So now that Obama’s elected, the news cycles turn to … who will he choose for which positions? Advisors, counsellors, cabinet officers … it seems everyone has a list of who they want to see, and who they don’t want to see there.
Which, frankly, will be a great way for Obama to get a preview of the criticism he will face for every decision he makes for the next eight years.
Face it — we elected Barack Obama. We did not elect
Rahm Emanuel, et al. So everyone Obama picks will be someone that some Obama supporter has something to criticize about.Especially since anyone that he picks will have some past Administration track record, probably some consultant / lobbyist / business association that is dubious — or, lacking that, has no Washington experience, which is itself subject to criticism.
So I’m not going to do a bunch of rumor-swapping or second-guessing of who he picks. Rather, I’ll (gasp) wait for the actual policies and governmental actions to start taking place. Those will mean more than the relative resumes of who the person I elected decides to put forward.
The proof of the pudding is in the governing. I trusted Obama enough to choose his own campaign team. I trusted Obama enough to elect him. I can trust him enough to choose good people to be around him. For the time being, at least.
I’m not really that thrilled with RFK Jr. as head of the EPA.
Of course if you had a politically neutral civil service, like most countries, a lot of this wouldn’t be a problem- 3000 appointees, of which 1000 must be passed by congress.
Supposedly we do have an extensive, politically neutral civil service (instituted explicitly because of the “spoils” system). The number of people in the Federal govt is massive; I have no idea what percentage of them are actually political appointees.
~goes into the fetal position at the thought of RFK, Jr being in charge of EPA or the FDA~
But, I have mixed emotions at Rahm Emmanual as Chief of staff:
On one hand we have a hard right wing Dem whose entire purpose was to get Dems to side with the GOP in the House, against whom we had to spend tons of money defeating his candiates in the Primaries…
But, now he is in a position to really mess things up.