If this handy chart of potential Obama candidates doesn’t fill you with at least a small amount of trepidation, you probably haven’t been paying attention to anything happening in Washington in the past ten years.
Every administration looks to fill in Cabinet positions with blasts from the past, but I can’t recall when I’ve seen such a motley assemblage of has-been and never-will-be politicians. John Kerry for Secretary of State? Bill Richardson as Secretary of the Interior? Colin Powell for Secretary of Education? How many of the top names on that chart have run for President before, or have seriously flirted with the idea? I could five of the Cabinet potentials, plus Gore and Biden.
That’s a heartwarming picture, isn’t it? Imagine the Cabinet, sitting around playing cards and reminiscing about those days on the campaign trail when they were actually, marginally, relevant. The good news, I suppose, is that perhaps listening to those losers for the next four years will put Colin Powell off the idea of ever running for President himself, finally putting an end to the stories every four years wondering if he’ll run this time (note to reporters: NO! He didn’t run any of the other three times you asked him. He’s never going to run. Stop already!).
A couple of the choices are liveable and may even do quite well in the positions – Tim Roemer at DHS, Howard Dean (yes, him) at HHS – but the rest of them are just Democratic retreads or obvious bones to the labor unions and other assorted special interests.
Oh, and there’s a prospective new office of “Climate Czar” for Al Gore, too. So, finally, the Goracle can take his rightful place at the right hand of the Obamessiah.
Have I mentioned that this is going to be a long four years?
(via memeorandum)
Tags: Al Gore, Bill Richardson, Colin Powell, Education, Howard Dean, Labor Unions, President Barack Obama, Tim Roemer
I just spoke with a coworker who’s a fervent Democrat, and according to her, GWB has made things so bad in this country that as long as the Obama administration doesn’t make them much, much worse, it should be considered a success.
So even if the country finishes the first term slightly worse off than it is now, in every department, that’s a win in the (D) column.
And I thought you were setting low expectations, Jimmie; look how wrong I can be.
As it happens, Erich, I’ve been hacking around a longer post (that’s not ready for publication yet) about the Buyer’s Remorse I’ve mentioned a couple times earlier and how we’re already being prepared for disappointment.
Your coworker’s thinking is going to be one manifestation. The other one is going to be sheer anger that President Obama didn’t do everything he promised to do (and everything his supporters expected him to do).
I saw a poll yesterday that showed that over 70 percent of the respondents expect Barack Obama to fix our economic problems in his term. Your coworker is one of the 30 percent who thinks he won’t. What will happen when he doesn’t?
EricH, I imagine the fervent supporters are going to be convinced of that. The media & the Democrats have managed to convince a whole bunch of people that we’ve been in a recession for the last 5 or 6 years. Even though none of the numbers indicate that, that is what they believe. And why shouldn’t they? They heard it on the news.
What will be interesting is over the next 4 years, the media will tell everyone how wonderful the economy is even as it starts to sink…and if they have to acknowlege any bad news at all, they will simply blame it on the legacy of GWB.
We’ll see though…right now it is still fresh, all of that “programming”.