"HeyBub" wrote in message
m...
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.
Accomplish the task? ARE YOU FOR REAL???? We're still THERE! Gawd, can you
pour on the BS. Maybe you're not as smart as I think you are and you really
believe the codswallop you're writing. Shinseki was right and there's not
very many people left who doubt it, especially since when we finally DID get
around to following his advice and sent a huge surge of additional troops,
things immediately improved. What COLOR is the sky on your planet? We
can't be talking about the same person:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Shinseki
If you bothered to read that item, you would have learned: "On November 15,
2006, in testimony before Congress, CENTCOM Commander Gen. John Abizaid said
that General Shinseki had been correct that more troops were needed. Who
should we trust to evaluate the truth of Shinseki's statement: You or the
CENTCOM Commander? I would say "you lack the real world experience to make
the call."
You'll just say anything to make a point, won't you? Truth seems hardly
relevant.
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.
So what? I didn't notice that anyone had died and made you King of Thread
Breadth. That horsecrap might work for M. Dufas (it doesn't!) but it
carries no weight with me. You can't scare off a comparison between the two
most recent presidents with a worn-out half-watt witticism. Bush appointed
people that were obviously more to your liking with the real world
experience you seem to think so valuable to a cabinet secretary. That make
it completely valid to examine how well that worked out since you're so
critical of Obama's different metrics but provide very little proof of what
you're saying.
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
Irrelevant to you because it easily demonstrates the fallacy of your
contention that having some ill-defined "real world job" previously makes
for better cabinet members. When you denigrate someone like Shinseki and
label his real world experience as "arguable" you're engaged in pure,
unbridled bull****. I'm just calling you out on it, just like I promised.
What should I use to compare cabinet appointments? Abe Lincoln from over a
century ago? Bush, as you've argued in the past, apparently did a better
job in your mind, picking cabinet secretaries because he chose "real world"
people (read: businessmen). I intend to show that's erroneous, and easily
proved to be. We won't even have to examine Bush's dubious record in other
appointments, such as toying with nominating his personal lawyer Harriet
Miers to the Supreme Court, a nominee lacking in both academic and real
world credentials, at least as far as the Federal Judiciary is concerned.
""The only sexism involved in the Miers nomination is the administration's
claim that once they decided they wanted a woman, Miers was the best they
could do. Let me just say, if the top male lawyer in the country is John
Roberts and the top female lawyer is Harriet Miers, we may as well stop
allowing girls to go to law school." -- Ann Coulter"
http://www.rightwingnews.com/quotes/miersquotes.php
Oh, but this wasn't a "cabinet" appointment. It was 10 times more important
and it was naked cronyism that even Bush supporters couldn't swallow. She
was never is a judge. So what were you saying about the importance of real
world experience? Sounds like "It counts when I want it to and doesn't when
I don't."
Bush may no longer be president, but I'm sorry to report, his actions are
now a legitimate part of US history, subject to comparison to the current
president our presidents from the past, despite how apparently uncomfortable
it makes you to revisit his record. Trying to make discussion of Bush
somehow off-limits to the subject of presidential cabinet secretaries only
indicates you're fearful. We both know that if we actually look at the
record, the record is bad.
Worse still, you know that your labels are wholly inaccurate regarding
Obama's cabinet. To say Shinseki's "real world" experience is arguable is
to lie through your teeth. Who, then IS qualified if not a man with his
credentials? Why on earth should a man have to have private sector
experience to run a government organization that concerns the US military?
Why isn't being Chief of Staff of the Army not good enough for you? What
past VA Secretaries do you think had qualifications more suited?
There are others on your list that are as woefully mischaracterized. I'll
go through them one by one as we compare Bush's "real world" secretaries and
their performance with those of Obama's "academics" you so thoroughly
disdain. I predict we'll quickly see that what you're claiming as some
essential quality of a cabinet member really means squat and in fact, it
could mean less than squat: it could be the exact reverse of the truth.
Having business ties and experience might actually cause a Secretary to act
in the best interests of his former associates and not the President and by
extension, the citizens of the United States. I am sure you know where I am
going with this.
The best comparison to the roster you've listed as somehow less than
competent is the *last* president's cabinet, selected in a way you think is
superior to the current administration. Of course you don't want to explore
that because a number of them left under serious clouds. The trouble they
found themselves in puts serious doubt to your implication that only
captains of industry should serve in cabinet positions. That's nonsense,
and it needs debunking. The best way to chip away to the truth would seem
to be comparing the most recent ex-president, Bush, and his cabinet, which
was to clearly more business oriented that Obama's.
Comparing experienced cabinet members who have been egregious failures seems
to me the perfect rebuttal to your implication that lack of something you
nebulously define as "lack of real world experience" has a serious impact on
a cabinet secretary's performance or competence.
unless you're claiming that good
people cannot be found by ANY president.
No, I am claiming that your assertion that an alleged "lack of real world
experience" somehow results in inferior secretaries. You're implying
Obama's made bad choices because they are academics. I'm merely pointing
out that in the past that ex-businessmen have done very, very poorly, often
resigning under a cloud like FEMA's "Heckuva Job Brownie." I realize that
having your parade rained on is unsettling, but your alleged facts aren't
really facts and need to be exposed as simply your unsubstantiated opinion
(I'm being charitable).
So here's a serious newsflash for you. No one with even half a brain would
respond to "Bush is longer president" with anything other than a big SFW?
That statement in no way means he's off limits in a discussion of
presidential cabinet appointments, no matter how much you try drawing that
imaginary line around your comments. A line meant to deflect criticism of
your basically erroneous contentions.
Ever hear a judge admonishing an attorney "But you opened the door to this
line of questioning so I will rule it admissible"? Well, that's exactly
what you did: opened the door to discuss ALL cabinet secretaries, not just
the ones you want to gore with you "short on facts" classification of
Obama's cabinet.
I feel for you, though, HeyBub. It's got to be painful to try to kick dirt
on Obama's cabinet when Bush's was so much worse, only starting with "Heck
of a Job Brownie" the Arabian Horse Assn. executive. That's the subject of
a followup post. This one's run over and we haven't even gotten to those
Bush Secretaries and their various ill-fortunes. (-"
And lest you think this is partisan, at least neither Bush nor Obama tried
to pull perhaps the most dubious appointment of all time: JFK making his
brother AG. Ouch! Was he the best qualified in the nation? Very, very
doubtful. I suspect JFK's appointment eventually cost RFK his life. Sirhan
Sirhan was just another patsy. RFK violated life's number one rule:
"Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate."
--
Bobby G.