"At his announcement of an economic team there was no secretary of labor. If you don’t think the labor secretary is on the same level as treasury secretary, that gives me pause. The president-elect wouldn't be president-elect without labor."
-Jonathan Tasini, workinglife.org
Mr. Tasini speaks as if Obama has no intention whatsoever of naming a labor secretary. Given that the presumptive choice, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, removed her name from the cabinet hat over the weekend, he may have to wait a little longer. I am sorry to say that if this article is any indication, he and many of my other fellow liberals aren't very good at waiting.
They are angry because no staunch progressives have been named to cabinet. Inasmuch as Bush's track record has been retrogressive at best, that would certainly be nice to see. But the difficulty with staunch progressivism is that its believers are often too quick to call for an overhaul of the entire system. I think most of us can agree that while the country is in recession, it would be far too soon to quit this system cold turkey.
Nobody foresaw how bad circumstances would become under Bush. But even if he has to renege on some earlier promises to do it, Obama's priority must be getting everything back to normal. His commitment is not first to the people who voted for him, but to the people who will have to contend with him no matter what they thought of him before.
I like to say that when a nation isn't feeling well, a liberal searches for a vaccine and a conservative searches for a bandage. If the country was in otherwise stable health and only required preventative medicine, the conservative would be on a fool's errand. But as it stands, in light of serious injuries both domestic and foreign, you'd have to be a fool yourself to think that a bandage would serve no purpose. Is the doctor supposed to pour all his energy into finding a cure now? Or should he make time to ease the pain and save the cure for later?
We have already seen eight years of results of choosing ideology over the greater good. We have already seen what comes of blind partisanship when there is the opportunity for constructive dissent. We have already seen eight years of a president who surrounded himself with yes men and women instead of diverse perspectives that would have otherwise paved the way toward viable solutions for all. Would any of these things be more prudent even if they were carried out by the person you voted for?
Obama's cabinet thus far is composed of people who, while differing in approach, have one thing in common: a commitment to keeping the country afloat the best way they can. That sounds pretty fresh to me.