Beinart on Obama's Transition

This makes sense: 

Despite passing NAFTA and a deficit reduction package, his first two years were a comedy—and tragedy—of errors, marred by the gays in the military fiasco, several aborted cabinet nominations, the health care disaster, and humiliating reversals on Haiti, Bosnia, and China. Part of the reason was that Clinton—wary of being associated with the much-maligned Carter administration—chose relatively few of its veterans. From Defense Secretary Les Aspin, who had never before worked in the Pentagon, to Chief of Staff Mack McLarty, an old Arkansas buddy, to George Stephanopoulos and Dee Dee Myers, both in their teens when Carter left office, Clinton’s staff was plagued by inexperience. Things only got better when Clinton brought in old hands like David Gergen and William Perry, who helped right the ship.

So what Obama is doing is smart—unusually so for a Democrat. Knowing that he is new to Washington himself, he’s surrounding himself with people who aren’t. He’s doing something neither Carter nor Clinton could: taking advantage of the fact that the Democratic presidency before his was a success. And as a result, his first year in office probably won’t be amateur hour, which is a good thing, since we can’t exactly afford that right now.

The liberal blogosphere is worried that all these Clintonites spell timid centrism, but that is probably wrong. Remember, Reagan stocked his administration with people who had worked for Nixon or Ford, and yet he pursued a far more conservative path. Similarly, Obama will likely be more ideologically aggressive than Clinton—even with many of the same appointees—because he is governing in a different time. Clinton, after all, won the presidency by running as a New Democrat, and even then failed to garner 50 percent of the vote in what was still basically Reagan’s America.