Ken Silverstein (Harper's): Cabinet Appointments DO Matter

Well, folks, welcome back the DLC:

Face it: if you’re a self-described Democratic Party progressive, Barack Obama’s picks for top spots in his administration look pretty grim thus far. Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner are disciples of former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin. The latter was a chief architect of Bill Clinton’s pro-Wall Street policies who then moved on to Citibank, where he helped bankrupt the company and the country (in return for over $100 million in compensation since 1999).

“The ultimate irony, of course, is that just as Rubin and Co. at Citi were being bailed out by the Bush Administration, President-elect Barack Obama was getting set to announce a new economic team drawn almost entirely from Rubin acolytes,” Steven Pearlstein wrote the other day in the Washington Post.

And Paul Volcker to head Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory board? A hero to central bankers everywhere, Volcker under Presidents Carter and Reagan whipped inflation by creating the worst depression and highest levels of unemployment since the 1930s. “It’s not that Obama…turns out to be a pragmatist,” Fred Barnes writes in The Weekly Standard. “The point is he’s pragmatic (so far) in one direction-rightward. Who knew?”

If Obama's got Fred Barnes' approval, you who hoped for 'real change' are more fucked than you could ever have imagined.