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I've been trying to make this point lately, but as you might expect, Rick Hertzberg makes it with more grace and quality. So I'll just quote him:
What is a “Clinton person”? Apparently, it’s any Democrat under about fifty or fifty-five years of age who has had work experience in the executive branch of the federal government.The theory seems to be that a “Clinton person” would be inclined, at best, to reproduce the policies and actions of the Clinton Administration, including the accompanying mistakes, or, at worst, to serve the interests of “the Clintons” should they prove divergent from those of the Obama Administration and the nation.This is the sort of reasoning that led to needless unhappiness the last two times Democrats were in power. Jimmy Carter’s circle regarded Johnson, who mired the nation in Vietnam and then handed the White House to Nixon, as a failure. They weren’t about to have any “Johnson people” in their White House. Clinton’s circle regarded Carter, who allowed himself to be paralyzed by a few hundred Iranian “students” and then handed the White House to Reagan, as a failure. They weren’t about to have any “Carter people” in their White House.It didn’t seem to occur to either crowd, Carter’s or Clinton’s, that old hands, far from being eager to repeat the errors of the Administrations of which they had been a part, would be especially keen to avoid them. Also, they would know in detail what those errors were.Hertzberg goes on to detail a couple of those mistakes, including the fact that Carter entered office on a pledge to cut White House staff by a third, and Clinton on a pledge to cut White House staff by a quarter. Neither of these efforts turned out very well, and they were particularly dim initiatives given that neither Carter nor Clinton had run a White House before and so had no real idea what sort of staff support you actually needed for successful governance.
