Obama is making solid choices, UPDATE
If you have not been under a rock, you know that Obama stepped in a steaming pile with his request to have purpose-driven wanker Rick Warren give the invocation at his inauguration. People who care about gay rights, reproductive rights, AIDS, and preventing wars are all, shall we say, less than pleased. Pissed, actually, and with good reason.
Obama may paying a debt to Warren, who after all did help him get elected president. One thing about Obama is that he can be in the presence of people he disagrees with, and still keep his own compass needle pointed in the right direction. This is something our current CIC cannot do, which may be why he seems to prefer surrounding himself with yes-men.
I am confused by the report that the Rev. Joseph Lowrey will deliver the benediction. Not that Lowry isn’t a wonderful choice – he is – but I looked up the difference between an invocation and a benediction and I’m still fuzzy on it. Is it like the difference between the little stubby fork and the long skinny fork at a formal place setting? Feel free to explain in the comments if you know. Anyway, Lowry is a civil-rights giant, and Warren is a flea, a religious pop star. That will be very clear when the two of them share a stage.
Switch to infrared, though, and look through this little fog-bank to the presidency on the other side; Obama has been making some terrific choices for policy positions that really matter. The more I read about each of these individuals, the more impressed I am by Obama’s commitment to getting people who know what the hell they’re doing into positions where they can do some good. I’ll update this list as new information comes in:
- John Holdren, Science Advisor. HUGE background in science policy.
- Jane Lubchenco, actual marine biologist, for head of NOAA.
- Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor. Read her bio – she has actual experience with the deep issues of labor related to the economy, environment, energy, and ethnicity. She’s the e-secretary of Labor. Read what Councils for Occupational Safety & Health are saying about her.
- Stephen Chu, Energy secretary. With apologies to Sarah Palin, Chu is a REAL expert on energy.
- I totally fail to understand why Obama picked Ken Salazar for secretary of the interior.
- And keeping Robert Gates as Secretary of Defense. Gates is no lightweight. I also have a hunch that he has wanted to close Guantanamo all along, and he has ordered up a plan to do just that. Cheney is apparently in recession along with the Bush economy.
- Arne Duncan, Secretary of Education, has experience wrestling with urban school problems. This choice is not as stellar as the others, because there ARE no stellar choices for SecEd. Most important is that Duncan is not an ideologue in any direction. What makes me think he’s a good choice? He’s the first high-level ed leader who seems to have hit upon the idea of tracking how students are doing after high school, and correlating it with what was going on in the schools they went to. This is the experimental approach, which is the only way to find the path out of where we are now.
Folks, government is like business: you have to do it well to get a good result. Put in ideologues who ignore experimental results, and you’ll get, well, the Bush administration. We are in a deep hole and it’s about damn time we got some grown-ups behind the wheel again.
UPDATE: I’ve placed Obama’s address about the appointment below the fold.
Invocation is the opening prayer, benediction is the closing prayer, aka “blessing”.
As far as Warren goes, in a few years (months?), it will be forgotten. This is small stuff, and as you basically state, Obama knows how to not sweat the small stuff. It doesn’t feel like small stuff to the GLBT community and others, but it is just that: feeling based on symbolism.
I too have been watching the other appointments, and if one can’t figure out Obama’s direction from those, they aren’t paying attention. The appointment of Solis for Labor Secretary is really interesting.
Closing Gitmo probably will go down in history as a feather in Obama’s cap, but really, it’s the Supremes that should get the credit.
It’s about time we realize that inalienable rights exist everywhere, for everyone, but US law stops at the US border.
The camp is where it is because absent specific permission in the supreme law of the land, Bush wanted to pretend that because it was only under US control via perpetual lease and not actually sovereign territory, he could make crap up.
“Change you can believe in” would be the pardoning, apology and release of Jose Padilla. He may be guilty as sin, but violating all his civil rights between when he was taken into custody and when he was declared unfit to stand trial isn’t anywhere near the values I hold as a US citizen.
WeeDram has it right on the difference between the two … and, if Obama felt it was necessary or desirable to have Warren involved, then doing it at the beginning was the right choice. Warren’s not going to go on stage and start laying into Evil Gays at the Inaugural, and the folks who are there or watching will remember less what he says than what Lowrey finishes with. The closing act/number is what people are whistling on their way out the door …
True, but there’s also an arugment to be made that giving Rick Warren an honored platform will come back to bite Obama in the end.
Fortunately, his Cabinet so far looks to be making him bite-proof. There’s a few in there I’m kinda eh on, but most of them are making me scream with joy. It’s an interesting contrast to all of the screaming with fury I’ve done over the past several years.
I think I could even get used to it.
And sometimes, I wonder if Obama does things like toss Rick Warren at us so we don’t go into shock from a too-abrupt withdrawl from being angry at our leaders.
“True, but there’s also an arugment to be made that giving Rick Warren an honored platform will come back to bite Obama in the end.”
Nah. Obama is smarter than all of us. Trust me.
And, contrary to what you’ve been told, Obama’s middle name is “Focused”.
Oh, and the verification code is “strong”. Dig it.