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Originally Posted by Villages Kahuna
You're right, Bucco. Rahm Emmanuel has a history of being pretty liberal. But his role in the new administration, while powerful, limits what he can accomplish either legislatively or administratively. He will run the President's office for sure. Everything I've read about him says he will perform that role very well, particularly knowing the "mechanisms" inside the beltway.
Byt my comments on the other cabinet choices and how they appear to be defining Obama's political leanings still have me coming down with the conclusion that this administration seems to be drifting much more to the center than critics might have supposed during the campaign.
To a degree, that might be dictated by the limitations of the huge national debt and market limits on how much we can borrow. A better test of how liberal this president might be would occur if he had the same type of economic conditions and debt load that exisited when Bush took office. Those conditions would tell us a lot more.
I'm not the only one that thinks Obama is drifting to the center. Here's an article from today's New York Times... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/us...s.html?_r=1&hp |
Top tier appointees have a history of 2+ years and then gone. Rarely has anyone lasted an entire term.
The first appointees are indeed "payback" appointments. They are folks who made early commitments to support the candidate and did indeed campaign, are Party careerists who are currently unemployed, or are Party seniors who want limelight positions and are better off for the administration to be "in the fold" rather than in a sharpshooting position.
In a couple of years, if things in a particular department have become a problem in any manner, then the hatchet comes out and someone who actually has some competence is brought onboard. What the public usually misses is that the Deputy Secretary is the person who really is the knowledgeable appointee and really is involved as the day-to-day executive. I would be surprised if many people can name any of the Deputy Secretaries (who are also presidential appointments and Senate-confirmed).
As a side bar - this transition has actually been going very well. The "agency review teams" are in place and have been active, and the currrent administration has insured there will be no knowledge gaps or surprises to the new appointees. The system works!