Elections Have Consequences

by digby

There is a lot of yammering among the gasbags about the absolute necessity for a bipartisan cabinet. I agree with Stephen Hess on tonight’s Lehrer News Hour who weighed in after Norman Ornstein insisted that Obama needs to not only be bipartisan, but that he has to nominate several high profile Republicans to high profile cabinet positions:

JUDY WOODRUFF: What about, Norman, naming Republicans to the administration? How important is that, both in reality and in terms of the signal that it sends?

NORMAN ORNSTEIN: It’s important. I mean, you can’t — if you pick a token Republican, then, you know, nobody is going to much care. It looks good, but it doesn’t have great resonance.

It’s got to go a little bit deeper than that to say that your rhetoric during the campaign, that you wanted to bring the parties and people together, was more than just rhetoric.

You know, that means probably picking two or three high-profile people, including some whose political views on every issue would not be consonant with your own.

If, for example, President-elect Obama kept on Bob Gates as secretary of defense and picked Richard Lugar as secretary of state, that would send a signal that goes well beyond tokenism.

And I suspect, because he’s got a number of Republican friends, including Lugar, including Chuck Hagel and others, that we’re going to see more than one Republican in a high-profile post.

And sometimes those people can help you a little bit with their previous colleagues on Capitol Hill.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Steve…

STEPHEN HESS: I’m a little different on that. If he were to pick Lugar and retain Gates, he would be saying something about the talents in the Democratic Party.

After all, he was elected — overwhelmingly elected as a Democrat. If you’re going to pick a Republican in the inner cabinet, you’ve got to be sure that that’s the best available person.

You make these token appointments in the outer cabinet if you have to. But, after all, there are a lot of very good people who are Democrats and who want to be secretary of state and secretary of defense. And this is their opportunity.

After the closest election in American history had been decided by the Supreme Court in a partisan 5-4 decision and which left the US Senate in a 50/50 tie, one might have expected the new president to appoint a bipartisan cabinet. He had run as a “Uniter Not a Divider” after all, and the country was brutally divided after the impeachment of president Clinton and the dubious election results. Among the political establishment, he was seen as a master at reaching across the aisle. Richard Cohen, villager extrordinaire, said this:

Given the present bitterness, given the angry irresponsible charges being hurled by both camps, the nation will be in dire need of a conciliator, a likable guy who will make things better and not worse. That man is not Al Gore. That man is George W. Bush.”

This is what George W. Bush did:

President George W Bush has produced a cabinet team which is the most ethnically-diverse in US history, but is politically right-wing.

He promised to to take an inclusive, bi-partisan approach to government, and his cabinet nominees include four women, two African-Americans, two Hispanics an Arab-American, a Japanese-American and a Chinese-American.

But although the team includes one Democrat, the key members are hardline Republicans, and several served in George Bush senior’s administration.

I don’t recall the Villagers rending their garments over this. In fact, they criticized Democrats for being too partisan when they objected to Bush appointing throwbacks like John Ashcroft Justice department:

To argue too loudly that Bush’s Cabinet isn’t truly bipartisan risks opening Democratic critics up to the charge of indulging in post election sour grapes. Democratic leaders appear to realize that and have tempered the carping, say GOP staffers.

How dare those horrible Democrats indulge in post election sour grapes. Why couldn’t they just “get over it?”

Look, I am not saying that Obama can’t pick a Republican for his cabinet if he thinks he or she is the best person for the job. I can see some logic in picking one for defense, for instance, just to counter the worst impulses of the military brass who are inclined to engage in pissing contests with new Democratic presidents. (He could ask Colin Powell how that works – — he’s an expert.) But if he thinks he needs to do this in order to appease these stupid villagers and “send a message” that he is a conciliator, he should tell them to take a walk.

To paraphrase Dick Cheney: Bush proved bipartisan rhetoric doesn’t matter. This is our due.

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