We talk a lot about how the media has continued to reward pundits who got the Iraq War totally wrong, how prestige is valued over accuracy and name recognition easily trumps applied expertise. This goes on in other areas of political life too. Take Clinton's suggestion today that she'd deal with the financial crisis by appointing a panel that included Alan Greenspan and Robert Rubin. That would be the same Alan Greenspan who refused calls to regulate the subprime market, and who aggressively pushed Adjustable Rate Mortgages. And that would be the same Robert Rubin who helmed Citigroup, the same Citigroup that tanked when the subprime mortgages they bought turned lousy, and the same Robert Rubin who admitted he didn't know much about these new financial instruments and hadn't been following their development. Absent from Clinton, or anyone else's, recent comments, are names like Dean Baker, who has accurately predicted almost every turn in this crisis, or even mentions of Ed Gramlich, the Federal Reserve governor who had been calling for regulation of the subprime markets a full seven years ago (sadly, he died last September). Washington is not small. There is no reason we have to turn to the same minds, again and again, even after they've failed us, or proven themselves better suited to a past period in our history. Clinton does not need to float Colin Powell's name for foreign policy experience, and she doesn't need to restore Alan Greenspan's authority or ignore the fact that his virulent opposition to regulation had a role in the meltdown. New ideas are important! And elevating new voices is a good thing to do, particularly as the old voices failed because they were so opposed to your political philosophy.
