The prospective Bush administration is off to a blazing start, but the heat and light this week are generated by the Linda Chavez nomination going down in flames. At what was probably the last press conference of her political career, the now-defunct nominee for labor secretary portrayed herself as a victim of head-hunting politics, predicting that the treatment she received will discourage good people from volunteering for public service.
That may be true, maybe not. Linda Chavez’s resume is not that of a dedicated public servant, it’s one of a political golddigger. She jumped on the Democratic-union bandwagon in the early 70s, the years of Nixon’s disgrace, but allowed the strong wind of the Reagan Revolution to blow her 180 degrees, into an anti-union Republican.
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Pro-Criminal
The president, Republicans keep saying, should have the right to pick a cabinet whose members reflect his views. In the case of George W. Bush, perhaps we should amend the axiom to say a president should have the right to pick a cabinet whose members reflect the views of the people who financed his election. It’s not clear Mr. Bush has any views of his own. Either way, the symmetry between the president-elect and his cabinet designees runs deeper than ideology.
Mr. Bush lost the popular election to Al Gore by a half million votes. He may well have lost the electoral vote, too, but let’s let that go for now. Two of Mr. Bush’s cabinet appointees, the controversial John Ashcroft and the low-profile Spencer Abraham, lost their Senate seats when the voters spoke on November seventh. For them, the west-wing cabinet room will be something of a political Valhalla, where the dead rise to fight again. Can a president with such a thin mandate, perhaps a negative mandate, afford to be appointing people who could not, even as incumbents, gain a plurality in their home states?
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