“How did we transform from champions of human dignity and individual rights into a nation of armchair torturers? One word: fear.

Fear is blinding, hateful, and vengeful. It makes the end justify the means. And why not? If torture can stop the next terrorist attack, the next suicide bomber, then what’s wrong with a little waterboarding or electric shock?

The simple answer is the rule of law. Our Constitution defines the rules that guide our nation. It was drafted by those who looked around the world of the eighteenth century and saw persecution, torture, and other crimes against humanity and believed that America could be better than that. This new nation would recognize that every individual has an inherent right to personal dignity, to justice, to freedom from cruel and unusual punishment.

We have preached these values to the world. We have made clear that there are certain lines Americans will not cross because we respect the dignity of every human being. That pledge was written into the oath of office given to every president, “to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution.” It’s what is supposed to make our leaders different from every tyrant, dictator, or despot. We are sworn to govern by the rule of law, not by brute force.

We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.”

-Leon Panetta, the man chosen by Barack Obama to head the CIA, writing in Washington Monthly last year.

As someone put it today, “This is a good day for America’s soul.”

FURTHER READING: Marc Ambinder on Panetta’s greatest challenges.

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So, sheesh, with all the tough questions for any job seekers within the administration - “do you have any embarassing e-mails?” - you’d think “are you the subject of a grand jury investigation” might make the list.

So B-Rich is out as Commerce Secretary.

I was beginning to get worried that we were going to have a scandal-free transition. Glad human nature came through, once again.

So who fills the spot now?

Steve Clemons says:

“Leo Hindery — who was senior economic advisor to the John Edwards campaign and then was an economic advisor to the Obama campaign as well and authored the interesting book It Takes a CEO — is a real stand out.”

Further reading: track the Richardson developments on this New Mexico politics blog.

What do you think?

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A friend pointed this out to me.

On the left: Arne Duncan, Obama’s Education Secretary nominee.

On the right: that principal guy from ‘the Breakfast Club.’

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Above: The President-elect announcing his energy & environment team, yesterday. (note: Al Gore’s in the mix, too.)

Read more about the team here, & about the looming challenges they face here. Read a positive review of Nobel-winning physicist Steven Chu (Obama’s pick for Energy Secretary) here.

Read skepticism over a complete energy policy makeover here.

Obama announced his Health & Human Services Secretary in Saturday’s radio address, which you can watch here.

Also, later this week: he’s expected to name Arne Duncan as Education Secretary (background here). Click here for a piece on why he’d be a good addition & here for a piece on why he wouldn’t.

& Colorado Senator Ken Salazar (oh-oh! another Senate seat open!) as Interior Secretary later this week; read more about that here.

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On this, the anniversary of the release of ‘Gone with the Wind,’ Marc Ambinder points out the dearth of southerners in the incoming Obama cabinet.

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Marc Ambinder:

“It’s quite unsettling to talk to members of Barack Obama’s transition teams these days, especially those who are helping with the economics portfolio. Without going into details, the sense I get from them is that they are very worried that the economy will get a lot worse before it gets better. Not just worse… a lot worse.

As in — double digit unemployment without the wiggle factors. Huge declines in aggregate demand. Significant, persistent deficits. That’s one reason why the Obama administration seems to be open to listening to every economist with an idea and is stocking the staff with the leading lights of the field. In one sense, the general level of concern among Obama advisers and transition staffers is reassuring; they get the magnitude of the problems, and they’re not going to assume that, just because the bottom has never dropped out before — certainly not in the lifetimes of most people doing policy these days, the bottom will never drop out.”

He goes on to worry about the foreign policy implications of this focussed-like-a-laser-beam mindset.

What do you think?

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The guy who got it right in predicting how many ‘boots on the ground’ were needed in Iraq - & who was promptly shown the door for saying so - is going to be Barack Obama’s Secretary of the VA.

In 2003, Eric Shinseki testified before Congress that in his estimate half a million troops total were needed.

That didn’t gibe with Donald Rumsfeld’s “smaller & smarter” vision for the U.S. military, & he was forced to turn in his resignation, despite ultimately being proven right.

Read Shinseki’s end of tour memorandum he wrote in 2003 shortly after turning in his resignation here.

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There’s a lot of ways to read into Obama’s recent choices for his cabinet; Marc Ambinder tries to find some commonalities, including this:

“Rulebreaking? Normally, you appoint at least one major donor to a prize cabinet spot. Obama hasn’t. Normally, you clear the decks and bring in a team you know will be loyal to you. Obama hasn’t done that. Normally, you don’t deliberately create two, equally robust centers of power and task them with sharing one portfolio; Obama egregiously violated this rule by appointing Tim Geithner to Treasury and asking Larry Summers to be National Economics Council director. (Can’t he have his cake and eat it too? This is like having his cake… and eating three more cakes at the same time.) There will be conflict between Geither and Summers, unless one of them suddenly loses their nerve. Obama seems to take pride seeding these conflicts, out of which he will grow consensus. Oh, and he doesn’t seem to be alarmed about dropping policy propsosals that no longer with fit with the times, including a winfdall profits tax on oil companies.

