Yglesias (via his cronies at CAP) reports that Melody Barnes will run Obama’s Domestic Policy Council.
That’s good news. I think she counts as a “dyed-in-the-wool progressive.”
On a related note, there’s been a fair amount of back and forth about my complaint the other day w/r/t the lack of movement lefties in the nascent Obama administration.
But I want to reiterate, that while I’m really not pleased with a lot of the picks — Larry Summers, for instance — I think it’s also easy to over-interpret the degree to which the ideological disposition of the personnel being named will be determinative. “Personnel is policy” is an old movement conservative saw. And it’s doubly true for ‘wingers that don’t actually believe in constructive governmental policy engagement. But with a Democratic administration actually committed to good governance, it’s a bit more complicated.
And, as the mutual fund ads say, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Just consider that when Dubya appointed his cabinet it was dominated by old GOP hands, with a strong over-representation of the Ford administration. None of us thought: uh-oh! Those Fordies are totally going to launch an insane campaign of imperial conquest and messianic violence. But that’s what happened. So who knows?
