Grading Obama's Picks

Don Surber, an editorialist and columnist for the Charleston Daily Mail, has a great blog post grading President-elect Obama's cabinet picks. It's a good post. I totally agree with Mr. Surber's observations that Obama "has spotty judgment, and the choices for attorney general and vice president are real troubling. For a man whose selling card is his perfect judgment, he sure pulls more than his share of boners." It's worth gandering over to his blog and reading the post!

Panetta for CIA??

President-elect Obama has announced Mr Leon Panetta as his nominee to lead the CIA. Curious! Mr Panetta is a Washington insider who was President Clinton's Chief of Staff during Monica-gate. He has absolutely no experience with the intelligence community, other than sitting in on National Intelligence Briefings. Okay....why this nomination? Spook86 at "In From the Cold...." has a great post about the nomination. He speculates that the appointment was either an afterthought (I sure hope not) or was a "bone" thrown at liberal activists concerned with potential nominees who support more aggressive interrogation techniques (which would be worse). I agree with Spook86, the position of the Director of the CIA is too important to our national security to name an intelligence neophyte to fill it. I've said all along that President-elect Obama's judgment about people is critically lacking. This is just another example.

Imagine

"Imagine playing a central role in the biggest national defense disaster in 50 years. Imagine playing a central role in one of the biggest economic disasters in your country's history. Imagine doing both as an un-elected official. Imagine getting filthy rich in the process, and even being allowed to sit self-righteously on a commission appointed to get to the bottom of the first disaster, which of course did not get to the bottom of that disasters or anything else for that matter.

Imagine ending, ruining or at least causing significant quality deterioration in the lives of millions of people, most of whom will never know your name. Imagine counting your millions of dollars while people who tired to stop you from causing all this mayhem were getting blamed for most of the ills you actually contributed to."

C. Edmund Wright authors a piece at American Thinker asking us to let our imagination run . . . but he also identifies the one person who doesn't have to imagine; primarily because she is the one person who has done all these things. This person is Jamie Gorlick. She was a Clinton appointee who, as Deputy Attorney General in 1999, built the "dreaded" wall of separation between intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies that prevented our investigators from talking to each other before September 11th. There were a number of other problems with intelligence gathering (particularly the lack of capable human intelligence gathering and the over reliance on technical means of gaining intelligence); but when the intelligence folks had one piece of the puzzle and couldn't talk to the law enforcement folks, who had the other piece, the puzzle never came into focus. And that was a major contributing factor to the success of the September 11th hijackers. I know personally from working cyberlaw intelligence and law enforcement issues for the Air Force before (and after) September 11th, that this "wall" was a major stumbling block to ensuring smooth policies, plans, and procedures.

You'd think that would be enough . . . but not for Ms Gorlick. Mr. Wright recounts how Ms Gorlick was Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae from 1997 to 2003, even though she didn't have a bit of real estate or finance experience. During her tenure, she helped create the mess that resulted in the Federal takeover of the mortgage institution, including at engaging in improper accounting practices that covered up $9 Billion in unrecorded losses. Of course, Ms Gorlick still took numerous bonuses; making millions in the process.

Now she's one of Senator Obama's advisers. Just another example of his lack of judgment in selecting people to work for, and with, him. But then, like Senator Obama, Ms Gorlick is a graduate of Harvard Law School and a well-connected liberal. Like Mr. Wright says, she keeps "getting appointed to positions above her experience level where she could flex her liberal muscles, add a resume item, and move upward." Apparently, she's now grabbed ahold of Senator Obama's coat tails and is ready to keep moving. If Senator Obama wins the presidency and appoints Ms Gorlick to another government position, I wonder what else her toxic touch will negatively impact. That's one picture I'm not sure I want to imagine.