Post-partisan? Not that Obama has operated without partisanship. It’s that he doesn’t seem to believe that the partisan theatre of the past 15 years or so applies to his decision-making. He doesn’t seem to worry when analyts predict that Republicans will “salivate” at the opportunity to question such-and-such a nominee, or that the public will pronounce its negative judgment.”

‘Salivate’s’ still an apt term, though - here’s (conservative) Mona Charen:

Superstition almost forbids me to comment on President-elect Barack Obama’s appointments thus far. The news has been so shockingly welcome that I’m almost afraid to remark on it for fear of breaking the spell.

…

If the economic team is centrist, the foreign policy team (and I pinch myself as I say this) leans a little to the right. Did you notice that in introducing his choices, the president-elect used the term “defeat our enemies”? … And that, along with the other appointments, is enough to keep some of us smiling at a time when we were expecting to be in deep anguish.”

Apparently Ms. Charen, like apparently much of the country (laughably, for those of us who were paying close attention) had envisioned more of this from the President-elect:

Boy, partisanship sure can be blinding sometimes.

The Vote08 blog had Obama pegged as the making these kinds of choices during the transition all the way back in August (actually I had figured that out much, much earlier, but August 29th was the 1st time I put it in a post). Click here to read “He’s Not a Cookie Cutter Candidate,” in which, among other things, I said

“As one who’s read both of his memoirs, I have to say that this philosophy really gets to the core of what Obama’s approach to government is. The GOP & the right wing is eager to brand him as an ultra-liberal, which has been so effective for them in the past, but in many ways there will be disappointment from the left side of the Democratic party.”

You’re welcome.

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Kinda sad - but kinda funny - post at the Washington Note, written by a person, according to Steve Clemons, “who really does deserve a very top spot in Obama Land but is sitting pensively waiting for a call while trying to pretend he/she is not:”

“…I wait in a state of suspended ambition. I too have the dreams featuring, in no apparent order, Vice President Elect Joe Biden, Secretary of State-designate Hilary Clinton and, yes, even the man himself, President-Elect Obama.

Sometimes in these dreams they offer me a job, and sometimes they say they can’t offer me a job because they can’t find my resume amidst the other 300,000 on www.change.gov. I wake in a cold sweat.

…

A good day for me is when I resist the urge to e-mail the same 5 people I do know on the transition team again, congratulating them and offering to do anything I can to help.

…

Why aren’t we getting the call? Why did I do all of that volunteer work on the campaign? What did I do wrong? How can they treat me this way? Most importantly, don’t they know who I am? (Literally?)”

Awwwwww!!

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Obama taps the New Mexico governor for his Secretary of Commerce.

His remarks this morning, from Change.gov:

“Bill has never been content to learn just from briefing books — never satisfied with only the official version of the story. During his time in Congress, he held more than 2,500 town-hall meetings, so he could hear directly from constituents. He was a regular in the U.N. cafeteria, mixing it up with U.N. employees over lunch. And during his 2002 campaign for Governor, he actually broke a world record by shaking nearly 14,000 hands in just eight hours.

All of this reflects a determination to reach out and understand where people are coming from, what they hope for, and what he can do to help. This approach, I believe, has been the key to Bill’s success as a negotiator and will be key to his work on the critical functions of the Commerce Department — from administering our census and monitoring our climate to protecting our intellectual property and restoring our economic diplomacy.

.
Blogger Grumpy Old Man (a registered Republican) likes the pick:

“After thinking about it, I agree that Bill is a good pick. It signals that we will be refocusing our business and trade agreements with Latin America, an area that has languished while the focus has been on the Middle East. China, Brazil, and Russia have formed an economic alliance, and we will need to address those spheres of influence.”

But Alex Conant of the RNC proved more contrary:

“Nothing says change like picking the Clinton administration’s energy secretary and UN representative to be commerce secretary.”

I think my favorite story about the Obama-Richardson debate is this one, in Richardson’s words as recounted on Daily Kos:

“I had just been asked a question — I don’t remember which one — and Obama was sitting right next to me. Then the moderator went across the room, I think to Chris Dodd, so I thought I was home free for a while. I wasn’t going to listen to the next question. I was about to say something to Obama when the moderator turned to me and said, ‘So, Gov. Richardson, what do you think of that?’ But I wasn’t paying any attention! I was about to say, ‘Could you repeat the question? I wasn’t listening.’ But I wasn’t about to say I wasn’t listening. I looked at Obama. I was just horrified. And Obama whispered, ‘Katrina. Katrina.’ The question was on Katrina! So I said, ‘On Katrina, my policy . . .’ Obama could have just thrown me under the bus. So I said, ‘Obama, that was good of you to do that.’”

