Obama Bright Appointees Make Bush's Look Even More Dim

Bruce Bartlett compares the Bush years and how horrible his appointees were with the competence of Barack Obama's team:

"So far, I am very impressed. Larry Summers at the NEC is brilliant. Tim Geithner at Treasury inspires confidence. Peter Orszag at OMB tells me that we will get honest numbers on which to base policy for a change. And Christina Romer at the CEA puts one of the nation’s top experts on the Great Depression at close hand.

This group has made me realize just how poor Bush’s appointments in recent years have been in the economic area. When slavish political loyalty is apparently the only requirement for a Bush Administration job, and demonstrable competence barely counts at all, it doesn’t tend to attract the best and the brightest. When on those rare occasions, Bush managed to get someone who is competent, there is no evidence that he paid the slightest attention to them, preferring instead the counsel of “Mayberry Machiavellis,” as former White House adviser John DiIulio called them. No wonder we are in the mess we are in."

via Matthew Yglesias:

Ask yourself, amid this massive economic crisis, who runs Bush's National Economic Council[NEC] now? You'd think his name would be in the headlines. It is run by a guy named Keith Hennessey. He's a complete nobody. Before he ran the NEC, he was the deputy. Before that, he was on Trent Lott’s staff. He has a master’s degree and it’s not in economics. The stature gap with a Lawrence Summers is enormous.

Source: Bruce Bartlett