That was a pretty intense post I wrote on Tuesday, and I stand by every single word of it. What perhaps I should have made clearer was my moods oscillate. Wednesday I had to do a lot of work for the Horace seminar, and today I had the Horace seminar for 4 hours, and I got out an hour ago, and I'm too tired to be angsty. Make no mistake, though: The US is in really deep doo-doo, and I'm not sure we've stopped digging.
(My metaphors suck.)
Anyway, when I got out of Latin I was quite astonished to learn that my main man Judd Gregg (R-NH) had withdrawn his nomination as commerce secretary. He's going to stay in the Senate and will retire in 2010. Now, the obvious question is: why? Seems to be two reasons: 1. Pressure from other Republican senators and angry constituents. 2. Disagreement with Obama on such things as the stimulus package (Republicans are lockstep against it, or nearly so) and the amount of power in the position of commerce secretary.1
I tend to side with reason 2, which seems more compelling to me, I guess because I don't see why Gregg would be cowed by dittoheads or Republican senators. Accepting reason 2, why did Gregg take the Commerce position at first? NB that Gregg actively lobbied to be named commerce secretary. He wanted that job. No doubt about that. The answer is that he had two years left as senator, probably. New Hampshire has been trending hard Democratic. 2004: Kerry narrowly wins NH, John Lynch (D) narrowly defeats an incumbent Republican governor. Judd Gregg wins reelection to a 3rd term over a Democrat, Granny D - seems like a good person, but not someone who I would vote for. 2006: Democrats take over the state legislature and capture both House seats from the incumbent Republicans. 2008: John Sununu, the junior senator, is defeated by former Democratic governor Jeanne Shaheen. 2010: Judd Gregg comes up for reelection. You see the trend. I figure he wanted to end his career in an honorable way, a way that would look good, rather than face a humiliating defeat.
And here we are: withdrawing his nomination wasn't so honorable or good-looking. Ideology trumped the idea of a nice end to his career. Republicans put their ideology first. And we come back to the question: How do you compromise with people who refuse to compromise?
I wish I had a good answer. (I do have answers, but they all boil down to Fuck them.)
1. Commerce traditionally handles the census. It was moved (by who?) out of Commerce's jurisdiction around the time Gregg was nominated by Obama. Democrats want to count everyone, Republicans don't care so much. Generally it's poor people/minorities who are undercounted, and they prefer to vote Democratic. The census determines redistricting, and the Republicans would prefer to have fewer Democratic districts. This is analogous to the whole vote suppression and voter fraud debate, which I heard too much about in the last election and refuse to recount.
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P. Static is ill, so I get to comment! If only I knew more on the issues in D.C. my comment could have more substance.
ReplyDeleteI'm not exactly certain why he wouldn't just want to get out of the senate post haste. Now that his party is the minority, he's not going to be able to do much there, right? At least as Commerce Secretary he'd have a chance to have an influence on the nation, right? Also, I have to ask, who now has control of the census? That may lead to answering who moved it.
Well, I certainly hope sir p-static recovers.
ReplyDeleteGregg - well, he can try to obstruct legislation. He can keep on introducing his own legislation, of course. His influence will be mostly in helping the GOP thwart Obama, I figure. Commerce - not a particularly important department, as I understand it. The only things they oversee that I've heard of are NOAA and the Patent and Trademark Office - and the Census Bureau, of course. It looks like the Census brouhaha is now the Census director reports to the White House staff as well as the Commerce secretary. The bureau proper is still under Commerce's aegis.