So, Secretary Powell is out. He wasn’t a very good Secretary of State, but then it would have been surprising, given his history and the circumstances, if he had been.
The Cabinet shake-up is more or less usual on heading into a second term; in fact, I think it’s a bit unusual how stable the Cabinet has been over the first term. Still, with the heads of State, Justice, Agriculture, Education, Energy and Commerce all leaving, and with it considered probable that Homeland Security and HHS will need new heads, and with the substantial possibility that Defense will lose its head to State, that’s a lot of change in the government apparatus. Or perhaps it isn’t, as many of these things work quite well headless. It does look as if Jack Snow is in the catbird seat, though.
What it started YHB thinking about was the fact that during the election, we (generally) never compared the people surrounding Our Only President with the people surrounding John Kerry. I don’t know that I blame the campaign for this; for all I know, they tried to do it and it never caught on. Anyway, I don’t know that we would have gotten more votes from that as a tactic, but I think it would have helped the discussion of what the President’s job is, and how Our Only President is doing it.
Thank you,
-Vardibidian.
I wished Kerry had named a shadow cabinet, and let them start campaigning for him. It would have vastly improved his candidacy, in my opinion.
Are there really rumors that Rummy will replace Powell? I’ve been hearing Rice was the forerunner, and have been hoping Rummy will be removed for incompetence rather than promoted.
Fark had the best headline, given this morning’s cabinet cuts: “Cabinet Reduced To Drawer”.
removed for incompetence? Looks like somebody didn’t learn the lesson of 2 November. This is America, boychick, we don’t remove people for incompetence.
Thanks,-V.
Kay Bailey Hutchison seemed to think it’d be Rice, when she appeared on The Daily Show last night. (Which surprised me a little, but makes more sense than Rumsfeld, who seems obviously useless as a diplomat.)
Oh, and I’m behind: Bush officially nominated Rice to the post this morning.
rice is good. a young, arrogant zealot who will better represent her government to the world than did powell.
it’s just a shame she couldn’t have been the one delivering the “proof” speech to the UN last year. there might not have been a war.