Cabinet Woes

Most would grant that Newsweek has been very favorable to Obama over the last year, so it is remarkable to find Michael Hirsh declaring that Obama has lost control and already has to mount a “comeback.” This is a measure of how badly things have gone for the administration in the last week. There is certainly something different about a President who can admit publicly and without much coaxing that he made mistakes, but it doesn’t inspire confidence that while just in its third week the administration has already managed to bungle the handling of multiple major Cabinet choices and finds itself criticized by friendly pundits for a lack of leadership. The comedy of the Commerce appointment continues after the embarrassment of Richardson’s withdrawal, which was only made necessary because of the need to placate interest groups who wanted to see Richardson in a significant Cabinet post and were disappointed that Clinton received the spot at State that they expected him to fill. The strange chain reaction can be traced back to the decision not to select Clinton as VP and the supposedly “clever” move to neutralize Clinton by bringing her into the Cabinet. That “clever” move, besides freezing out many Obama loyalists from top slots at the State Department and elevating to the top foreign policy post in the government a rival whose foreign policy judgement he regularly derided as poor, continues to have negative effects on the administration weeks later.