For those interested in the environmental and other tragedies foisted upon us over the last eight years, and that the current occupant is hurrying to entrench in his final days - know that hope lies ahead:
A small nugget on Wash Post dot com turns out to be a seed that blossoms upon reading into a profound realization of just how good is the man we've elected; his ability to gather a team to focus on important environmental-changing and economy-changing details floors me yet again.
I knew in my heart when I heard that video'd pep-talk he gave to his Chicago staff after wrapping up the nomination, when he said essentially that there was no choice - that he had to become a better candidate and get elected because the environmental work we needed would never get done unless it was him in office.
As a former Congr staffer [focusing on the environment] who often heard BS from House Members, my "BS meter" is pretty focused. I heard his words and I heard his tone and I believed he meant it.
Only I could not know whether he had the capacity to get the details right.
In a tiny article published this am in WaPo,
Obama Positioned to Quickly Reverse Bush Actions
we learn that Obama already set up a HUGE team:
four dozen advisers, working for months in virtual solitude, set out to identify regulatory and policy changes Obama could implement soon after his inauguration
Those who come in as agency chiefs will know ahead of time what are Obama's goals since the advisory group is consulting with:
potential agency chiefs to prioritize those [rules] they regard as the most onerous or ideologically offensive
And it's not just in the environment. Crazy religious right-wing suck-up Rules are going out the window too. Those are items such as the global gag rule for family planning around the world, and the anti-stem-cell research executive Order - rules that an Obama advisor says were
imposed by Bush for "overtly political" reasons, in pursuit of what Democrats say was a partisan Republican agenda
Read the article. It gives one hope.
I was frankly an ardent supporter of Pres Clinton for so many things but was devastated at his lack of focus on getting envoronmental details finalized in a timely fashion and in getting judges onto benches. He was just not organized enough to ensure that his Departments got things done on deadline, and his administration's lack of preparedness for the possibility that a Republican might win cost us mightily. As many of us know, an unholy number of Clinton's executive Orders were undone because they fell into the 'last-minute' 90 day period. Those Rules changes were undone becuase of Clinton's lack of attention to detail.
Our next president, however, gets it. Thank the gods for our luck in having such a great man as our next leader.