Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Bring Back The White House Office Of Political Affairs...

...So that there is someone around to tell Barack Obama not to make Kathleen Sebelius his HHS Secretary. I've said this before, but this is very clear cut:
  • There are a half dozen people who would be roughly as effective as Sebelius at being the HHS Secretary.
  • There are exactly zero people who would even be one tenth as effective as Sebelius as a Democratic Candidate for Sam Brownback's Senate seat in 2010.
  • The bottleneck to getting things done is the lack of cooperation from Republicans. Either we need fewer Republicans, or Republicans need at least one more electoral drubbing before deciding that maybe their policies need to change.
  • Either way, Democrats needs as many hands on deck for the House and Senate races. We can't afford to lose Sebelius.
Obama has already pulled Janet Napolitano away from running for Senate in 2010; he can't do the same thing with Sebelius. He just can't. Someone has to tell him there are competing priorities beyond building his ideal cabinet.

6 comments:

corvus said...

Word. This is so obvious I don't know WTF he's thinking.

Neil Sinhababu said...

The only thing I can think of is that she really, really doesn't want to run for Senate for some unspecified reason.

drip said...

Maybe it's because Kansas is in worse shape than California? I have no idea about Kansas politics, but who would want to deal with this budget and an even crazier bunch of republicans for 2 years? Brownback seems almost mentally competent compared to Pat Roberts, the senior republican in the state.

Anonymous said...

drip,

Kansas is in much better shape than California. The dispute, which is now over, was about shifting funds from state accounts with more money to accounts with less. Now that the fight is over, the refunds, school money and everything else is flowing again.

And seriously, no group of Republicans in the country can hold a candle to the nonsense California's death cult members. The Kansas GOP is in a state of constant civil war between bonafide death cult members and relatively sane people. Think of our board of education problems: nutjobs get in when things are going well, then go too far and get voted out the very next election.

In California, the only conflict in the GOP is over who can be the craziest.

drip said...

Stephen, that is a relief. So should Sebelius stay in Kansas and become senator? I agree with Neil's post and was just trying to figure out why she should have the HHS job.

Anonymous said...

So should Sebelius stay in Kansas and become senator?

Oh, a hundred - no thousand - times yes. But she's going to make up her own mind on this. And I really don't think anyone can predict what she'll do. Sebelius is an interesting person, to say the least.