Obama Considering RFK Jr. for Cabinet Position

[Snide]

Any perspective candidate with the last name Kennedy or Bush should be automatically excluded for any future White House position no matter what the capacity.

Related or not?

(No, I don't want to go through this again)

 

[applecorped]

Trying to be Ben Burch Jr?

ouch.

 

[davefoc]

Haven't we had enough of this over the top partisanship for the last eight years?

QUOTE]

Yes the Neocons were way too over the top! However a little liberal partisanship is in order to make sure the stake stays driven through the heart of those bastards for as long as possible.

You said a lot in a short sentence.

1. I agree that the neocons dragged the country into a war with questionable justification.

2. The Bush administration prosecuted that war with uncommon ineptitude and corruption. I don't think the neocon movement is completely responsible for that.

3. But the neocon movement is responsible for a bellicose, militaristic, Israel first foreign policy that threatens the vey fabric of the US in my opinion.

3. At least some of the Bush administration failures and excesses go directly to their decision to inject partisanship into almost every element of their governance. I voted for Democrats and in particular Obama because I had a hope that he would strike a better balance between the need for partisanship and the need for good governance than Bush did. If he doesn't his administration will be at least as big a failure as Bush's. I don't know much about RFK jr. but what I see I don't like. He looks like a Democratic partisan hack that at least on one significant issue has abandoned all common sense. From my perspective he looks exactly like the partisan hacks that Bush filled the government with except that he happens to be a Democratic partisan hack.

 

[Darth Rotor]

If this rumor is true, then we have data point number one of Obama going for symbol over substance. In better news, I hear he will keep Sec Def Gates on for a while. I think that's a good idea.

1. I agree that the neocons dragged the country into a war with questionable justification.

2. The Bush administration prosecuted that war with uncommon ineptitude and corruption. I don't think the neocon movement is completely responsible for that.

Uh, yes it is. It takes political energy to sustain support for a war. The neocon core spent a hell of a lot of time selling, and supporting that war, until they realized they had effed up, and then like rats leaving a sinking ship, headed out.

3. But the neocon movement is responsible for a bellicose, militaristic, Israel first foreign policy that threatens the vey fabric of the US in my opinion.

For continuing that position, yes. They didn't start it.

I don't know much about RFK jr. but what I see I don't like. He looks like a Democratic partisan hack that at least on one significant issue has abandoned all common sense.

Just like Rahm Emanuel.

Dave, Hope is not a method.

DR

 

[aerosolben]

DR almost got me to put some additional cabinet thoughts here, but I put them here instead.

 

[moon1969]

It is a great choice and a PR stunt.

 

[notheist]

Does RFK Jr.'s stance on vaccines and autism concern you at all? Or is it okay, since he plays for the right team?

Exactly! We believers in fact based science made a big deal and rightfully so of GWB's anti-science agenda.

Are we to look the other way when it involves liberal pseudoscience?

At the very least we need to deny conservatives the talking point.

I for one made my displeasure known to the Obama transition team.

 

[NobbyNobbs]

Could be worse.



Could be Jenny McCarthy.

 

[portlandatheist]

Here is another article on topic "Dangerous Kook At the EPA?"
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/11/07/kennedy-obama-epa-oped-cx_wo_1107olson.html

That's only the best-known example of the lawyer-activist's less than casual acquaintance with scientific rigor.

Fortunately, I don't believe the senate will confirm a rabid conspiracy theorist and science denialist. Remember, this is the same guy who opposes harvesting cape cod wind and is ideologically opposed to nuclear power.
Unfortunately, the war on science is not yet over.

 

[Shadowdweller]

According to the Associated Press, RFK Jr. is NOT one of the front-runners, if it's true he's being considered at all. (Who knows what the source of this all is)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_on_el_pr/obama_potential_appointees

EPA ADMINISTRATOR

Lisa P. Jackson, commissioner of New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection.

Mary Nichols, head of California Air Resources Board.

Kathleeen McGinty, former secretary of Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

 

[davefoc]

... In better news, I hear he will keep Sec Def Gates on for a while. I think that's a good idea.

That seems like a reasonable idea to me also. Stuff seemed to get better as soon as Gates was in charge. I think Obama's policies and Bush's Iraq policies are close enough at this point in time there won't be some sort of ideological issue with Gates on Iraq. I think Gate's ideas might be closer to Obama's anyway if there was a difference. Bush's current policies, whether he ever admitted it to himself or not, may have been excessively tied to not wanting to admit error in the screwups of his first four years or so of Iraq war execution. Gates obviously doesn't have this issue.

2. The Bush administration prosecuted that war with uncommon ineptitude and corruption. I don't think the neocon movement is completely responsible for that.

Uh, yes it is. It takes political energy to sustain support for a war. The neocon core spent a hell of a lot of time selling, and supporting that war, until they realized they had effed up, and then like rats leaving a sinking ship, headed out.

I was thinking here of the neocons as an ideological group and not necessarily the ones that made up the inner workings of the US Iraq war effort. Obviously the various neocons that made up almost the entire US senior Iraq staff initially are responsible. It was their dubious analysis and their management decisions that were highly responsible for the screwups. Although some of the screwups seem to go beyond their faulty analysis and seem to be more part of an overall failure to manage the occupation decision process skillfully and that goes directly to Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld.

And of course, you are right in the sense that almost certainly there would not have been a war without the role that the neocon movement played, especially as related to PNAC which is roughly the neocon corps that you referred to.

I don't know much about RFK jr. but what I see I don't like. He looks like a Democratic partisan hack that at least on one significant issue has abandoned all common sense.

Just like Rahm Emanuel.

Dave, Hope is not a method.

There is no doubt that Rahm Emanuel is a partisan. I don't know much about him beyond that. But I don't know that he's been out campaigning for miscellaneous bogus crap, so in that I like him better than RFK jr. And this is chief of staff a fairly political position anyway. The test will be in how he fills out the rest of the cabinet. Does he go for people with experience and proven skills or does he use the cabinet positions as a way of advancing a personal political agenda.

I remain hopeful, even if hope isn't a method.

ETA: Do you suppose that part of equation when Gates was approved was that Bush agreed that there would not be attacks on Iran without major provocations and that the appointment of Gates was a signal to Cheney that his dreams of additional middle east wars were over?

 

[kallsop]

RFK is a lightweight thinker and would be a very mediocre and undeserving pick and an indication that Obama's not even going to apply a veneer of bipartisanship. The media will barely notice though, he's their guy to the end.

 

[GreyICE]

RFK is a lightweight thinker and would be a very mediocre and undeserving pick and an indication that Obama's not even going to apply a veneer of bipartisanship. The media will barely notice though, he's their guy to the end.

Wow, accusing the democrats of not being bipartisan. After 8 years of Bush.

Hypocrite.