Remember when the Vulcans came to power?

Ezra Klein erinnert bei allem angebrachten Enthusiasmus in Bezug auf Obamas Ernennung von sovielen kompetenten Leuten an eine wichtige Begebenheit der jüngeren Geschichte:


"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?
Quite a bit, as it turned out.

Das ist ohne Einschränkung richtig. Es mag beruhigend wirken, daß in all die Ämter wieder Sachverstand einzieht. Genau dasgleiche konnte man aber vor 8 Jahren auch behaupten.