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Above: a Democratic primary debate in Iowa late last year.

Hat tip: Andrew Sullivan

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Obama’s unveiling them as we speak; look for the clip from that news conference in this post shortly.

Click here to read more about some of the people pictured above, & here to see which slots in the cabinet are filled.

Read what the AP’s saying about the news conference so far after the jump.

CHICAGO (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama has chosen his former chief rival for the Democratic nomination to be his secretary of state.
At a news conference Monday in Chicago, Obama announced that he’s chosen Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton to lead the State Department.
He described her as a friend and colleague, as well as a source of counsel and a tough opponent. He added that she’s someone of tremendous stature who can advance America’s interest around the world.
In order to make it possible for his wife to take the job, party officials say former President Bill Clinton agreed to disclose the names of contributors to his foundation and step away from day-to-day management of it. He’ll also submit his speaking schedule to review by the State Department and the White House.

.

CHICAGO (AP) - The man who’s served as President George W. Bush’s defense secretary will be staying on.
President-elect Barack Obama said Monday he’s chosen Robert Gates to continue as Pentagon chief.
It’s a move that brings continuity amid the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the terrorism that erupted last week in India.
Obama says Gates won the confidence of U.S. commanders and military personnel. He says Gates will face a new mission of bringing a responsible end to the war in Iraq.

.

CHICAGO (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano to head the Department of Homeland Security.
He told a Chicago news conference Monday that Napolitano has spent her career protecting people. He said she understands the need to protect against terror attacks and to respond to natural disasters - and that she also understands as well as anyone the danger of unsecured borders.
The announcement came as Obama filled out the key national security posts in his Cabinet.

.

CHICAGO (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama is nominating Susan Rice to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
He calls her a close and trusted adviser who knows the global challengees the nation faces.
Rice was a senior foreign policy adviser to Obama’s presidential campaign. She’s a senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.
She earlier served on the staff of the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

.

CHICAGO (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama has chosen Washington lawyer Eric Holder to be attorney general. If confirmed, he’ll be the first African-American to hold that post.
At a news conference Monday in Chicago, Obama said the former Justice Department official has the experience to succeed from his first day on the job. He said Holder has distinguished himself as a prosecutor, judge and in government service and is deeply informed on the nation’s law enforcement challenges.
Obama said that in his administration, it will be clear the attorney general serves the American people. Obama expressed confidence Holder will respect the public trust and adhere to the Constitution.

.

CHICAGO (AP) - President-elect Barack Obama has selected retired Marine General James Jones to be his national security adviser.
Obama told reporters at a Chicago news conference this morning that Jones would prove a skilled national security adviser. He praised Jones’ experience, having served the country “in uniform and as a diplomat.”
Noting that generations of the Jones’ family have served the country, Obama said Jones “has commanded a platoon in battle, served as supreme allied commander in a time of war and worked on behalf of peace in the Middle East.”
Jones says he’s deeply humbled to have been asked to serve during what he called challenging times. He said national security in the 21st century has a broader scope and he sees the role as helping to make the world a better place.

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Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is close to finalizing an agreement to remain at the Pentagon for at least the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency, providing the new commander in chief with a Republican in his Cabinet and continuity for a military waging two wars, according to Democrats familiar with the negotiations.

Some sources described a “rolling transition,” in which Gates would stay on during a phased changeover of key political appointees at the Pentagon. Others said he could stay in the job indefinitely. Under both scenarios, most of the deputies serving under him would be replaced, the sources said.”

We talked about this last week; click here to read reasons why this is a good move.

UPDATE: Steve Clemons of the Washington Note has a hunch as to Gates’ motives:

“…Gates wants a chance to make the kind of leaps in the Middle East I have been writing about for some time. He wants to try and push Iran-US relations into a constructive direction. He wants to change the game in Afghanistan — and the answer will not be a military-dominant strategy. He wants to try and stabilize Iraq in a negotiated, confidence building process that includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey and other regional forces. And he wants to support a big push on Israel-Palestine peace and reconfigure relations between much of the Arab League and Israel.

This is a big order. And he wants to lurk in the shadows, behind the scenes and away from cameras and let other of Obama’s team get the spotlight and credit.”

What do you think?

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The reasons behind Obama’s selection of Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State are varied & multi-leveled.

