Editor’s Note: Don’t forget to watch CNN Senior Political Analyst David Gergen talk further about President-elect Obama’s cabinet tonight on AC360° at 10 p.m. ET.
David Gergen | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Senior Political Analyst
With the final pieces falling into place today, a much clearer picture has emerged of the men and women who will gather around the table when Barack Obama convenes his new cabinet in Washington. By any measure, this cabinet will be one of the most pragmatic, talented, and politically experienced of any in recent decades — the makings of a dream team. Even so, some serious questions remain about how effective they will be – questions that can only be answered by the passage of time.
Altogether, Obama will have some 21 people at his cabinet table – himself, his vice president, his White House chief of staff, the heads of 15 executive departments, as well as the heads of the Office of Management and Budget, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Trade Representative. Whether he will invite others to the table such as his “czars” is still unclear.
But we do know now the identity now of the first 21, and one thing that stands out – especially in the political tug of war between left and right – is how centrist and pragmatic most of them are, especially in the areas of economics and national security. For weeks Washington has been wondering whether Obama would govern from the center-left or from the left. His appointments suggest that on a few issues, he will please the liberal elements of his base – global warming and unionization – but on most others, he will be more of a moderate progressive. That’s what he promised during the campaign, and that is what he is delivering in his appointments.
Brian Todd reports on a confirmation fight Senate Republicans seem willing to wage: Eric Holder’s nomination.
Karl Rove
The Wall Street Journal
As he organizes his presidency, Barack Obama continues to receive glowing reviews. Three out of four Americans approve of how he’s handling his transition.
But organizing and operating the White House will be a much bigger challenge than he can possibly yet understand.
Consider national security. Mr. Obama’s team has the advantage of inheriting procedures and structures that stretch back to President Harry Truman’s 1947 reforms, which created the National Security Council. But there’s historically been tension over the roles of the national security adviser and secretary of state. How that tension is resolved depends largely on the able National Security Adviser-designate, James Jones.
Arthur B. Laffer
The Wall Street Journal
This week in Chicago, President-elect Barack Obama introduced key members of his new energy and environmental team and gave a statement expressing his administration’s ambitious goal to make America energy independent. While his desire to do so is sincere, such a strategy would be disastrous for our economy.
The platitude of “energy independence” makes zero economic sense. Yes, it’s true that many nations that supply us with oil are run by anti-American governments. But unfortunately embargoes don’t overturn despotic regimes. More often than not they harden them, as in Zimbabwe, North Korea and Cuba. Since the U.S. is so reliant on oil, embargoes will hurt the U.S. as much, if not more, than the countries of OPEC. The issue of how to handle the anti-American nature of oil-exporting nations is not for the Commerce Department, but for the White House, the State Department and perhaps the Department of Defense.
The U.S. currently imports some 60% of the oil we use. To imagine an energy-independent U.S. today is to envision gas at $20 or more per gallon and a true depression. President Dwight D. Eisenhower tried oil import tariffs in the 1950s, as has every president since. Yet never before has America’s reliance on foreign oil been greater than it is now.
While energy independence for the U.S. would enormously increase the price of oil at home, it would have the exact opposite effect in the rest of the world. Cheap oil for countries like China would surely not benefit the U.S. or the world’s environment. Businesses that use oil would move offshore, costing American jobs while still polluting the world’s environment. Artificial energy independence is neither a good foreign policy nor a good domestic economic policy.
Bradford Plumer
The New Republic
If the news reports are accurate, Senator Ken Salazar of Colorado has been tapped by Barack Obama to head up the Department of Interior. Let’s hope he knows what he’s getting into. After the last eight years, the Interior Department has become fairly dysfunctional, and this may end up being one of the most difficult jobs in the Obama administration-not to mention one that gets remarkably little attention.
Looking back historically, the Interior Department has been a mess from the very beginning. It was created in 1849 essentially to handle the government’s odds and ends, from exploring the West to conducting the decennial census to managing the D.C. jail system, and quickly became a massive patronage reservoir: Walt Whitman was famously fired from the department in 1866 by a reformer secretary trying to weed out sinecures. The public-land giveaways in the 1890s were frequently plagued by fraud–a precursor to the Teapot Dome scandal under Warren Harding–and the Indian Bureau has been criticized for corruption and inefficiency for as long as anyone can remember.
David Brody
CBN News
Obama’s new pick for Education secretary is Arne Duncan, head of Chicago Public Schools. He’s been pushing for Chicago to start their first gay high school. Not kidding.
Obama is going to get a lot of flack over this pick from social conservative groups and it wouldn’t surprise me if Republican Senators raise a fuss about this during his confirmation hearing. Mark my words. Read below from The Chicago Tribune:
The Chicago Public Schools’ first high school designed for gay, lesbian and transgender teens is among 20 new schools recommended to the school board today by CPS Chief Arne Duncan.
