Wednesday, December 10, 2008

Browner Proves It: The Second Clinton Administration!

Carol Browner, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency for both terms of the Clinton administration (1993-2001), is expected to be tapped as "energy and environmental czar" for the incoming Barack Obama administration.

Well, that does it. I'm putting my foot down, finally. I've held off on criticizing Obama for his oppressively stale administrative appointments. But, I mean let's be honest, this is a de facto Second Clinton Administration, with a token black chief executive who'll be sitting in the Oval Office. This is not just a disaster for the Democratic Party, but for Barack Obama's personal claim to embody hope and change, not to mention post-partisan transformation.

Recall what we've seen so far: Obama picked the profane Illinois political operative Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Emmanuel, prior to being elected to Illinois' 5th conressional district in 2002, was Bill Clinton's
campaign finance director in 1992, and later served in the Clinton White House as a personal advisor to the president.

Then, of course, we have Senator Hillary Clinton who has accepted her nomination to be secretary of state in the new administration. The Clinton pick raises more questions than anything we've seen so far. Tapping Clinton, above all, is a sign of Obama's dire weaknesses. Did Obama need to shore up his credibility with the PUMAs? Probably not, as he won a decisive 52.5 percent majority on November 4th (apparently showing that the pre-convention fears of party disunity were overblown). No, Obama selected Clinton to neutralize his own woeful inexperience, and not just in foreign policy, which Hillary had targeted so effectively during the primaries (don't forget the "
3 am phone call"). After running perhaps the most successful presidential campaign in history, Obama put on the retroburners. Frozen by the fact that he's going to have to actually govern, he tossed his utopian calls for transformation and hewed to the tried and true of old-news party hacks. We'll have not just have Hillary, but Bill Clinton too, as an in-house deputy secretary of state, with tremendous influence on his wife (and not to mention his estimable connections, which at any other time in history would raise vigorous questions of conflict of interest).

Then you've got New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, the most qualified failed presidential candidate in American history. Richardson was Bill Clinton's ambassador to the United Nations and secretary of energy. Having been snubbed for state, Richardson will preside over private-sector ribbon-cutting at one of the smallest cabinet departments in Washington. What a letdown, but it's a perfect signature for Obama's already-failing style of bureaucratic leadership.

Of special note is attorney general-nominee Eric Holder. As assitant attorney general in the second Clinton administration, Holder endorsed Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, which soon became a culminating symbol of the moral vacuum of the Clinton presidency.

With the appointment of Carol Browner as a top staffer on Obama's energy and environmental policy, we'll see another top Clinton administration official coming back to D.C. for a second turn on the Democratic-insider merry-go-round (revolving door?). An undistinguished bureaucrat, Browner apparently stepped on toes during her tenure as the administration's enforcer on bone-crushing anti-business environmental mandates. This time around she'll have the added capital of global warming hysteria to really dampen entrepreneurial enthusiasm.

More announcements are on the way (including the possible appointment of Anthony Lake, a former national security advisor to Bill Clinton, as CIA director - no "change" there, again!).

Note that Obama's selection of
physicist Steven Chu as secretary of energy should have been the model. This man has no inside Washington experience, and he boasts impeccable credentials as a winner of the Nobel Prize. Chu is a big thinker on the cutting-edge of alternative fuels and is thus exactly the kind of pick that Obama should be making across-the-board.

The progressive left has been
deeply disappointed with Obama's appointments so far (not enough "genuine" Democratic leftists). But it's the American public who should really be disappointed, now that they're disabused of the campaign's lofty - even ethereal - promises of national healing, unity, and restoration of American values abroad. The fact is American government will largely return to the status quo ante, circa 1999. The difference is the country's got pent-up and deep-seated problems, and the man in driver's seat (or the figurehead, depending on how incompetent Barack Hussein ends up being) will have not a "team of rivals" but a team of cronies from the previous Democratic era of Whitewater, Troopergate, Paula Jones, Monica Lewinsky, and the last presidential impeachment.

I can't see how this constitutes the kind of "change" Americans hoped for when they pulled their levers last month. But this year's been a black-magic tour of corruption and radicalism on the Democratic side, from Jeremiah Wright to Bill Ayers, and now to Rod Blogojevich.

I'll be relieved, though, if Obama breaks with Bill Clinton's record and loses in 2012, ending up as a failed one-term president with his first-term agenda of big-government liberalism repudiated at the polls next time around.

13 comments:

  1. Of course Bush employed nothing but people who had never stepped foot in D.C.

    Give me a break.

