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President-elect Barack Obama is being criticized for appointing too many people from the Clinton administration to top level government posts. The criticisms follow his most recent selection of Sen. Tom Daschle to be Secretary of Health and Human Services.  Prominent people are openly suggesting that Obama needs to be careful of contradicting his previous statements on the need for change in American government.

“I thought he said he wanted change,” is the main criticism being heard. “He made these major speeches about the need for change and now here he goes filling up the white house with the same old names and faces that were there during the Clinton era. He’s even trying to get Clinton’s wife to serve as Secretary of State. Where’s the change?”

It sounds as if people are confused about Obama’s message of change. They seem to think that by change in goverment he meant change in who is running the country rather than change in how the country is run; but as Lanny Davis, former special council to Bill Clinton, pointed out, “change is about policy, not people”.

Davis is quoted by CNN as saying:

“What this conversation is about is laughable if you ask people in America what they care about. They care about the economy, jobs, education, health care. They don’t care about whether somebody who fills a particular box is from a prior administration.”

Well, people shouldn’t care that he’s appointing people from the Clinton administration. This doesn’t prove he’s no longer committed to change. It’s not as if these people are coming in to tell him how to run the country; and we all need to back off a little bit, stop acting like overgrown babies unhappy that things aren’t going the way we think they should be going, griping just for the sake of griping.

How about letting the man get sworn in and giving him six months to a year before you start to accuse him of being a bad president?