Don’t judge Obama’s cabinet by its diversity

Yet consistency in error is no virtue at all, and those who would judge the Obama administration by the crooked yardstick of “diversity” are misguided. So too are those conservatives who, remembering how mercilessly the Obama campaign derided Mitt Romney for his line about reviewing “binders full of women” when choosing appointees, have been keen to point out the president’s hypocrisy. Seductive as revenge is, we believe that it is the wrong course. This type of mockery affords the “diversity” fetish a legitimacy that it doesn’t deserve.

An open society will see natural variations in the makeup of government. Three of the last four secretaries of state were women. Two were black. One was a black woman. Now, it seems there will be a white man in the post. President George W. Bush’s cabinet was the “most diverse ever,” until Obama’s outdid it. The president’s new cabinet, by contrast, will be more white and more male. So what?

These are patterns that one would expect in a melting-pot society.