Really, one has to ask if Hildebrand is really trying to reassure "the left wing of our party," or whether he's trying to stir them up further out of some unknown political calculation or other. After all, many on "the left" have also made Hildebrand's point: They've noted that Obama should be allowed to let his actual policies do the talking, while simultaneously asking completely legit questions about what his choices portend about the future direction of his administration. If merely asking such questions is enough to incite an attack on "the left" from someone in Obama's inner circle, it seems reasonable to conclude that the motive here isn't to mend fences at all.
But putting the politics of this new Obama narrative aside, I see this more as a move to ignore or marginalize criticism in general. If the majority of Obama's appointments thus far happen to be... for the most part... a string of Wall Street whores, insurance lobbyists, and war criminals, one doesn't necessarily have to be part of some angry left wing conspiracy just to point out the obvious.
In fact, it's the counter-argument put forward by Obama sycophants that the magical new President can somehow polish all of these turds which seems the most off-the-wall to me.
Update: Greenwald says
Until five weeks ago, I literally never heard anyone claim -- in either party -- that it was irrelevant who the President appointed to his Cabinet and other high-level positions. I never heard anyone depict people like the Defense Secretary and CIA Director as nothing more than impotent little functionaries -- the equivalent of entry-level clerical workers -- who exert no power and do nothing other than obediently carry out the President's orders.
In fact, I seem to recall pretty vividly all sorts of confirmation fights led by Democrats over the last eight years (John Aschroft, John Bolton, Alberto Gonzales, Michael Hayden, Steven Bradbury) -- to say nothing of the efforts to force the resignation or dismissal of people such as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Gonzales -- that were based on exactly the opposite premise: namely, that it does matter who is empowered to lead these agencies and departments, and specifically, that their ideology not only matters, but can, by itself, warrant rejection. Nobody ever claimed that Ashcroft, Bolton or Hayden were "unqualified." It was their beliefs and ideology that rendered them unfit for those positions, argued Democrats.
When and why did everyone suddenly decide to change their minds about this and start repeating the mantra of some Obama supporters that high-level appointments are irrelevant because only the President counts? For the people who now make this claim to justify Obama's appointments, were any of them objecting during any of the above-listed confirmation fights that those fights were wasteful and unjustified because presidential appointments are irrelevant?
Other than Brennan (and Hayden, if that happens), I haven't felt very strongly about any of Obama's appointments, mostly because they're roughly what I expected. And it is true that a President's actions matter more than his appointments (which isn't saying that the latter is irrelevant). But I nonetheless find it striking how quickly people are willing to spout a position that they never previously believed and even is at radical odds with what they've said and done in the past -- Cabinet appointments are irrelevant! -- simply because the new position justifies what someone they like is doing.
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