Robert Green wrote:

Consider our current president's cabinet. Only two or three have had
experience in the field for which they are responsible or have even
had a recent real-world job. Here's a list:

Experienced:
Justice - Eric Holder who once worked in private practice
Defense - Robert Gates had at least four or five years on the job
training. Treasury - Tim Geitner once worked on Wall Street

The rest:
State - Hillary Clinton. No experience in foreign relations. Several
decades since she held a real-world job.
Interior - Ken Salazar, former governor
Agriculture - Tom Vilsack, former governor
Commerce - Gary Locke, former governor
Labor - Hilda Solis, former House member from L.A.
Health - Kathleen Sebelius, former governor
HUD - Shaun Donovan, arguably experienced, former NYC head of Housing
Preservation
Transportation - Ray Lahood, Illinois congressman
Energy - Steven Chu, academic
Education - Arne Duncan, arguably experienced as a Chicago school
superintendent
Veteran's Affairs - Eric Shinseki, former Army Chief of Staff,
arguably experienced as a military leader
Homeland Security - Janet Napolitano, former governor

NONE of the above 15 were promoted from within the departments they
now lead.

However, NOT ONE of those have been involved in anything as
ridiculous as George Bush putting the failed head of an Arabian horse
association in charge of FEMA or have you forgotten the infamous
"Heck of a job, Brownie!" comment that became so well known after
Katrina? I would rather have a smart academic than a dud with "real
world experience" - especially if that dud had NO experience in the
field he was appointed to.

A fair assessment of FEMA would disagree with the progressive meme. First,
FEMA had never in its history encountered a disaster of the proportions of
Katrina. Second, most investigators place the vast majority of what went
wrong during Katrina with state and local governments (contrast Louisiana
and Mississippi). Third, FEMA was never designed to be a first responder.

Further FEMA is NOT a cabinet position and not part of my critique.
Although the current director, W. Craig Fugate, seems admirably suited to
the position, starting out as a volunteer fireman and rising to the position
of director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management.


Shinseki has plenty of experience and was not cowed by strong
opposition. He basically got sacked during Bush's adminstration for
daring to tell Rummy and the Congress that we didn't have enough
boots on the ground in Iraq for the war to come to a swift
conclusion. Guess he was right.

Shinseki had virtually NO private sector experience nor any experience
dealing with veteran's affairs. You are correct in that he got sacked for
not only bucking the chain of command and doing so in public, but by
guessing wrong. For the second Gulf War, he wanted a minimum of 200,000
troops (a la 1st Gulf War). Rumsfeld managed to accomplish the task with
one-quarter that number.


Now I've got to dust off my Bush cabinet list and all of their
foilbles. Is there no end to your evil HeyBub? (-: I guess the
price of freedom is eternal vetting of your posts for "yabbuts." Is
not your evil-doing great? and there is no end to your sins?


News Flash! Bush is no longer president.

I'm not comparing the Bush Cabinet to the Obama cabinet; I'm suggesting that
the current cabinet is chock-a-block full of incompetents. Whether the Bush
cabinet was stocked with Nobel laureates, dishes from China, or
ventriloquist dummies is irrelevant -- unless you're claiming that good
people cannot be found by ANY president.