Wanted: Pro-NAFTA Minority for Cabinet Post
12/29/2008 by Peter HartContinuing the media trend of cheering Obama's center-right cabinet nominees, the Los Angeles Times' editorial page weighs in today (12/28/08):
The best measure by which to evaluate any president's administration is the quality of the appointees. In recent times, however, a president's inner circle also has been viewed through the prism of identity politics. Obama has succeeded on both levels, assembling an impressive roster that includes men and women, blacks, whites, Latinos and Asian-Americans. Only once did he seem willing to allow diversity to trump policy. He offered the Cabinet-level position of trade representative to the protectionist Rep. Xavier Becerra, but after Becerra withdrew -- and after Obama had named another Latino, [Ken] Salazar, as secretary of the Interior -- the Rubik's Cube was twisted again and the trade portfolio went to former Dallas Mayor Ron Kirk, an African-American supporter of NAFTA.
In other words, the corporate media's preference is for ethnically diverse cabinet officials who demonstrate little to no ideological diversity. Knowing that this will please the corporate press is a lot easier than solving a Rubik's Cube.
The editorial would also seem not to have noticed that it has contrasted "quality" with "identity politics"--in this context meaning the hiring of anyone who is not a white man.
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December 29th, 2008 at 9:55 am
It would seem that the only identity Obama gives a fig about is that which embraces the system that gives us war, hunger and oppression … with a few tweaks to prevent it from collapsing in on itself.
His job is to fix the engine, not replace it with one that will hum along tuned to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights … or the frickin' Constitution of these here United States, for that matter.
And that is, of course, what the corpress expects of him. It's change they can believe in … and try their damnedest to delude us into supporting, as well.
December 30th, 2008 at 6:25 pm
Most of the people who call in on our local community radio, "KMUD" (Humboldt County, CA) have expressed disappointment in Obama's appointments. I can only hope that he is "playing it safe, for now." otherwise it is just another 'Bait-n-Switch' like Bill Clinton's "progressive agenda."
September 23rd, 2010 at 7:10 pm
[...] http://www.fair.org/blog/2008/12/29/wanted-pro-nafta-minority-for-cabinet-post/ 12/26 [...]