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President-elect meets deadline
President-elect Barack Obama wrapped up his Cabinet appointments Friday, meeting his ambitious holiday deadline by assembling a team full of outsize personalities with overlapping jurisdictions and nominees who are known more for pragmatism than for strong leanings on the issues they will oversee.
- Los Angeles Times-Washington Post
- Published: 22:40 December 20, 2008
- President-elect Barack Obama greets his Transportation Secretary Rep Ray LaHood, at a news conference in Chicago on Friday.
- Image Credit: AP
Washington: President-elect Barack Obama wrapped up his Cabinet appointments Friday, meeting his ambitious holiday deadline by assembling a team full of outsize personalities with overlapping jurisdictions and nominees who are known more for pragmatism than for strong leanings on the issues they will oversee.
In Chicago, the president-elect announced his picks to lead the Departments of Labour and Transportation, the Small Business Administration and the office of trade representative. The announcement of the labour nominee, Rep Hilda L. Solis, D-Calif, the daughter of a union family who has a strongly pro-labour voting record, came as a relief to some liberals who had grown slightly anxious about Obama's commitment to organised labour's agenda. "She's an inspired choice from a working-class background, who represented a working-class district with middle-class sensibilities," said AFL-CIO legislative director Bill Samuels.
Practical choices
But many of Obama's other picks reflect his apparent preference for practical-minded centrists who have straddled big policy debates rather than following the strongest pro-reform positions. Their reputations as moderates have won Obama plaudits from even some Republicans, but the choices offer relatively few clues to his plans in key areas.
"He's clearly been under great pressure to satisfy any number of constituencies, and to a certain extent, these appointments are prisms through which you can see what you want," said Paul C. Light of New York University's Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service and a contributor to The Washington Post. "But at some point there will be tough decisions to make, and some of these Cabinet members are going to have to choose, and we'll see how that plays out."
Cohesion
Peter Wehner, a former senior adviser to President Bush, warns that placing too much emphasis on pragmatism may leave the Obama team rudderless and without cohesion. "Pragmatism has its place, but there are limits, as well," said Wehner, now a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre. "If you aren't anchored to a political philosophy, you get blown about, and government becomes ad hoc and you make it up as you go, and if you're not careful, you begin to go in circles."
Obama's choice for education secretary, Chicago schools chief executive Arne Duncan, kept a foot in both camps of the education reform debate, and his pick for interior secretary, Sen Ken Salazar, D-Colo, was welcomed by big industry, reassured by his support for offshore drilling.
Obama's selection for agriculture secretary, former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack, was cheered by groups representing big agricultural interests, which praise him for his support of biotechnology and subsidies for corn-based ethanol. "He understands the reality of producing food and energy today," said Craig Lang, president of the Iowa Farm Bureau.
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