What change looks like

Ezra Klein argues that the embarassing moments of the transition were unavoidable, and in fact will lead to a cleaner administration:

But if Daschle's actions were forgivable in the eyes of President Obama, they still stood in sharp contrast to the rhetoric of candidate Obama. And that turned out to matter. In explaining his decision to withdraw, Daschle pointed to two New York Times articles. One was an editorial that concluded, "Mr. Daschle is another in a long line of politicians who move cozily between government and industry...[and] could potentially throw a cloud over health care reform." The other was a front page news story that said "Obama's ethics rules face an early test" and noted that "Mr. Obama on his first day in office imposed perhaps the toughest ethics rules of any president in modern times, and since then he and his advisers have been trying to explain why they do not cover this case or that case." It was this coverage -- not a word from Obama or an attack by the Republicans -- that drove Daschle to withdraw his nomination. And this coverage would not have existed had Obama not run the campaign he did.

There was always something studiedly vague about Obama's insistence that he would battle a culture in which “our leaders have thrown open the doors of Congress and the White House to an army of Washington lobbyists who have turned our government into a game only they can afford to play.” Obama could not remake Washington anew. His administration would certainly face unwanted scandal and welcome proficient rogues.

But it turns out that Obama's words, well, mattered. They made it harder to ignore scandal, as the Bush administration had done. The endlessly long vetting forms forcing deep tax and income transparency, which in turn uncovered embarrassments that would never have emerged under past regimes. This has made for a more troubled transition, but will probably also result in a cleaner administration. For all the embarrassments, this, in a concrete sense, is what change looks like. It's not an administration that decides to be clean so much as one that has little choice in the matter.