With every selection that Barack Obama makes for his White House team, right-wing pundits scramble for their megaphone to lambaste the President-elect for choosing former Clinton Administration officials and Capitol Hill veterans. And every time, it sounds something like this: “filling the Cabinet with former Clinton operatives, former Congressmen, and former Senators doesn’t uphold the commitment to ‘change’ he talked about during the campaign.”

Before we torpedo this idiotic critique, let’s acknowledge that this is a perfect example of a Catch-22 partisan attack. If Obama taps individuals who’ve spent their careers developing the necessary qualifications for the incredibly important jobs they’ll hold in the Administration, they’re “Washington insiders,” living and breathing examples of “politics as usual.” If he chooses business leaders and lawyers and others who’ve never set foot in D.C., he’s being irresponsible by leaning on advisors who have no experience whatsoever. If he surrounds himself with the same people who ran his campaign, he’s allowing himself to be the pawn of partisan politics. The line is thin, and no matter where Obama steps, he’s likely to have stepped over it one way or another, depending on who you ask.

Politico.com emblazoned headlines about Obama getting the “Clinton Team Back Together.” It’s true that those who’ve already been selected have ties to the 42^nd President. Rahm Emanuel (Obama’s Chief of Staff) served as a senior communications director in the Clinton White House. Eric Holder (the rumored Attorney General-to-be) became the first Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton years. Obama is even considering putting former First Lady in the top spot at the State Department.

But the truth is, where else would Obama go to find qualified candidates for the job? Bill Clinton is the only Democrat to have served in the White House in nearly 30 years. The vast majority of those who have earned the privilege to be considered for a high-profile job in the Administration had to have made their marks during the Clinton years. Clinton chose them because at the time, they were the very best at what they did. It’s conceivable that eight years later, some of them are still going to be at the top of the list.

It’s not as if the Republican attack dogs don’t know this. These are the same talking heads that slammed Obama as not having experience, and then turned around and claimed that his vice presidential selection of a 30-year Senate veteran in Joe Biden as being too much of a career politician (this, contrasted against a GOP presidential candidate who’d spent 25 years in the Senate and a vice presidential candidate who’d spent less than two years in big league politics).

Contrary to a lot of the criticism, however, Obama has surrounded with some who’ve spent their careers far from the beltway.  It was announced in the last 24 hours that Penny Pritzker, a Chicago businesswoman, would head up the Commerce Department, pending further vetting by Obama's transition team. Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Berkshire Hathaway Chairman Warren Buffet, Xerox Corp. CEO Ann Mulcahy, and Time Warner Chairman Richard Parsons are just a few of the non-politicos Obama put on his economic advisory team. Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Leveris and Google Climate Director Dan Reicher are both major candidates for Energy Secretary and climate czar, and T. Boone Pickens (however unlikely) is still in the mix as well. There will be career soldiers, like retired General James Jones, who end up in top national security positions. After winning his Nobel Prize for Economics, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (who blasted Obama during the primary)- is frequently mentioned as a possibility for Treasury Secretary. There will probably be a few New England academics as well.  And it's also expected that Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a woman who has never held federal office, will become the first female Secretary of Homeland Security.

In any event, the “Washington insiders” argument is unpersuasive, and worse, even the most ardent Obama-hater has to admit that Obama has selected incredibly qualified advisors so far. Emanuel is- if nothing else- an enforcer, which is exactly what you want in a White House Chief of Staff. Eric Holder is a top notch attorney with high level government law experience. And if he selects Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, few can say that the Senator was anything less than a goodwill ambassador while she was First Lady (and let’s not forget, a little less than half of the Democratic Party thought she was qualified to be in Obama’s position). Because more than the “experienced vs. inexperienced,” “Washington insider vs. Washington outsider” conundrum that the right-wing has trumpeted, this process is about putting together the smartest, most effective team possible. And so far, Obama has done just that.