Obama's cabinet and staff picks

[leftofthedial]

(from memory--probably omitted a few)
Timothy Geithner
Bill Richardson
Ken Salazar
Hillary Clinton
Bob Gates
Arne Duncan
Eric Holder
Shaun Donavan
Tom Vilsack
Tom Daschle
Hilda Solis
Steven Chu
Janet Napolitano
Eric Shinseki
Ron Kirk
Ray LaHood
Christina Romer
Karen Mills
Rahm Emanuel
Larry Summers
Melody Barnes

[NightWatcher]

1. My least fav to date. Eric Holder and Vilsack

nobody's perfect, but come on, Holder as your AG???

I'm still on the bus, waiting to see what happens. BTW this is still better than a McCain cabinet

[leftofthedial]

2. Where are all the Obamaites on this?

I would have thought they'd be padding the "Great picks" options...


There are several on the list, looking at it in total, that just leave me scratching my head.

[NeedleCast]

18. Waiting until he actually enters office...

[mkultra]

21. ill speak for them

As i am one of your broadly brushed Obamaites , I think i can respond to this attack. Personally, im happy with some of his picks and unhappy with others. In general, i believe that Obama will operator in a far more hands on position than someone like Bush or perhaps Clinton. This being said, these posts will be taking direction from Obama not making policy.

If this is the case, these people need to be knowledgeable in their area of appointment or have some other advantage that makes them useful. For example, i know a fantastic system administrator at work, smart and creative yet fundie to the core. Not even a smart fundie, a dumb "Obama is a Muslim" fundie.

If Obama where to fill his administration with lefties, the result might not be to choose the best in a given area for the sake of creating an attractive package for the left. It would also signal to the right that Obama was going to be partisan and we would loose any chance at getting them to help.

In summary, we have played partisan for a long time and Obama is trying to fix a giant problem. This requires everyone to focus on the biggest problem at hand, the economy.

I have look at his appointments and i understand why he made each one. I also understand why people who look only at the surface are upset. I would look for a partisan effort on the economy for the entire first term with far more progressives moves late first term early second.

[Sebastian Doyle]

3. Well, let me break it down.

Good choices for the positions nominated: Steven Chu, Eric Shinseki, Hilda Solis

Good choices for the cabinet, but would have been better in a different job: Bill Richardson (should have been Secretary of State), Janet Napolitano (would have made a better AG than Holder)

Absolutely HORRIBLE choices: Bob Gates, Tom Vilsack, Larry Summers, Ray LaHood

Obviously political appointments: Ken Salazar, Hillary Clinton, Tom Daschle, Rahm Emanuel

"Jury still out/need to research more on these people":
Timothy Geithner
Arne Duncan
Eric Holder
Shaun Donavan
Ron Kirk
Christina Romer
Karen Mills
Melody Barnes

[leftofthedial]

4. good reply

Good points about the different jobs.

I add to my HORRIBLE list all yours, plus Salazar, Geithner, Duncan and Mills. Romer, Kirk and Holder are whatever is one notch below HORRIBLE.

[femmocrat]

7. ITA on Duncan.

Terrible pick. A real let-down, considering we once had some hope that Obama would undo some of the damage done by the repukes. Instead we get a basketball buddy/CEO to head Education.

[leftofthedial]

8. but he has a mean jump shot.

That one really hurt.

[MrSlayer]

5. Too many center-right people. However....

Obama is the executive, he is the boss. So while I'm not very impressed with whom he has picked, I want to see how he directs them before rendering final judgement. If he is as Lincolnesque as we are led to believe, everything will be fine. If he can't control his cabinet, we're not going to be seeing much in the way of change. We'll see how it plays out.



edit:typo

[Political Heretic]

6. Time will tell. Bascially no one knows shit yet, but everyone loves to pontificate

[leftofthedial]

9. do we really "know shit"?

You mean to say we can't tell anything from the considerable resumes of all these people?

Really?

[Political Heretic]

10. Yes. Really.

It depends a lot on weather or not they work for Obama or Obama works for them, which we don't know yet.

[fla nocount]

11. You're right. We don't yet know if the junior senator from Illinois is...

capable of independent thought or decision making. Let's give him six months of crossing the street on his own and see if he's still alive.

