BAMWATCH OR BAMWRECK?

Posted at 7:09 a.m. ET

We're not in the prediction business here, and I think our very informed readership expects us to be pretty careful about what we say and report.  That stated, I can't resist the temptation to ask a simple question:  Do you get the sense that the Obama transition has run into trouble?

Let me explain.

During the campaign, McCain/Palin hit away at Obama's lack of experience.  One part of experience is the simple fact of knowing people - who they are, what they can do.  Roger Kahn, author of the classic, "The Boys of Summer," about the old Brooklyn Dodgers, wrote that one of the pleasures of going to see the Dodgers in their small park, Ebbets Field, was that you got to know what they were like.

We are two weeks into the transition, coming off an Obama campaign that lasted 21 months, and we get the sense that Mr. Obama doesn't know enough people, hasn't thought about enough people, to effect the kind of change he promised.  It is simply remarkable how he depends on holdovers from the Clinton government, a government he trashed during the primaries.  Hillary Clinton at State?  Eric Holder at Justice?  Rahm Emanuel, Clinton insider perfecto, in the office next door in the White House?  Larry Summers, Clinton's Treasury secretary, a strong shot to get his job back?  Susan Rice, from Clinton's White House, a strong possibility to be national security adviser?

Now we find that the new deputy White House chief of staff will be Mona Sutphen, top aide to Clinton's UN ambassador, Bill Richardson, and the woman, according to Byron York, who had substantial contact with Monica Lewinsky, to whom Richardson offered a job.  Richardson himself is also being interviewed.

All we need is Monica with that dainty blue dress.  We assume it's been dry-cleaned.

Look, it's normal that some people from the last Democratic regime will be hired.  But after Mr. Inspiration's promises, you'd think his first impulse would be to look beyond the usual employment pool.  It clearly is not.  And we have the feeling that Obama just doesn't know that many people, doesn't know what they are like, that his knowledge of government is thin, that he doesn't have the names in his mind, that he hasn't marveled at people who contribute something outside a political campaign.

That is inexperience.  He has time, but he is proving that the charge was true.

November 19, 2008.