Entangled Alliances

photo credit: megabn

Hello to whomever may be out there! As the only blog member who’s currently languishing in full-time education, I’m gonna keep my posts snippy for the time being, but I hope to provoke debate and provide links to a few interesting things from around the web.

To get us started, here’s a question to which I’d genuinely like an answer. It’s now pretty much a fait accompli that Judd Gregg, senior Republican Senator from New Hampshire (and facing a tough re-elect in 2010) is heading to Obama’s Department of Commerce. More interestingly, despite NH’s Democratic Governor, John Lynch, having the prerogative of appointment, Gregg and Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell seem to have managed to ensure the appointment of a Republican Senate replacement (probably former Gregg-aide Bonnie Newman). So what’s Obama’s logic?

As far as I can read it, there are two possibilities:

1) This idea, which looks like it came from Harry Reid, is basically just an example of the Administration and Senate Democrats getting played by Republicans. Reid naïvely thought he had a path to 60 Senators, Obama latched on, and the GOP proved to be stronger than they’d imagined. If so, this is a worrying precedent. Two weeks in, the Administration loses a Cabinet post in a rookie attempt to seize fillibuster-proof control.  Good luck passing universal health-care.

2) If not an error, we’re left with the possibility that Obama is genuinely a “post-partisan”, and welcomes the presence of Gregg in his Cabinet.  Admittedly, the Commerce Department hasn’t exactly been a repository for major political muscle since Herbert Hoover moved onward and upward, and in a Democratic Administration, the balance of power traditionally shifts from Commerce to Labor, but it still seems awfully generous to welcome a third Republican to the Cabinet (joining Gates at DOD and LaHood at Transportation) with no qui pro quo.  Remember too that this was the Department that Bill Richardson, Democratic presidential candidate, Governor, and Clinton-Administration Energy Secretary and UN Ambassador, was supposed to fill.  It had hardly been ring-fenced for the Republicans during the Transition, so why the change?  The prospect of an open seat in 2010 may have helped matters, but Gregg’s re-elect numbers were already pretty anemic, and I hardly think this merits a place in the Presidential Line of Succession. Nor does a single potential vote on the stimulus package, as some have suggested.

So did Obama get played, or am I missing something?