The proposed schools range from technology-focused high schools to the School for Social Justice Pride Campus, which officials said would cater to but not focus exclusively on gay youth.
Backers said they envision a small high school offering a college-preparatory curriculum in which students would take four years each of English and math, three years each of foreign languages and science, as well as fine arts and physical education. It would be a performance school, meaning it would have the same staffing and oversight requirements as other district schools.
The announcement of the schools, which are expected to open in the fall of 2009 and 2010, took place at the Chicago International Charter School’s Ralph Ellison Campus, 1817 W. 80th St. Public hearings on the proposed schools are expected before the Board of Education votes on them Oct. 22.
“If you look at national studies, you see gay and lesbian students with high dropout rates…Studies show they are disproportionately homeless,” Duncan said. “I think there is a niche there we need to fill.”
Supporters have said the Pride Campus would help students find a safe school environment because studies have shown that gay youth are at a greater risk of dropping out of school and abusing drugs and alcohol, and are two to three times more likely to attempt suicide. A 2003 district survey shows that gay and lesbian youths are three times more likely to miss school because they don’t feel safe.
Opponents have called the move a misuse of public funds. At a recent public hearing on the proposal, some gay rights advocates have said the move would segregate these students and said the district should work more on fostering acceptance by mainstream students, teachers and other school officials.
Roland S. Martin | BIO
AC360° Contributor
CNN Political Analyst
No one with President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team has identified his close friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett as Senate candidate #1, as mentioned in the criminal complaint against Gov. Rod Blagojevich, but it’s clear that she is the person often mentioned.
There is a wide assumption by many that Jarrett “mysteriously” dropped out of the race for the U.S. Senate, and I’ve even heard some suggest that the Obama team got wind of Blagojevich’s alleged scheme to broker a deal for the seat appointment and that was what led her to say no-go to pursuing the Senate seat.
But there is nothing mysterious about what happened.
One week before the Nov. 4 election, Jarrett had multiple conversations with Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, with regards to the Senate position. This was in response to a number of Chicago allies asking her to consider taking an appointment for the remaining two years of the seat.
That doesn’t come as a surprise to those familiar with the city’s politics. A former top official with Chicago Mayor Richard Daley who is now CEO of a real estate company, she has served in many civic positions, and has had her name mentioned for various posts, including even running for mayor one day.
Colin Powell talks bluntly with Fareed Zakaria about conflicts he saw within the Bush cabinet.
Program Note: His full interview will air this Sunday at 1 pm ET on “Fareed Zakaria GPS.”
Barclay Palmer
AC360° Senior Producer
Seems everyone is noting that Obama’s national security picks are more hawkish than Obama himself. Liberal blogs are fired up, some worried that Obama will go back on his peace-seeking promises. But that seems to assume Obama is a dove…that his opposition to the Iraq War was ideologically driven.
Some excited centrists, however, believe it shows Obama is more pragmatic than ideological… that he opposed the Iraq war because he thought it bad for the country, and he’ll decide when and even whether to get out of Iraq based on what’s good for the country.. and that he’s picking national security talent based on what’s good for the country.
This is the man who promised to step UP the war against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, after all… which, these days, seems to mean inside Pakistan, too. Do you think he’ll go there, as the Bush Administration has been?
Just as President Bush, after criticizing “nation-building” when he first ran for president, will Obama, the man who noted he was one of very few in the Senate who opposed the Iraq war, turn out to be a war president - of a different stripe?
What do you think…
Michael Isikoff
Newsweek Reporter
President-elect Obama has decided to tap Eric Holder as his attorney general, putting the veteran Washington lawyer in place to become the first African-American to head the Justice Department, according to two legal sources close to the presidential transition.
Holder, who served as deputy attorney general during the Clinton administration, still has to undergo a formal “vetting” review by the Obama transition team before the selection is final and is publicly announced, said one of the sources, who asked not to be identified talking about the transition process. But in the discussions over the past few days….
A behind the scenes look at “Anderson Cooper 360°” and the stories it covers, written by Anderson Cooper and the show’s correspondents and producers. Insight you can’t find anywhere else.
For more details, read our tips on how to win 360° approval for comments.
Send your instant feedback to Anderson Cooper 360°.
- Blagojevich calls Dems’ bluff
- I was fleeced by Madoff
- Gaza: What Arabs are watching
- Yes, free Gaza — from terrorist tyranny
- Larry Flynt? Publicity stunt? Never!!
- Q&A with Candy Crowley: Obama’s challenges..and his lunch
- Defending the Panetta Pick
- Deal with it, Burris is a senator
- Lethal rockets
- American Girl
