The gross but politically savvy thing to do 2010-Jun-04 at 01:11 PDT
Posted by Scott Arbeit in Blog.Tags: Bill Richardson, Ken Salazar, oil spill, Tom Daschle
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Remember a few days ago when I strongly argued against firing Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior?
I still think that, on the merits alone, that’s the correct position. Unfortunately, Washington political calculations don’t always follow the simple merits of a case. At this point, just to give the impression of doing something, it might be the right political decision to sacrifice Secretary Salazar and make a change, even though nothing that has happened is his fault.
We also have the opportunity to resuscitate one of the early Obama cabinet picks who got derailed eighteen months ago due to some minor tax issues. You know who would look like a real get-things-done type of guy? Former Sen. Tom Daschle. And you know who else would look good? Gov. Bill Richardson.
Take your pick… the thing about this job is that whoever has it has the opportunity to be in the public spotlight for many years, because they’ll be running the cleanup job… and that’s going to take years. I’d really like to see one of these two guys taking on a national role like this.
Does this seem cynical? Yeah, it probably is. But sometimes that’s what you do in Washington. We’re all grown-ups… we can take it.
The Dawn of the Integral Age 