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Edited on Sat Jan-10-09 02:17 PM by Two Americas
Some of these picks are odd, to say the least. Vilsack was s surprise to me for the same reasons. We expect caretakers and figure heads, glad handers and salesmen from the Republicans. We face many challenges in agriculture and food policy, and Vilsack in a non-entity - no background, no strong positions, no commitment, no experience. People then say that Obama will be calling the shots, he will be large and in charge. But Obama has no background in or knowledge about agriculture. Are we to imagine that none of that is required, that the agency can be effectively managed by empty suits? That would only be true if there were no program for the relief of the people in the works, if the job were to merely babysit the agencies on behalf of the corporations who will be the ones actually setting the course and making decisions.
It is a shame that we cannot discuss them without running into hostility from people who see criticism as disloyalty. There is something odd about the super-loyalty, as well. We have a PE who is talking post-partisanship, and yet his most zealous defenders are the most partisan group in the Democratic party in a long time, so much so that they defend everything he does, tolerate no discussion, and see anyone who does not as the enemy. That is partisanship taken to an extreme degree.
There is much to consider and discuss about the appointments. No president can micro-manage the federal bureaucracy, so the appointments matter. we are then told that Obama is brilliant, and has an innovative and yet-to-be revealed master plan, and that if we just "give him a chance" all will be well.
Perhaps in the corporate world you can put a person in charge of automobile companies who knows nothing about automobiles - although we have now seen the outcome of that - or a person in charge of an energy giant who knows nothing about that business, and whose only qualification was that he was a golfing partner of George Bush - and we know how that one turned out - but it makes no sense in government, of we are going to see government as an agent for the people, as the defender of the left behind and the left out, as an advocate for the have-nots rather than as a mechanism for advancing the interests of the powerful.
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