uy do something this important, regardless of who he appoints. And how good is Burris, exactly? Well, he's not perfect. As an Attorney General, he sought the death penalty for an innocent man, even against the advice of his associates. He built himself a mausoleum listing his accomplishments (at right), which some might consider tacky. And the thing that strikes me as really bad form is the way he's acting through this whole thing, claiming opposition to his appointment is illegal and hiring teams of lawyers to get himself a senate seat. Now, it's not that he's wrong - the law is really on the state's side when it comes to filling vacancies - but it is not exactly a mark of integrity.Burris is the closest thing Illinois has to a black elder statesman, and he's very much supported by the entrenched network of Chicago black politics against which Obama had to fight to rise through the ranks. Bobby Rush, one of the leaders of the machine there, was the guy Obama challenged - and lost to - for a House seat before becoming senator, and it's fair to say he and Obama have no love lost for each other. Rush and others have forcefully come out for Burris, basing a great deal of their support on the fact that there are no black senators, currently. I find that reasoning, as you might imagine, somewhere between stupid and outright offensive. But Burris is a longtime public servant, and his sins (being tacky, zealous, and ambitious) are fairly minor, especially given the type of politician that can survive in Chicago's climate. If a deal gets worked out, as it sort of looks like it might, before Blagojevich's trial, I won't cry over it. But let's not pretend this is a good thing. The lily-whiteness of the Senate is definitely a point of shame, but I'd like to believe that the way to fix it doesn't involve corrupt appointments.
Speaking of appointments, I want to touch on Obama's appointment of Leon Panetta to head the Central Intelligence Agency. Panetta wasBill Clinton's chief of staff for the first term, a member of the 9-11 commission, and has basically no experience with Intelligence. Dianne Fienstein has already taken the opportunity to rip the appointment, and many others are grumbling. Obama had no great choice that would both represent a clean break from the Bush Administration's stances on torture and Guantanamo and have good relations with all of the many, many parties necessary to make change within the agency.
I have an interest in the intelligence field, partially from having friends and acquaintances in and around it. The important thing to remember about intelligence is that the gathering of intelligence is a skill and craft done best when it is separated from policymaking. One of Bush's most awful transgressions, in my opinion, was that he broke this divide by ordering his intelligence to fit his desired policy. I like the Panetta pick, though it is definitely a gamble. Panetta, by all accounts is a gifted administrator and thinker about management, and has the connections on both sides of the aisle - and all over Washington - that will be necessary if the agency is to be reformed. One of my intel-interested friends suggested that Panetta will be a very good top-down administrator, as far as implementing direction and changes in the CIA, but his challenge will be getting, interpreting, and using feedback from below, where people will be less familiar with him and less likely to trust him.
Some closing notes:
- Congrats to Kathy Dahlkemper, the Representative-elect from the Pennsylvania 3rd (Butler County, etc.) who made Chris Cillizza's list of the best House campaigns of the year.
- Roger Simon has a piece on how "No-Drama Obama" has definitely found - and caused - some drama. Best line, on the apparent nonexistent vetting of Richardson: "Maybe it’s because I was a criminal courts reporter for several years, but in my experience, people with something to hide often hide it."
- Some reshuffling in the House and Senate may occur, as a result of people moving up. Ken Salazar, Obama's new Secretary-Appointee of the Interior, will give up a Senate seat that the GOP will hope to win in a special election in two years (Cillizza goes over Gov. Bill Ritter's options to fill the seat temporarily). Kay Bailey Hutchinson's thoughts of wading into the Texas Governor's race spurred a whole bunch of people - including a Democrat - to throw their names in. Could a Dem really win a Senate seat in Texas? Remember, Texas used to be an interesting political state, with names like Lyndon Johnson and Lloyd Bentsen, before Rove et al. gerrymandered it into simplicity. And Jeb Bush said no to a Senate run in Florida, so the GOP is scrambling for a candidate there.
- From the home front, Chris Matthews' brother, Jim, says he'd be "stunned" if Chris runs for senate. Jim Matthews, you'll recall, is a PA politician in his own right. And Jim Gerlach's potential gubernatorial ambitions could open up his Reading-area seat in the PA 6th. The last Dem nominee, Bob Roggio, says he's 50-50 to run for it if that happens.
- And Jack Shafer of Slate writes a compelling defense of newspapers and their history of innovation. Contrary to the common criticism of newspapers as clunky old dinosaurs, Shafer writes that they constantly were looking for new ways to communicate, but in the end failed for a very simple - and maybe even unforseeable - reason:
From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.
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Two thoughts. I don't think Leon Panetta's appointment to the CIA will work well. The problem is that the CIA isn't like most government agencies. It is populated by spooks who are proud of being spooks (spies)and are perfectly willing to not reveal things to politicians and administrators who they regard as amateurs. The first president Bush was CIA director and everyone agrees he never got control of the agency.
Also the likely appointment of Sanjay Gupta as Surgeon General is worthy of note. First, i was delighted that this incredibly literate, intelligent and attractive young neurosurgeon was picked for this post, which is mostly a bully pulpit, with no real power. But then I realized...
THIS WAS NOT ATUL GAWANDE, THE BRILLIANT AUTHOR OF "BETTER" BUT INSTEAD THE SOMEWHAT FATUOUS TALKING HEAD THAT TALKS ABOUT LIFE EXTENSION AND SIMILAR CRAP.
I think Obama made the same mistake I did: he picked the wrong Indian doctor! It's easy to do. Just check out the Daily Show's Wednesday episode in which Asif reveals that all Indians are born with most of a post-doctoral degree. Predictably, when he finds out that Surgeon General is not a cabinet level post he turns on Sanjay, saying, "You have disgraced our whole community".
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