According to The Hill, President Obama had a sit down with the Senate Democrats in which he faced the following criticism from Senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas:
Lincoln, who faces a tough reelection fight, asked Obama to push back against "people at the extremes" of both parties, especially against Democrats "who want extremes." She also took a swipe at Obama's White House, referencing a constituent who "fears that there's no one in your administration that understands what it means to go to work on Monday and make a payroll on Friday."
Lincoln's constituent is exactly right. According to research by JP Morgan, the Obama administration has the lowest percentage of appointees with private sector experience of any administration--Democratic or Republican--going back at least to Teddy Roosevelt:
That research, though, is quite faulty -- the guy who wrote the article in Forbes arbitrarily left out some agencies and used some sort of sliding scale based on his subjective analysis of the value of a given private sector job -- e.g., attorneys were worth less than other professions. I don't like it when salon.com is the voice of reason, but in this case, it's probably right: http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2009/12/07/obama_cabinet/print.html
I'd agree with Blanche Lincoln's criticism, but the same thing could be said of both Bush administrations and many governor's mansions on both sides of the aisle.
Posted by: will47 | 02/04/2010 at 07:07 AM