Another Look Inside the Cabinet

Long time, no post. I hope everyone had a blessed and joyous Christmas (or Kwanzaa or Chanukah or whatever), and I wish you a happy and prosperous 2009, in spite of all the bad news I'll be throwing your way in the days, weeks and months to come.

My four Christmases were wonderful, though I'm glad that aspect of the holidays have ended, and then I took off work the week after Christmas. I spent some much-needed time with my lovely wife, did some things around the house, took down the Christmas stuff, started sorting through pictures and music for our daughter's high school graduation slide show (requiring occasional "melt-down" breaks), and saw several movies. "Marley & Me" and "Slumdog Millionaire" are highly recommended. Take plenty of tissues for the former, and be prepared for some difficult-to-watch moments in the latter - conditions in the slums of Mumbai are abhorrent. Skip "Quantum of Solace," even if you're a die-hard Bond fan, as am I.

Okay, so much for the holiday niceties. One would expect I'd ring in the new year by talking about the deficit, or giving a forecast for the coming year. But first I want to take another peek at the incoming Obama administration, as more has come to light about who's filling what role, and several people asked me my opinion over the holidays. One of them commented that Obama's cabinet seemed to be more centrist, which is needed, so I particularly want to examine that.

To start this exercise, I'm going to list, for each cabinet post, Bush's first appointment, then Obama's. Then we'll dissect some of the picks to see where they fall on the left-right continuum. (Sorry, I don't know how to embed a table, so the spacing will be off.)

President Bush Obama
Sec. of State Colin Powell Hillary Clinton
Treasury Paul O'Neill Tim Geithner
Defense Donald Rumsfeld Robert Gates
Atty. General John Ashcroft Eric Holder
Interior Gale Norton Ken Salazar
Agriculture Ann Veneman Tom Vilsack
Commerce Donald Evans Bill Richardson (oops!)
Labor Elaine Chao Hilda Solis
Health & Human Services Tommy Thompson Tom Daschle
Education Rod Paige Arne Duncan
HUD Mel Martinez Shaun Donovan
Transportation Norman Mineta Ray LaHood
Energy Spencer Abraham Steven Chu
VA Anthony Principi Eric Shinseki
Homeland Security Tom Ridge Janet Napolitano
EPA Christine Todd Whitman Lisa Jackson
OMB Mitch Daniels Peter Orszag

Okay, how do they stack up. First of all, I'll address diversity, and both get pretty good marks here. They're pretty much equal in terms of appointing African- and Asian-Americans, Hispanics, females, etc. So both cabinets are pretty "centrist" in terms of being a cabinet that "looks like America." Bush also at least maintained, if not increased, the diversity of his cabinet as changes were made, and I suspect Obama would do the same.

Now, as for the leanings. Rumsfeld was obvious a hawk, and a bad choice with whom Bush stuck for too long. He replaced him with Gates, whom Obama is keeping in the job. So if that's a "centrist" pick by Obama, it was equally centrist by Bush, even if it wasn't his initial pick.

Ashcroft was branded an extreme right guy, but mainly due to his faith. He was actually a darn good pick for the job, a very capable legal mind. But any President is going to lean toward the party platform when choosing an AG, and Obama pretty much did the same.

Ridge is a pretty conservative guy, but he did a good job in his newly-created role, so it's hard to see him as too far right.

Most of the rest of Bush's picks were pretty moderate, like Whitman and Powell and later, Rice. O'Neill was a fiscal conservative, whereas Geithner is a socialist in the mold of Paulson. O'Neill would never have gotten us into the bailout frenzy in my opinion.

Obama's picks overall seem to me to smack of ties to the Illinois Democratic machine, Washington insiders - current Senators and Reps, lots of Clinton cabinet retreads, and favors paid for helping the campaign (not unlike Bush, or any other incoming Prez though). In short, it looks a lot more like more of the same old Washington than like change.

But I think in part that's a function of the differences between Obama and Bush coming into the office. Bush gets slammed for being the opposite of his infamous "I'm a uniter, not a divider" line. But that was exactly his track record in Texas, where he hails from.

Washington ain't Texas. It didn't help that this country was bitterly divided already. It didn't help that the media fed on that divide. It certainly didn't help that Democrats felt that Bush "stole the election in the courts" from Gore, a curious bit of revisionist history that still puzzles me. Gore conceded he'd lost, then decided to file a lawsuit, then lost, then claimed Bush stole the election in the courts.

The analogy is, I have something you want and you compliment me on having it, then you decide to claim that it was rightfully yours to begin with, so you sue me. The court finds no basis for your claim, and lets me keep the thing you want, so you go around claiming I stole it from you in court. Hey, I had it to begin with; you're the one who took legal action.

So anyway, back to the divide. As I said, Washington ain't Texas, and the people there ain't Texans. A governor entering the White House is used to being the boss - a CEO. So he's going to be inclined to do things his way. He's going to see Congress as his underlings more or less.

And power-hungry, big-egoed Congresspersons have to hate that.

They're used to compromise, to the point of being smarmy. We're talking sleeping-with-pigs compromise. And they're used to getting their palms greased by special interests.

An incoming Prez with a CEO background and mindset isn't going to cotton to that, to use a Texas term. So there's going to be a gulf - what should, to us Americans, be a very refreshing gulf.

Conversely, an incoming Prez who hails from the Senate himself is going to fill his cabinet with compromisers. And the pigs will all just keep sleeping with each other, most likely to the detriment of we, the people.

So which more represents change? Well, if Obama was promising change from Bush, he'll deliver that, probably.

But if he was offering change from the old-school, palm-greasing, dirty tricks, politics as usual that our legislative bodies have come to represent ...

Good luck with that. If you believe that's coming, I have some nice houses in Phoenix I'd like to sell you, at 2005 prices.