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Obama Would Be Better Off Appointing William Seward |
We have a very simple rule when it comes to political appointments: if Fred Barnes likes the appointee, then something somewhere is terminally wrong. Perhaps many of you strode to the voting booth in November with one goal in mind, to reassure Max Boot. Others no doubt wanted to "change" from the placate-the-wealthy policies of Hank Paulson to the appease-the-affluent policies of Robert Rubin.
Granted, Obama did not campaign as Robespierre so we didn't expect Dick Cheney riding an ox cart to the guillotine. And yes, if we're pissed off now imagine how many Clinton people President Hillary would've appointed!
Who knows, maybe Hillary will be a great Secretary of State. Maybe she will stop using words like "obliterate." Maybe she will now read the pertinent documents before signing off on hundreds of thousands of deaths. But if it was up to us, we would've gone with William Seward.
Except for himself, Seward would bring many things to the table. The gravitas of actually having served under Lincoln. Advice that would be consistent and devoid of personal ambition. And most importantly, Mrs. Seward would not be running around the globe ad-libbing speeches at $500,000 a pop.
Yet whatever happens, we voted for Obama with the hope that he will do less evil. Sure there are things we'd love to see -- abolish the inane office of Drug Czar for one. But don't expect the mainstream media to hold the new administration to account. A serial point-misser like David Gregory can dance just as slavishly behind Emanuel as he did behind Rove.
The future? Kevin Phillips was on CSPAN for three hours this past Sunday. It was impossible to come away from those three hours not knowing how utterly vile the Bush administration is and how semi-vile the Clinton administration was. And if Obama does not somehow manage to at least get this country health care, and free it as much as possible from the vice grip of the banks and financiers, we, as a people, will be irredeemably screwed. And not even Lincoln would be able to save us again.
Filed under: Barack Obama, financial crisis, George Bush, Henry Paulson, Hillary Clinton, Meet the Press, Obama's cabinet
posted 3:39 pm on 12/09/2008
You're now a Fan of hardybear.
Each manned by a member of the Career Disgruntled, each
waving an unassailably accurate motivation to crucify PE Obama's
cabinet decisions.
I don't begrudge the opines of those who frequently fantasize that
Hillary Clinton is the one mounting those steps to la Guillotine.
It might prove useful, however, to revisit a history lesson from
the end of French Revolution. To paraphrase Wordsworth's view of the subject:
the enthusiasm didn't last very long before the revolutionaries began
to murder each other.
I was hoping that my enthusiasm about and appreciation of Obama's
victory would be allowed to reign for more than five minutes. But,
no. Old rivalries and battle lines rushed back at the speed of light at
the first hint of his choice for Secretary of State. I was in shock. Were
we all not getting along swimmingly just days before? Why am I
back in the tired position of feeling it necessary to counter (what seemed
to me) to be unreasonable hatred of all things Clinton?
Can't we revert to maligning the GOP? Calling the neo-cons
unscrupulous and power-hungry and hell-bent on war? aaahhh ...
good times.