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  2. Wow, I'm glad that there are several states between us Grace because stupid as powerful as yours must be contagious.

    As I said earlier Don, I've dropped back by your place because you left a comment back at mine but come on, dude: is this woman someone you're proud to have on your side in an intellectual debate? I mean, I realize you both probably agree on issues like Israel and abortion and prayer in schools but Jesus (the atheist said with all due irony), I would personally be embarrassed if I had fruit loops from the left of this mental caliber frequenting my blog.

    Grace, I can only imagine what your friends and neighbors think about you yet never say to your face. You need to unclench, girl.

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  3. Grace...
    Obama is going to speak at the capital of a Muslim country that we want on our side. Several Muslim countries ARE on our side or at least partly receptive, for whatever reason.

    Allies are good.
    Enemies are bad.
    Get it? Can you comprehend that?

    What YOU want is the same as what the terrorists want... a holy war waged entirely on nutcase religious lines.

    The UN... is the thing we use to stop civil wars, promote international aid, disaster response... etc. It's not the Muslim/Socialist/whatever enabler you seem to think it is.

    Get psychiatric help, for your own sake, if not America's.

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  4. It seems, as always, our left wing friends cannot see the trees because the forest is in the way. Therefore, I will try to make this as simple as possible for these people who seem to eternally have their noses pointed to the sky.

    Appeasement is dangerous and counter-productive.

    And the UN, for the anonamouse above me, the General Assembly is going to pass a resolution making criticism of Islam a hate crime.
    The Muslim lead majority in the UN
    is one of the greatest dangers we have today in the free world.

    So let's see what Obama is going to do. I hope he kicks butt and tells them it is going to be OUR
    way or the highway.

    Webb, your Lewis quote is just too funny...thanks for the laugh.

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  5. "I hope he kicks butt and tells them it is going to be OUR
    way or the highway."

    I can't imagine that in a million years, Norm. But if he does I'll near abouts consider voting for him in 2012, LOL!

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  6. Don, I notice that your usual practice of giving positive shout outs to commenters you agree with does not extend to Grace so I'll assume that you agree with my assessment of her mental faculties, and there's nothing wrong with that but come on, guy: be honest with the woman. Have the courage to condemn the nutcases who agree with you yet are clearly nutcases; I do the same with the random nutcases on the left who find my site and I feel more intellectually honest for doing so.

    Norm, the fact that you find religious fascism so funny speaks volumes about you I'm sure I don't need to go into, but on an even funnier note: I called you a pussy for not engaging me in several arguments on this site last month and you never said a word. Your cowardice gave me a bigger laugh than any quote ever could. Pussy.

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  7. JBW: Grace is awesome! She leaves so many powerful comments I can't keep up!

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  8. Don, I'm not saying that her comments aren't powerful, just delusional; and your blanket endorsement of her, void of any specific agreement on any of the wacky points she's tried to make thus far, would seem to back me up on that front. Don't get me wrong: the entertainment factor is huge and is certainly not lost on me but if you can't even call out the loons who agree with you, why should I take you seriously when you vilify the folks who don't?

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  9. JBW: You don't take me seriously irrespective of anything Grace's written.

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  10. Don, not true: I praised you for taking a progressive stance on gay adoption on one thread and agreed with Grace that you're a smart guy on another; I fuck with some of the crazies that frequent your site because I find them amusingly bizarre and tragically entertaining but I've always tried to engage you on an intellectual level void of personal and ad hominem attacks.

    I'm just asking for intellectual honesty on every level of engagement. If you and I disagree on foreign policy or health care or anything else, we can still debate the merits of our respective positions with civility and mutual respect and end the discussion knowing that the other is saying and doing what they think is right.

    But if you don't agree with those on your side who call Obama a traitor and a secret Muslim and 666beast (and I don't think that you do), saying so publicly would go a long way towards achieving that intellectual honesty I'm talking about.

    I give you credit for condemning the anti-gay bigots and their ilk over at BushwhacKKK but it's easy to condemn those who are so obviously vile, fringe elements of the right; I do the same with the idiots on the left who think we should get rid of every gun in the country, including those used by the military.

    But it takes a lot more character to publicly condemn those you usually agree with when they say or do something stupid. Look, I realize that you tolerate her and others like her because you want your site to thrive and gain popularity and I don't begrudge you that but honestly calling a loon a loon would go a long way towards getting many on my side to listen to what you're saying.

    Besides dude, if I really didn't take you seriously I wouldn't waste time conversing with you in the first place; I'd just insult you in a humorous manner the way I do Grace and Norm. So buck up there, little camper.

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