It may be cloudy or snowy where you are today, but don’t you worry. According to our President-Elect, today is “…a new dawn of American leadership to overcome the challenges of the 21st century”. To help shove that sunrise into place, he’s named his prospective foreign policy leadership team. They are:
- Senator Hillary Clinton- Secretary of State
- Secretary of Defense Robert Gates – Secetary of Defense
- Eric Holder – Attorney General
- Governor Janet Napolitano – Secretary of Homeland Security
- Susan Rice – Ambassador to the United Nations
- Ret. General Jim Jones – National Security Adviser
All in all, this isn’t a hideous slate of appointments. There are some bad names, as you might expect. Holder is pretty terrible, what with the love he has for politically-connected convicted criminals. Rice’s notions of the world seem to come from a different planet than we all inhabit. Napolitano seems to believe that borders are just pretty colors on a map that divvy up the world into archaic things we call “countries”. My guess is that Holder stands a good chance of not being confirmed (or squeaking through with a bare majority). Even Dems will have a hard time overlooking his Marc Rich dirty laundry. Rice and Napolitano will probably get party line votes with a few Republicans like John McCain sliding to the Obama side for the sake of bipartisanship or collegiality or some such nonsense.
On the other hand, Clinton, Jones, and Gates are pretty solid on the important issues like killing Islamists, not bailing out on the Iraqi people, and not letting nutball tyrants get their grubby paws on nuclear weapons. I see their confirmations being pretty quick and easy affairs, with one caveat. There’s a chance that the nutroots might throw a large enough tantrum to catch the attention of some of the wackier members of the Senate. Her confirmation hearings could make for interesting watching.
UPDATE: Maybe that Holder nominatino will slide through after all. Democratic Committee Chair Pat Leahy says that he’s not going to brook any nonsense from the Republicans like looking into Holder’s shady pardon dealings. He’s prepared to go to leftist-enabler Arlen Specter to make sure the chirpy minority is muzzled, too.
Tags: Eric Holder, Foreign Policy, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Janet Napolitano, Jim Jones, National Security, President Barack Obama, Robert Gates, Susan Rice, United Nations