[Radical Activist]

15. Many Presidents don't rely on their cabinet to make policy.

Some rely more on policy advisers and Presidential liaisons to various departments. So people may be looking at the wrong appointments completely.

[leftofthedial]

16. which Presidents were those?

Are you claiming that in this time of unprecedented crisis, the Obama has used up his cabinet on purely meaningless, figurehead appointments and that these already powerful and influential people have agreed to take the next four years off and just attend receptions and funerals? Clinton and Geithner and Daschle and Richardson and the like? Wow. It's getting pretty deep.

[Radical Activist]

19. Read the conclusion of this chapter

or the whole chapter on Presidential cabinets. What I wrote is the consensus view among Presidential scholars. It will help put things in perspective.
http://books.google.com/books?id=Zscghb2szdAC&pg=PA115&dq=t&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0#PPA133,M1


Goodwin wrote a good article before election day too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03goodwin.html?pagewanted=print

[leftofthedial]

23. that's one perspective, not shared by all (or even most) historians.

McNamara, Rusk and others would certainly disagree. Even Bobby as AG would probably have differed with that view.

To the extent that Kennedy did not turn to his cabinet for policy, the ugly truth is that it was because he turned to wealthy and powerful bankers instead.

[Radical Activist]

25. lol

You always have to look for the most negative angle, huh? First you dismissed my point as ridiculous. Now that you have to admit that Obama may not look to his cabinet to set the policy direction (something he has said himself) you're suggesting that the only alternative is wealthy bankers. When in fact, other Presidents have turned to advisers and department liaisons. The fact that you can name a few people in ONE administration's cabinet doesn't negate the view of a majority (yes, really its a majority view) of historians about more modern cabinets. You make it very hard to take you seriously when you search to find the most negative scenario imaginable instead of the most likely one.
Are you this negative about everything in life? You must be a very depressed person if you do.

[leftofthedial]

17. So their entire careers are irrelevant,

meaning that Obama's cabinet will be irrelevant.

That's even scarier than the possibility that he selected them *because* they are right-of-center, "free market" ideologues.

[JackRiddler]

12. Other: Predictably, these people suck. Return of the Clinton era, but it can't work so...

We have a state controlled almost entirely by corporations, banks, the military-industrial complex, the spooks, the super-rich and the managers of empire. The two parties have a consensus on these interests, even if they serve different voting clienteles. Obama's picks are therefore predictable. It's the return of the Humane Imperialists we already saw under Clinton. They offer nothing to deal with the economic, ecological or international crises, but that means their usual approaches may essentially be powerless. That's one factor that gives me hope: Obama may be flexible enough down the line to adapt to the realities that will hit this country much harder next year and beyond. Another factor is that the people are likely to be roused (of necessity) into the kind of organized action we haven't seen since the 1930s, or at least the early 1970s. And a third factor is that the crimes of the Bush regime were too obvious, and no matter how many key potential witnesses they off via accidents a whole lot of rotting bodies are going to float to the surface starting in January, leaving Obama with the choice of prosecution or open complicity. Americans may yet come to learn their own history, and that can change what they do next.

So let's organize and see what happens as the rapid terminal crises of cannibalism, erm, sorry, capitalism develop.

[leftofthedial]

14. Sounds better than an NBC miniseries.

I'm deeply concerned about the puny, don't-change-too-much approach to the economy so far at least.

Way too little, way too late.

If there is no justice for the plethora of crimes of the last eight years, this country is finished anyway. It will complete the process of "reaganization" and just become another Western hemisphere thugocracy.

[leftofthedial]

13. Wow. 12:30 Mountain time

and not much support for the Obama's picks. Hmmm.

