BECAUSE THEY DID SUCH A GOOD JOB LAST TIME THEY WERE IN CHARGE?:

Revenge of the nerds: For the first time since JFK, 'the best and the brightest' are back in the White House. Will Ivy-League intellect be enough to set the country straight? (STEVEN STARK, January 21, 2009, Boston Phoenix)

Barack Obama's new administration has been characterized many ways — as a return to liberalism, a Chicago Mafia, and the harbinger of a new age.

But what it represents on a grander, political-science level is the return of the intellectual establishment to the seat of power in American politics. Or call it revenge of the nerds.

If there's one overriding theme that characterizes Obama's team, it is that anyone who went to Harvard (or another high-powered elite school) has his full trust. The Boston Globe calls the newly ensconced White House team "Cambridge on the Potomac." And Obama's actions and rhetoric confirm the same impulse. One Obama advisor even told ABC's George Stephanopoulos that the cabinet would be a mixture of Abraham Lincoln's "band of rivals" and "the best and the brightest." In truth, we've seen a lot more of the latter than the former.

Thus, as promised, Obama is moving beyond leftists and rightists and setting up "the establishment" in its place.

People who don't analyze the UR through the lens of his presidency of the Harvard Law Review are missing the key clues to who he is.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 21, 2009 10:23 AM