, rape of the constitution, etc.? Crickets chirping.

Iraq becomes a success? Praise Obama's wise policy.
Iraq becomes a failure? Blame W's stupid policies.

Repeat for Afghanistan, the economy, energy policy, Michelle's hairdo, and everything else.

Palin is dumb, but Biden is just being Joe.

It's simply "narrative" (to use one of Dan's favorite words) combined with journalistic career interests, which are to stick to the correct opinions of one's social class. So just save yourself some money on newspapers and take the wife and kids out for dinner.

TED CRAIG

1:04 PM ET

November 30, 2008

I can see where Ashcroft can

I can see where Ashcroft can be dismissed since he did lose an election to a corpse, but I'd say being the past president of the National Association of Attorneys General made him far more qualified for the post than either Janet Reno or Holder.