Rich (NY Times) draws parallels between Team Obama....

[Aviation Pro]

...and Halberstam's The Best and the Brightest. This is a serious read and is a refreshing change after eight years of Rich recounting the buffoonery of the Fuckstick/Shitstain administration. You may not like his conclusions, but it deserves serious reflection and discussion.

Link here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/opinion/07rich.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1228627355-GB63VQWGx1boniJhO7CUnw&pagewanted=print


The Brightest Are Not Always the Best
By FRANK RICH
IN 1992, David Halberstam wrote a new introduction for the 20th-anniversary edition of “The Best and the Brightest,” his classic history of the hubristic J.F.K. team that would ultimately mire America in Vietnam. He noted that the book’s title had entered the language, but not quite as he had hoped. “It is often misused,” he wrote, “failing to carry the tone or irony that the original intended.”

Halberstam died last year, but were he still around, I suspect he would be speaking up, loudly, right about now. As Barack Obama rolls out his cabinet, “the best and the brightest” has become the accolade du jour from Democrats (Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri), Republicans (Senator John Warner of Virginia) and the press (George Stephanopoulos). Few seem to recall that the phrase, in its original coinage, was meant to strike a sardonic, not a flattering, note. Perhaps even Doris Kearns Goodwin would agree that it’s time for Beltway reading groups to move on from “Team of Rivals” to Halberstam.

The stewards of the Vietnam fiasco had pedigrees uncannily reminiscent of some major Obama appointees. McGeorge Bundy, the national security adviser, was, as Halberstam put it, “a legend in his time at Groton, the brightest boy at Yale, dean of Harvard College at a precocious age.” His deputy, Walt Rostow, “had always been a prodigy, always the youngest to do something,” whether at Yale, M.I.T. or as a Rhodes scholar. Robert McNamara, the defense secretary, was the youngest and highest paid Harvard Business School assistant professor of his era before making a mark as a World War II Army analyst, and, at age 44, becoming the first non-Ford to lead the Ford Motor Company.

[camera obscura]

1. Very interesting article

I don't really agree with his conclusions but it's worth reading

[elleng]

2. Don't mind his conclusions,

and read another 'anti'-Geithner opinion somewhere recently;anyone remember?

[jaysunb]

3. Fair & balanced

I don't totally agree, but I did learn something I didn't know, and will be paying closer attention....

[sohndrsmith]

4. Whether I agree or not (I usually do, but not always) Frank Rich

is always worth reading.

[elleng]

5. Do read Sorkin article,

cited in Rich article.

'But Mr. Geithner’s involvement in several ultimately ill-fated efforts to buttress the American financial system is the very reason some Wall Street C.E.O.’s — a number of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of piquing the man who regulates them — question whether he’s up to the challenge.

“We have only two things to say about Tim Geithner, who we do not know: A.I.G. and Lehman Brothers,” said Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics. “Throw in the Bear Stearns/Maiden Lane fiasco for good measure,” he said.

“All of these ‘rescues’ are a disaster for the taxpayer, for the financial markets and also for the Federal Reserve System as an organization. Geithner, in our view, deserves retirement, not promotion.”

Ouch.'

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D04E5DD133DF936A15752C1A96E9C8B63