NBC News has confirmed that former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack will be named Agriculture secretary. The appointment will be announced at the news conference tomorrow, along with Obama’s choice for Interior, Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar.
I guess we’ll just have to hope that GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley hangs up his spurs as opposed to goading him into retirement with the specter of a ‘Sack Attack.
this would indicate that they weren’t really interested in running for the Senate (both are more executives by career history, so one could see them preferring a Cabinet job to a legislative one).
….who isn’t a cookie-cutter stooge and apologist for corporate agriculture. I have little confidence that Vilsack has any interest in slowing the trend towards across-the-board corporatization of agriculture.
now Obama has just as many of his Rivals (TM) in his cabinet (Biden, Clinton, Richardson, Vilsack) as not in his cabinet (Edward, Dodd, Kucinich, Gravel)! I guess he could still surprise us with that Sec. of Labor spot, too. (Or a specially created cabinet-level Department of WTF? for Gravel.)
He could have picked another Iowan, Jim Leach, and thereby burnished his bi-partisan cred.
IA-Sen is now off the table for 2010? If Grassley doesn’t retire, who can we run? And if he does, who do we have to run & win?
Vilsack is now a name to be forgotten by political people, as the vast majority of cabinet members.
Not a very interesting Cabinet choice, but he’s fine.
Grassley was very beatable, but if you don’t want to be a Senator, you don’t.
Former Lt. Gov under Vilsack. Wonder if she’d be up to the challenge?
Mike Fitzgerald could run as well, the state Treasurer. Neither of them will though. I have been pushing David Miles a guy who sits on the Board of Regents and runs an investment firm, but I guess no one has asked him to run.
http://www.associatedcontent.c…
This is a terrible choice. Why not Tom Buis. At least then you’d not be picking a corporate farmer and career politician. You know Obama not every member of your cabinet has to be a Senator or Governor. I just don’t get this. What a terrible choice. He had two options, reach out to real farmers with down to earth poltical activist like Buis, or reach out to corporate farms with a big slick long time politician like Vilsack, he choose the big guy. Vilsack didn’t even endorse him in the primary’s for christ’s sake. Vilsack is not even a real farmer.
Also WTF? Didn’t Vilsack have a big deal a few weeks ago where he said he was not being vetted for Secretary of Agriculture and was not going to be S of AG. Then he started sending signals he was going to run agaisnt Grassley and suddenly takes the AG job out of nowhere? I really have to say I hate this choice more than any other except the HUD choice, (where he didn’t choose Shirley Franklin), and Eric Holder, (where he choose a wornout, controversial Clinton has been over many other options, including Deval Patrick, Granholm, and Napilitano), and I don’t much care for Napitlano as homeland security director. Being a border state governor doesn’t suddenly make you an expert in national security isses. I don’t understand appointing a former Lawyer, U.S. Attorney, and state attorney general to homeland security instead of attorney general. I also don’t understand making a former U.N ambassador and widely vetted Secretary of State choice secretary of Commerce. I also don’t understand choosing Clinton, who has about as much experience as Obama, over Richardson, it was just a move to suck up to their political organization. In fact I’ve only like three of his appointments so far, Salazar, Geithner, and Chu.
First he was the leading choice, then he said he was never asked, now he IS the choice.
US Trade Rep
Labor
Transportation
Any guesses? I’m hoping Rep. Earl Blumenauer for Transportation