Word: cabinets
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...main attraction, Chu, that has environmentalists and renewable-energy developers like Algenol's Woods so excited. The only Nobel laureate to be appointed to a presidential Cabinet - Chu won the prize in physics in 1997 for work involving lasers - he obviously has brainpower to spare. But what really counts is the way he has chosen to use it over the past several years. As head of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, part of the Department of Energy's network of research centers, Chu put his own research on hold to marshal the lab's efforts on climate change...
...willingness to compromise. In the heated world of education politics, that was the clearest message coming from President-elect Barack Obama when he tapped Chicago Public Schools CEO Arne Duncan to become the next Secretary of Education. (See Obama's other Cabinet picks...
President-elect Obama's Cabinet appointments are sending a powerful signal that change is on the way. His choice to run Veterans Affairs, retired general Eric Shinseki, was a brave critic of the Iraq war and is a staunch advocate for wounded vets. His pick for Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Shawn Donovan, has presided over a huge expansion of affordable housing in New York City. And his nominee for Energy Secretary, Stephen Chu (announced Monday), is a Nobel-winning physicist who preaches the gospel of efficiency. It's hard to imagine a starker contrast with their counterparts...
...Sorry, had to look them up. That would be VA Secretary James Peake, HUD Secretary Steve Preston and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman. They're not exactly household names, which is why it's so weird that second-tier Cabinet appointees get so much attention initially; they rarely make much news once they're in office. That's why I've proposed shrinking the Cabinet, which has doubled in size yet probably halved in importance since the Kennedy Administration. But that's one thing Obama does not appear likely to change. Judging by his appointments thus far, the Cabinet will continue...
...This is, in fact, a big change. In the Bush Administration, accomplished and independent-minded Cabinet Secretaries like former governors Christine Todd Whitman and Tommy Thompson bristled at marching orders from snot-nosed twentysomething White House apparatchiks. Obama's picks suggest that while his Cabinet Secretaries will take marching orders, the orders will at least come from seasoned heavyweights...