On your first point, I don't think you're fully allowing for the social changes between the 1950's and the 2000's. My impression is that you used to have the world of business and the world of academia (which offered jobs to most public intellectuals). Over time there has been a proliferation of think tanks, nonprofits, and financial institutions these days. And law has become much more of an avenue to politics and government than it used to be (and academia less of an avenue, except maybe for economists). So, Obama's picks are likely to have more diverse careers than JFK's.

I remember the praise accorded McNamara (he and his whiz kids actually tamed the Pentagon, or so it seemed to LBJ and me in 1965) for intellectual firepower, which seems to be the same sort of awe Summers seems to inspire. We must hope that Obama is a better judge than LBJ.

Barack Obama's critics on the left are correct about one thing: credentials are fine, but an appointee's record matters too.

To leftish critics this means mostly what appointees have said in the past, but it's also true with respect to what they have accomplished. Past achievement is no guarantee of future success; both Dean Rusk and Colin Powell, for example, were highly (and rightly) praised for their performance in other jobs before failing at the State Department. However, some realism is called for when assessing what people have gotten done that might make it likely they could succeed in the offices to which they are being named. People like Tim Geithner and Gen. Jones pass that test, or seem to at this point in time. Sec. Gates does, obviously, and so do Eric Holder and Tom Daschle.

I've already made clear that I don't think Hillary Clinton does at all. Her record in the Senate has won praise for collegiality and hard work, but at a time when the Senate (also the House) allowed itself to decline in relevance on the major issues with which government must deal. Nor is there much of a trail of Clinton accomplishments as a legislator to follow, and of course with respect to the Bush administration policies on Iraq and other subjects that she opposed Clinton was completely ineffectual. As First Lady she succeeded in not getting in the way of foreign policy in her husband's administration, but otherwise her reputation rests on her celebrity and record as a campaigner -- which historically are not good predictors of success in the State Department.

I actually agree with people concerned that a shared academic background can produce a provincial outlook, and it's probably not healthy for such a large country to have the top of its government populated primarily who think and talk like one another. So, far, though, Obama seems to have done pretty well as far as designating nominees for senior positions who can handle them without creating trouble for him, with the one significant exception noted above. I do have some concern that the emerging structure of the Obama administration may yield in practice more than one situation in which there are too many chiefs -- or cooks in the kitchen, or whatever similar metaphor one wishes to use -- who see themselves as policy makers rather than policy implementers. As President, Obama may find the task of managing these situations more problematic than the suitability of individual appointees for their positions.

Bill: This meme isn't any more persuasive if you allow for the social changes you mention. If you expand from the academy to think tanks, you only net one other person (Susan Rice). None of the other picks have spent much time in NGOs or other non-profits.

There appear to be only two commonalities among all of Obama's appointees: prior government experience, and prior basketball experience.

Stiglitz's writings over the past few years have been just awful. Obama's appointments have been somewhat encouraging, a big question being whether he really does believe himself to be first and foremost a 'citizen of the world', and how far his internationalism extends. For example, are we really going to start giving $800b dollars more to the UN in this economic climate, as the bill he co-sponsored earlier this year mandates? Are we really going to get draconian on carbon emissions just when the Europeans seem to be bowing to the economic realities? All this while going back on our trade agreements? His appointments seem to argue that a lot of that was just campaign rhetoric.

On a related note, the latest fiasco on Wall Street should be reason enough to shut down all of the Ivy MBA programs for about 50 years.

The meme that most of the really smart people go to the "Top 20" schools in whatever field has done immeasurable damage in Washington, and now our leaders have an irresistable urge to believe there are no smart people between Philadelphia and the California border.

Speaking from experience, one of the best benefits of an Ivy League education is that you realize that many of the best and the brightest do go to such schols. As do a large number of total dimwits.

I kind of come down where Zathras does -- Obama is creating a cabinet of significant ability and significant egos which will mean that his "no drama" campaign style is unlikely to carry over into his presidency. My read on Obama is that he is not intimmidated by these guys -- he is fully confident in his ability to smack somebody down when necessary. The question is how well will he deal with the Washington culture that inflicts death by a thousand leaks. My guess is he is going to have problems with people who feel it ther right and duty to take their hurt feelings to the media.

This entire argument is fatuous to begin with. Many well-accomplished people have been the product of higher education and many numskulls have been the product of higher education. Trying to vilify well educated people off baseless arguments like "well the architects of Vietnam were intellectuals" has no credence whatsoever.

After our era of "who do ya wanna have a beer with" human resources, I'm willing to cast my lot with some people who were able to withstand academic rigors.

http://chaosoutoforder.wordpress.com/

That God we have at least one person who went to Cambridge. World crisis over. Please tell me that there are not too many people who went to Oxford to screw it up...

"Um... no, because this overlooks the fact that, based on his DC experiences in the nineties, Joe Stiglitz's managerial, bureaucratic, and political skills are all really, really bad. "

And Summers' skills didn't s*ck the big one at Harvard, just as much? Aside from his 'bell curve fo the b*tches' talk at Harvard, he also managed to p*ss off everybody there on other matters, *and* covered for his friend Schlieffer, paying (IIRC) $25 million of *Harvard* money to cover for a crony friend's crimes. That's the sort of crony capitalist attitude which brought the crisis on.

In addition, Summers' 'deregulate or bust' attitude in the 1990's helped to get us the 'deregulated and busted' situation today. He should be decorating the Wall St gallows (or maybe Harvard, but we could flip a coin), not being rewarded for helping to break the system.