A change that smells

Wesley Pruden:

Change isn't always all it's cracked up to be.

Consider that nameless regiment of a bygone era, and the company sergeant who was told to make sure the men practiced basic hygiene. "All right, men," he said firmly at the first formation, "the colonel says we're going to practice cleanliness, and that starts with a change of underwear every week, whether you need it or not. O'Malley, you change with Sanchez; Hodges, you change with Cohen ... ."

This, as we now learn, was the formula Barack Obama had in mind when he promised "change we can believe in." He delivered change with the selection of his Cabinet, studded with Bill Clinton's mouldy scraps and fragrant leftovers, revealing that contrary to widespread impression, some of these worthies were not still dead. The underwear? We definitely won't go there. But Mr. Obama, eager to get where it is he may be going, is surely the first president to arrive with fresh scandal. New presidents usually get to unpack their suitcases and learn the way to the bathroom in the middle of the night before they have to explain why what the rest of us see is not really there.

Mr. Obama is resolute. He refuses to answer any questions about the "internal review" he ordered into whether, how and in what way Gov. Rod Blagojevich tried to sell the seat in the U.S. Senate that Mr. Obama vacated Nov. 16, saying the U.S. attorney asked him to withhold the report so as not to jeopardize the case against Mr. Blagojevich. The U.S. attorney in Chicago, Patrick Fitzgerald, has fallen silent now, but not before he said enough to put a little poison in any jury pool he might call on later for assistance in putting Mr. Blago away. He makes "no allegations" that Mr. Obama did anything wrong.

That's what he says now and that may be the last word, but it defies the past to think that anyone, even a messiah, could go for walks in the Chicago sewers and emerge with only stink on his clothes and nothing on his shoes. But we must all hope he did.

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A great analogy that is proving too accurate. From the mess with Blagojevich to the investigation of Bill Richardson's donors, the smell of the old Democrats is brought into the "diversified" cabinet of the new.