Has President Obama made a single appointment that says “change”?
Just asking
6 responses to “Just asking”
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There are some that signal ‘pragmatic’ change, but revolutionary, awe-inspiring people being placed in as ‘movement’ leaders, not many that I can think of.
For example, the new SEC head Mary Shapiro used to be the Commodity Futures Trading Commission leader, and many in the securities industry see this appointment as an indication the two entities, SEC & CFTC will merge. Change–yes, quite a bit to the people involved in those areas. Awe-inspiring revolutionary ‘move the people’ kind of changes–not really.
Many on the progressive side say ‘hey, we were sold out.’ Some in the murky center, like Andrew Sullivan have said ‘pragmatic choices for very realistic times’ and some on the right have been somewhat snarky ‘The One would never appoint an assistant Messiah’.
Unfortunately for Obama processes remain quite the same. He is burning political capital and goodwill left and right on this stimulus situation. Once done, passed, gone, then we’ll see if he can reset and restart on his proposals. Given their druthers, I’m sure they would have rather spent all this time on health care reform than this stimulus thing that was sort of left on the doorstep for them when they arrived.
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I’d say all the appointments to date say “change” from the previous administration, in-as-much as the appointees are qualified to handle their job. I know it’s setting the bar very low (“appointee should be qualified for his/her job”) but, in recent time, it’s a bar that was hard to jump over 🙂
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Energy Secretary Steven Chu: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2008/12/10/steven-chu-nominated-to-be-secretary-of-energy/
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And about rendition
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/10/us/10torture.html
“In a closely watched case involving rendition and torture, a lawyer for the Obama administration seemed to surprise a panel of federal appeals judges on Monday by pressing ahead with an argument for preserving state secrets originally developed by the Bush administration.”
The older we get, the more cynical?
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Andrew, good analysis. He’s lucky to have a large pile of political capital to burn, and I suppose that aligns well with the “stimulus package.”
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Steven Chu is a quite different from Spencer Abraham & (to a lesser degree) Samuel Bodman.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Chu
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_AbrahamObama’s change agent does seem more of a diversion from Bush; not Clinton. In fact most of his appointments seem to reflect the Clinton Administration.
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