As he picks Rahm Emanuel, Eric Holder, Tom Daschle and flirts with the former First Lady, there is a predictable chorus of criticism that going back to the Clinton years is not the change Barack Obama promised in his campaign.
Some of that was heard when he chose Joe Biden as his running mate, but Obama’s goal all along was to persuade voters wary of his inexperience that the best of the past would not be swept away in rhetorical enthusiasm for the new.
He is fulfilling that promise and concentrating on the real change from the Bush-Cheney years, bringing competence back to Washington, wherever he finds it–in the over-touted Lincolnesque “team of rivals” or in the best of the 1990s.
Holder, the new Attorney General who served under Janet Reno, will have the monumental job of restoring Justice to its pre-Ashcroft, pre-Gonzales stature, as he indicated in a speech last June, citing that “disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is destructive in our struggle against terrorism.”