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My foreign-policy-interested friend Rebecca emailed me Foreign Policy‘s list of who foreign-policy luminaries want running Obama’s foreign policy with the instruction "blog about this." So that’s what I’mma do. And what an interesting exercise in structure: there are something like 55 mooted names. You don’t want to read what I have to say about all of them, which is convenient, because I have an hour’s worth of battery power on this outlet-deprived BoltBus and I fucking sure am not writing about all of them even if my laptop overflowed with lithium.
So hmmmm. How to proceed. After the jump, an arbitrary attempt at pasting together a cabinet based on the best and the worst suggestions. A word on methodology: these are the picks of a squarebound establishmentarian magazine. They’re giving me a lot of wankers to work from. These are not necessarily my endorsements. They’re my endorsements out of this pool.
My Crew Be UNRULY
1. Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Bob Gallucci says he’s "capable of discerning America’s interests." That shit is harder than it looks. Ever try to do it drunk? Strobe Awesome-Name Talbott won’t.
2. National Security Adviser Buckminster Fuller. Bob Baer begins his endorsement of this guy by generously conceding "Fuller is long dead…" Which is all it took to get my vote, because this job is a total joke. Only Brent Scowcroft did a good job with it. The president should be running his/her foreign policy, not some neither-fish-nor-foul staffer who can’t even be subpoenaed by Congress.
3. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates. I’m already signed up for him, at least for the first year. Predictably, nearly everyone in this feature picked a Republican for the Pentagon.
4. Director of National Intelligence Jane Harman. Shashi Tharoor approves, and so do I. My personal opinion is that the DNI should be a career intelligence officer, especially because an inexperienced manager of 16 fractious, feuding and (occasionally) fucked-up agencies could be eaten alive. But having covered the intelligence community for some time, I’ve seen Harman exercise good judgment about intelligence matters, if not always policy ones.
5. Secretary of the Treasury James K. Galbraith. Katrina vanden Heuvel recommends and, having traded emails with him, I enthusiastically second. I don’t have a clue what makes a good Treasury Secretary, but Jamie is liberal as a motherfucker and funnier than a motherfucker. No matter what, somebody’s mother is getting fucked in Secretary Galbraith’s Treasury. Probably a mother who gave birth to an exorbitantly-paid CEO.
6. Energy Security Co-Chairs Al Gore & Van Jones. Another KvdH pick, another good idea. (No, I don’t have any Nation pitches out… for now.) Van Jones might be a prophet. If you haven’t checked out The Green Collar Economy, do so now. Plus, you know, Gore.
Maybe It’s Better If America Burns
1. Secretary of State Bill Clinton. I was thisclose to picking Richard Holbrooke. But then I saw Shashi Tharoor is determined to sabotage Obama from within. I suppose it might be funny to watch the most passive-aggressive cabinet secretary in history, but this shit is important.
2. National Security Adviser Fareed Zakaria. He’s a smart guy! But he’s also weathervane of conventional wisdom. Could easily be worse than Condoleezza Rice. It makes sense that the guy who teaches at a school named after Lee Kwan Yoo would nominate Zakaria.
3. Defense Secretary Robert Zoellick. You know what an antiwar Democrat needs at the Pentagon? A Bush veteran who has no experience with the military. Chris Bertram is rocking on the horse-size pills.
4. Director of National Intelligence Richard Holbrooke. Had to find a place for this one. Yes, let’s place the Democratic Donald Rumsfeld in charge of the most PTSD-having and crucialest aspect of the national-security apparatus.
5. Secretary of the Treasury Steve Forbes. You’re making this shit too easy, Grover.
6. Director of National Intelligence David Norquist. Grover Norquist says "He’s my brother and he’s good. He did defense intelligence budgets for the Pentagon, and he is now the chief financial officer for the Department of Homeland Security." I am kicking myself for not noticing this Bush patronage scandal in time.
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Your good list sucks. Bad. First of all, Robert Gates was an improvement over Rumsfeld, but not over anybody else (except Cheney, of course). Picking a Republican as Defense Secretary is the worst idea of all time. Let’s keep the crew that’s been running defense policy for the last eight. Absolutely brilliant. Can’t imagine why I didn’t think of that.
Oh wait, I remember. The torture, the illegal war of agression against Iraq, the gross violations of the Geneva F’ing Conventions …. Do I need to go on? And face it, Gates has done absolutely nothing to address any of those issues. And that’s the best guy for Obama to choose? Really? What the hell are you smoking?
Spencer:
WTF is Gideon Rachman smoking? The dude works for Financial Times yet obviously doesn’t have a fucking clue about Buffett. Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon would come back from the dead before Buffett took on the Treasury Secretary job. Buffett is a real maverick, not McCain. Buffett prefers being in Omaha. He had his fill living in D.C. when his dad was a Congressman. I know more about Buffett than Rachman and I’ve never met neither Rachman or Buffett.
I have to agree. Really, what ARE you smoking?
We saw far too many Repubs in the Clinton admin and ask Carter what he thought of Gates and you’ll probably puke. Maybe this time we can go Dem, but without any of the Aspins. Let’s try competence and sanity for a change!
Jesus Christ! Did you guys click through to the Foreign Policy list? THESE ARE NOT MY PICKS. They are my picks *of Foreign Policy’s picks.* I made an equivocal case for Gates as a temporary SecDef — click through to the link — and remain convinced that if you want to get out of Iraq without it being a complete national trauma, there’s a logic for keeping Gates. If you want to argue against Gates, argue against GATES, not against Republicans. Gates is not responsible for “torture, the illegal war of agression against Iraq, the gross violations of the Geneva F’ing Conventions” and working for Bush means you have a limited capacity to address these things. Sorry, he’s just not Rumsfeld, and he’s not another Bushie.
I was going to suggest Richard Clark good pick for NSA. But only so my bad pick could be Peter Russell Clark, a TV chef from the 80s who’s catchphrase was “where’s the cheese”. Certain to liven up security briefings.
A dead Buckminster Fuller would make a better cabinet secretary than just about anyone else on any of these lists. He was sounding off on global warming and its national security and economic ramifications in 1969 when T. Boone Pickens was founding his first oil companies.
And he wrote this book in the early 80s which pretty well eviscerates the corporate and financial structures that drove us into our current ditch.
Full disclosure, I’m program director of the Buckminster Fuller Institute…
Yes, I did click through the links. I didn’t say that Gates was responsible for all the crimes of the Defense Department under Bush, I said he hasn’t done anything about them. If Gates is no different than Mukasey in my view. He’s taken over a thoroughly corrupted organization and done absolutely nothing to address the continuing illegal activities within his organization. If that was a condition of getting the appointment, he should have refused. I’m not crazy about Lawrence Korb (who was on the list), but at least he’s not tainted with the stain of administering Guantanamo and the show trials that are going on there RIGHT NOW under Robert Gates.
And if you think the crazies on the right will be easier on Obama for pulling out of Iraq with Gates instead of (let’s make the most outrageous possible pick) SecDef Dennis Kucinich, you’re hopelessly naive.
We all know that those aren;t your picks, but if you had given a list of your picks, THOSE guys would really, really suck. Besides, what’s wrong with Rumsfeld?
You know what an antiwar Democrat needs at the Pentagon?
Obama isn’t an anti-war Democrat. But at least he’s a Democrat. No more Reps, please. Larry Korb would be an OK choice for SecDef.