Where I think we have taken a wrong turn on Obama's nominees

Obama makes an announcement and a rush is on to applaud or condemn.

Both responses are wrong.

Take anyone from Clinton or Gupta and you can build a reasonable case of the skills they have being used to advance the Obama agenda. A case can also be made to show that the nominee has no possible grasp of what Obama intends to do.

Governor Earl Warren was considered a conservative pick and when he got to the Supreme Court became the most liberal Chief Justice in history.

What we don't have access to are the discussions that Obama and the transition team has had with the nominees before an offer was made.

Those discussions include the policy that Obama intends to pursue, staffing, strategy and priority in the administration.

Any reasonable person would have a question on whether Clinton's ego or Gupta's previous association with a broadcast corporation profiting from pharmaceutical advertisements would be a good match for Obama's administration.

Obama has certainly addressed those issues and others.

So what do we do? Applaud? Condemn? Neither.

Our role should be to raise questions.

Questions that our Senators should be asking.

We should ask tough questions that should be put to all of the nominees, even the ones we like, especially the ones we like. It provides us the opportunity to show the country how this divided government is supposed to work in a responsible way.

We have people that have expertise and experience on every policy and every government agency that the new government is going to face. We should refine those questions and then push the Senate to do its job and ask the questions.

If the Democratic Senators aren't up to the job then we should pass the questions to Republican Senators.

Ask the tough questions. Ask them of the nominees we don't like and ask even harder questions of the ones that we love. It will set a standard that public will admire and make the Republicans shiver if they ever have the chance to send nominees to the Senate again.

And, ironically, this is what Obama is calling for. He said it over and over again, "This is change from the bottom up". He also stated clearly that he wanted the Legislature to act as an independent and useful partner, not a lap dog.

I have no interest in condemning Obama's picks (with the notable exception of his ability to pick pastors), some I admire, some make me think and some I don't understand. I learned last year that the people that have underestimated Obama's strategy are now all on the sidelines trying to figure out how a jr Senator with only 2 years experience and an African name has taken the Presidency and the imagination of the world.

We should concentrate our unique experience and passion as a community committed to a progressive future not to intercine feuding but on raising the questions that the nominees (whether considered ideological best friends or not) should be pressed on and then we should press the Senate to do its job.

After the nominees have been pressed then we will be in a much better position to see if Obama has done his job or not.

My challenge then is to put aside the surrogate battles and start drafting the questions.


I look forward to threads by the many gifted people here on what questions need to be asked regardless of the party or the reputation of the nominee

Here is my first one


Senator (I don't care who Republican or Democrat): Mr. Holder Sir, Is waterboarding torture? A simple yes or no is all the country requires.

Thank You.

:thumbsup:

I don't want to raise questions to Obama.

I want to rasie questions for Senators to ask the nominees.

Obama has done his job and now we have to help him by doing ours.

He picks the nominees and then we have to make sure that the people's representatives aren' sleeping at the switch like the Republicans did under Bush.

Forcing the Senators to grill the nominees is the best service we can contribute to Obama's government.

And if the nominee fails to raise to the occasion and is forced to recondiser his nomination then we will have done Obama a great service in weeding out the weaklings who weren't fit for high service.

I get the impression much of the confirmation process is a formality. The only speedbump seems to be the GOP's intention to put Holder through the ringer.

Our Senators should also take a professional course and ask all the questions we think were asked.


And these questions are not for show.


If Holder answers yes to the question then waterboarding is torture, torture is illegal and a crime has been committed, and he is obligated to investigate and prosecute crimes.


Publically answering these questions under oath has policy implications later on.

:thumbsup:

This post is way too reasonable to be in this forum.

K&R

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(( ))

Like a corporate tool, then ya know something, it IS a corporate tool.

I mean, c'mon, even the most conservative pollsters admit that the health insurance issue was one of the top issues on the minds of Americans.

And do you REALLY think Gupta would think outside of the Merck box on Single Payer Universal Health Care.

I will eat the sweatshirt I am wearing if I am proven wrong.

Now here is Dr. Dean explaining why Gupta is a "terrific appointment".

Your reply does absolutely nothing to advance the public discussion of the subject, nothing.

Now what would be productive is to formulate intelligent questions that would.

Obama and the Congress are not going to pass Single Payer Universal Health Care (although having lived overseas for decades I wish they would.)

What would be more productive and could atleast theoretically have an impact outside of DU is a list of cleverly thoughtout questions that might be asked in a Senate confirmation hearing.

Now purely ideological questions like the one that you raised are unlikely to be asked.


However asking Gupta what he thinks about CNN viewers marching into their Doctors offices and telling their doctors what they should be prescribing them would put Gupta into a very interesting dilemma.

Obama makes an announcement and a rush is on to applaud or condemn. Both responses are wrong.

Absolutely.

Every single move Obama has made in the last two years has made me think. I've shaken my head at some, cheered at others. But my respect and admiration for the man has not yet been diminished at all.

The feverishness over his every move, every breath coming from Freepers and some on the left is absolutely baffling in its incoherence right now. But I think that once some of the "new penny" shine comes off of Obama, that things will calm down considerably.

Right and Center Right.

But we're being blamed for 'taking a wrong turn?'

:crazy: :crazy: :crazy:

during the confirmation hearings and ask hard questions to make sure the people Obama chooses are successful. This is a much better way then the knee jerk reactionary stuff we have seen on DU for the last...(counting) four to five weeks.

and they are our militaristic foreign policy, the economy and the environment.

Sorry, but much as other issues matter, any of these three issues can literally destroy our delicate and complex world for real and in a hurry.

Accepting this premise for a minute (even just for sake of argument) he's 1 for 3. The "1" is the environment, but even though his picks seem good and his statement of respect for science is the best thing he's EVER said in his public life (in my arrogant opinion), he's still poised to accomodate the corporate overlords to such a degree that we may not move as seriously as we need to on global warming, and we may commit the serious stupidity of expanding nuclear energy.

The other two issues are pretty much disasters. Yes, Hillary Clinton is smart, engaged and really does want the world to work out well, but Bob Gates is a supreme asshole and the idea of widening the war in Afghanistan is strategically insane, ruinous, morally bad and a sad example of macho strutting. We shall see about the Israel/Palestine nightmare, but even though there will almost definitely be visible engagement, AIPAC's got this bunch by the short and curlies.

The new stewards of the economy are some of the people who caused and sustained this deregulated free-for-all of deliberate hucksertism in the first place. At least some of the more sensible greybeards are being trotted out, but when one's real hopes are pinned on a Paul Volcker, one should be a bit queasy. I don't see a great hope for sweeping change; I see patches on the same old dangerous and rigged system, much like the likely approach to health care. I also don't see any real accountability, which is necessary not only for a sense of fair consequences but for simple diagnosis so we can learn.

It's not a horrible thing to be somewhat middle-of-the-road, but it's hard to be there while also being "new" and embarking on great "change". These guys aren't "change"; Bob Gates has a history of being a ruthless enforcer of the party line, and lest we forget, it's the wrong party.

This has not been a heart-warming cast for a very dangerous adventure, ESPECIALLY in the most important categories.