I’ve seen lots of peo­ple on the left freak­ing out about Obama’s recent cab­i­net choices. Let’s review.

• Sec­re­tary of State: Hillary Clinton
• Sec­re­tary of Defense: Bob Gates
• Health and Human Ser­vices: Tom Daschle
• Home­land Secu­rity: Janet Napolitano
• Attor­ney Gen­eral: Eric Holder
• Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff

All famil­iar names to peo­ple who remem­ber the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion. Hell, one of them is a Clin­ton. So is this change we can believe in?

Hell yes. Mal­colm Glad­well points out that it takes 10,000 hours to mas­ter any com­plex skill. Writ­ing, play­ing piano, or even run­ning a gov­ern­ment. 10,000 hours. If you work a 40-​hour work week and have two weeks off for vaca­tion, you work 2,000 hours a year. So we’re talk­ing 5 years at a reg­u­lar job before you’ve mas­tered it. I under­stand the need for fresh faces and fresh ideas, but shouldn’t some­one in the new admin­is­tra­tion already have those 10,000 hours under their belt?

Let’s take a look at each one of these choices and see if just maybe they’re not as bad as the hard core left is saying.

Sec­re­tary of State: Hillary Clinton

This is the big one that no one can shut up about, least of which the peo­ple who keep leak­ing every step of the process to the press. Bill Clin­ton has agreed to do any­thing the Obama peo­ple want to make this hap­pen, so I don’t think he’s going to be the bag­gage peo­ple thought he’d be. The big ques­tion here is whether Clin­ton can and will be a faith­ful instru­ment of Obama for­eign pol­icy, the sin­gle point on which she and Obama seri­ously dis­agreed in the primaries.

I think she will be. Every­thing we’ve seen so far shows that Clin­ton is a team player. And we also know that Obama won’t hes­i­tate to replace her if she goes off mes­sage. More impor­tantly, Clin­ton knows that being very good at this job is a great step­ping stone to the Oval Office in 2016, since Biden almost cer­tainly won’t run at age 74.

Sec­re­taries of State have to be good at two things: talk­ing to for­eign heads of state and bypass­ing for­eign heads of state by talk­ing directly to for­eign media when nec­es­sary. Clin­ton can do both, maybe bet­ter than any­one else. Obama knows this, so he’s will­ing to give her the ben­e­fit of the doubt.

Sec­re­tary of Defense: Bob Gates

We knew there would be some Repub­li­cans in Obama’s post-​partisan cab­i­net, and as we pre­pare to get out of Iraq, con­ti­nu­ity of com­mand is impor­tant. Gates knows the cur­rent state of the mil­i­tary, and can enact a with­drawal plan faster than some­one who has to be brought up to speed. Plus, Gates has already taken a stand on secur­ing our nukes by fir­ing the top mil­i­tary and civil­ian heads of the Air Force over nuclear weapon safety. I think he’ll do a good job, and will prob­a­bly be replaced once the tran­si­tion out of Iraq is well under way.

Health and Human Ser­vices: Tom Daschle

He knows health care back­wards and for­wards and he knows how to get votes on the Hill. No one is bet­ter suited to drive leg­is­la­tion on uni­ver­sal health­care, not even Teddy Kennedy. Daschle knows where enough bod­ies are buried to get votes through on this, some­thing we’ve tried 4 times in a cen­tury and haven’t done. This time it will work.

Home­land Secu­rity: Janet Napolitano

Napoli­tano has been a voice of rea­son on immi­gra­tion and bor­der secu­rity, even rid­ing horse­back along the Mex­ico bor­der and walk­ing in the sewer tun­nels ille­gals use to cross over. She’s ide­ally suited to secure our bor­ders and ports, while not piss­ing off our legit­i­mate immi­grant population.

Attor­ney Gen­eral: Eric Holder

Yes, he was Deputy AG under Clin­ton, but he’s also the best man for the job. He knows Wash­ing­ton and he has an up close look at what Ashcroft and Gon­za­les have done to break the Jus­tice Depart­ment. He can put it back together.

Rahm Emanuel: Chief of Staff

Every admin­is­tra­tion needs a DA, a Des­ig­nated Ass­hole. A Bad Cop to Obama’s Good Cop. Rahm Emanuel was born for this job. He’s the attack dog that Dick Cheney was for Bush, but hope­fully he won’t shoot anyone.

So to wrap up, what we can tell from Obama’s picks so far is that he doesn’t care where peo­ple worked pre­vi­ously. Work­ing for Clinton’s or even Dubya’s admin­is­tra­tions isn’t a deal breaker. What he’s look­ing for is excel­lence. Peo­ple who can do the job they’re given superla­tively. In a way, it’s a very anti-​Bush pol­icy. There will be no “Brown­ies” in this admin­is­tra­tion, no one given a job for polit­i­cal rea­sons what­so­ever. Instead, we’ll have the best peo­ple pos­si­ble in each posi­tion, lead­ing with competency.

And after eight years of naked patron­age, that’s change I can believe in.