[Shiver]

20. Some more to add to your list...

Mona Sutphen (Deputy White House Chief of Staff)
Jim Messina (Deputy White House Chief of Staff
Patrick Gaspard (Director of the Office of Political Affairs)
Peter Orszag (Director of the Office of Management and Budget)
Phil Schiliro (Assistant to the President for Legislative Affairs)
Susan Rice (Ambassador to the United Nations)
David Axelrod (Senior Adviser to the President)
Pete Rouse (Senior Adviser to the President)
Valerie Jarret (Senior Adviser to the President, Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Affairs)
Robert Gibbs (Press Secretary)
Ellen Moran (White House Communications Director)
Nancy Sutley (Head of White House Council on Environmental Policy)
Jared Bernstien (Chief Economist and Economic Policy Adviser to VP)
Mary Schapiro (Chair of the SEC)
John P. Holdren (Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy)
Cecilia Muñoz (White House Director for Intergovernmental Affairs)


Sutphen, Gaspard, Schiliro, Moran, Sutley, and Bernstien are progressives; from your list, Barnes, Chu, Solis, and I think Donovan. Cecilia Muñoz is a strong civil rights advocate, which to me makes her a progressive as well. Others might be as well - information on some is hard to find. I also know there are more that I'm missing, but these are ones I can remember.

Yes, most of the people I have listed are advisers and White House staff and not Cabinet members. These advisers and staff, however, meet with the president more often than the Cabinet does, and help him form the policy that the Cabinet enacts. Yes, the Cabinet also advises, but they don't have the frequent access the advisers do.

I think, personally, that this is part of the plan; appoint centrists and whatnot to the Cabinet, while slipping progressives into less high-profile but slightly more influential positions. Thus, a progressive agenda can be passed under the guise of a centrist Cabinet, thus avoiding the "scary L word" (liberal).

I'm not too troubled by most of his appointments..

-Krugman and Reich have said that Geithner is an excellent choice, and have said the same of Summers - I'm willing to trust their judgement. I'll see if I can find the link with those quotes.

-Richardson should have been at State, but I like that he's in the Cabinet, even if it's at Commerce.

-Salazar... I've heard good and bad, so I'm waiting to see which is more accurate. Pulls of the cowboy hat well, though.

-Clinton I'm going to give a chance to, although I'm not ecstatic.

-Gates is good, as long as it's temporary, as reports have said. He knows what's going on right now, and doesn't have to hit the ground running - he's already in the race. If Clark doesn't replace him by 2010, though...

-Duncan... don't know enough, not thrilled by what I do know, no comment beyond that.

-Holder wants to close Guantanamo, which is fucking great. Pro war on drugs, but it'd be political suicide to appoint someone who wasn't... sadly...

-Donovan I'm rather happy with. Dude knows about housing down to the wiring and which carpet matches which drapes, and foresaw the current housing crisis back in '04.

-Vilsack... :banghead:

-Daschle. Not a bad pick, and I'm willing to see what he can do. Would have preferred Dean, though...

-Solis... :loveya:

-Chu is brilliant. The best pick for Energy I've seen in a good long time.

-Napolitano. I'd prefer to see the Department of Homeland Security dismantled. I honestly don't know enough about her to form an opinion, other than she apparently stopped the Right in Arizona from having total control.

-Shinseki I like. Guy is a veteran, guy is against the Iraq war, and he know what veterans need. Missing a foot too, from what I hear, and anyone who is an enemy of Rummy deserves some kind of praise.

-Ron Kirk. Don't know enough, but if he's a free trade advocate like I've heard, I'm not exactly enthusiatic.

-Ray LaHood. Fuck him. The only good thing about this appointment is that it gets his vote OUT of Congress.

-Christine Romer, I don't honetly know enough about...

-Karen Mills, ditto

-Rahm Emanuel.... I can't help it, I like the guy. His attitude is perfect for Chief of Staff, has a reputation for loyalty, and is capable of strong-arming the opposition if need be. Politicall, there are some things about him I don't like, some things I do. He's generally liberal on social issues, from my research.

-Larry Summers has a better record on women's issues that many people realize - that one comment was pretty dumb, though. Again, in regards to the economy, see about for Geithner.

-Melody Barnes has issued me at least three restraining orders, and has asked me to stop sending her love letters.


I'm surprised I went through them all... anyway, I'm happy with most, indifferent to a few, and really annoyed with Vilsack and LaHood. However, like I said, I think that the White House staff and advisers have more influence.

[LWolf]

22. They suck.

No surprise.

[Individualist]

24. One DLC pick is one too many

[Radical Activist]

26. He chose a well qualified cabinet with a diversity of viewpoints.

That's my choice that I have to post since you're poll pushes people into being either cheerleaders or negative nellies.

You left off a liberal member of his foreign policy team, Susan Rice. You find it difficult to remember anything positive Obama does, don't you?