Obama and the 1955 DeLorean

Here's the best reading of the day: Noam Scheiber's New Republic piece on Obama's thinkers (link). It's good at two levels: good at giving names, and also good at comparing (contrasting) styles:

[the Bill clinton 1992 approach was] what you might call a "deductive" approach--an all- encompassing, almost revolutionary idea, out of which fell lots of smaller proposals. ...

For their part, the Obama wonks tend to be inductive--working piecemeal from a series of real-world observations. ... Think of the contrast here as the difference between science-fiction writers and engineers. [Robert] Reich and [William] Galston are the kinds of people who'd sketch out the idea for time travel in a moment of inspiration. [Austan] Goolsbee et al. could rig up the DeLorean that would actually get you back to 1955.

Confession: I always felt a little nervous around Robert Reich and his grand pronouncements (so, I suspect, did Clinton: I bet Reich expected more out of Clinton than the crummy Department of Labor). And where, I wonder, is Ira Magaziner? Oh. Right. Got it (link).