Ross Douthat has spotted one of them:

“…there will be difficulties - maybe a lot of difficulties - along the way, and it’s very easy to imagine a scenario in which the withdrawal from Iraq ends up dominating the foreign-affairs side of the ledger in Obama’s first term, and not necessarily in a good way. And by putting the job in the hands of Robert Gates and Hillary Clinton - a Republican appointee and a primary-season rival who attacked him from the right on foreign policy - Obama has effectively given realists and liberal hawks partial ownership of whatever happens in Iraq between now and 2011. In a best-case scenario for progressives, Gates and Clinton will play the role Colin Powell played in the run-up to the Iraq War (except with a better final outcome, obviously).”

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“In matters of foreign policy, it has been proved time and again, the Clintons are devoted to no interest other than their own. A president absolutely has to know of his chief foreign-policy executive that he or she has no other agenda than the one he has set. Who can say with a straight face that this is true of a woman whose personal ambition is without limit; whose second loyalty is to an impeached and disbarred and discredited former president; and who is ready at any moment, and on government time, to take a wheedling call from either of her bulbous brothers? This is also the unscrupulous female who until recently was willing to play the race card on President-elect Obama and (in spite of her own complete want of any foreign-policy qualifications) to ridicule him for lacking what she only knew about by way of sordid backstairs dealing. What may look like wound-healing and magnanimity to some looks like foolhardiness and masochism to me.”

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Read more here.

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Mike Memoli (subbing for Marc Ambinder) runs through the several scenarios -in some cases, with political party switch implications - that might happen should Obama tap a sitting senator or governor for his cabinet.

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Well, it looks like after several days of waffling, Hillary Clinton has decided to accept President-Elect Obama’s offer to be Secretary of State:

Mrs. Clinton came to her decision after additional discussion with President-elect Barack Obama about the nature of her role and his plans for foreign policy, said one of the confidants, who insisted on anonymity to discuss the situation. Mr. Obama’s office told reporters Thursday that the nomination is “on track” but Clinton associates only confirmed Friday afternoon that she has decided.

The good news about this pick: it sends a great signal - & lesson - to world leaders who have rivals & factions & sects of their own. (see LBJ’s famous (& warning: salty) quote to understand the philosophy behind it)

She will be a good “face of the USA” around the world, there’s no question.

But in another respect, you should color me none-too-happy about this development.

Why?

I chose the picture above for a reason:

Click here to view the embedded video.

On St. Patrick’s Day of this year Hillary Clinton made what I consider one of her most stupid, unnecessary blunders of this campaign: claiming she as First Lady arrived in Bosnia in 1996 “under sniper fire,” assuming that the cameras she saw then weren’t rolling on any kind of videotape that could be preserved & replayed in the future.

Her husband Bill followed suit in the foot-in-mouth department in regards to this issue a couple of weeks later.

It was around then (perhaps before, but this incident really solidified it) that my opinion of Hillary Clinton took a severe nose-dive.

How could she have been so blind/stupid?

It was this incident I remembered as talk of her being Secretary of State surfaced late last week.

& don’t forget these other arguments that should cause concern.

As far as the grand scheme of things - staying on message, following Obama’s lead - I think she can do this & won’t be terrible. Certainly better than Rice or Christopher.

But ’sniper fire’ raises red flags for me when it comes to those casual, negotiating behind-closed-doors, seemingly-insignificant moments. It shows she thinks she can get away with peddling b.s., when she can’t. I’m really worried about that.

that & Bill. get the guy a muzzle.

I’ll be watching.

But feel free to disagree with me - what do you think of Clinton as Secretary of State.. or my worries about it?

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MSNBC reports this man is whom Obama will tap to become perhaps the most important cabinet positions of ‘em all.

…

Yeah, I didn’t know who he was either.

Read on to find out (somewhat) more about him.

That’s Tim Geithner (pronounced, I think, GATE-ner), who’s been the NY Fed President since 2003.

MSNBC says Geithner

“..actually had worked at the Treasury in three administrations under five Secretaries — going back to 1988.

Geithner has been a key player in the current economic crisis — helping Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and his team manage the wall street bailout.”

Wall Street certainly reacted positively to the news.

It’s also encouraging that this leak, unlike Rahm Emmanuel & Hillary Clinton, seemed to be specifically timed. That shows that at least by some measure the president-elect is in control of his own message.

His Wikipedia page is frustratingly slim. It shows he’s spent a lot of time living overseas.

For the record, I was rooting for Larry Summers.

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Time Magazine’s Mark Thompson weighs the pros & cons of keeping Robert Gates on as Defense Secretary:

“Keeping Gates would make for a smoother transition amid two wars. (But that’s why the uniformed military leaders who are actually running the wars, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, don’t change when a new Administration takes over).

Keeping the Defense Secretary would continue his push to focus the military services on insurgencies of the type they’re facing in Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than on the hypothetical conventional wars for which they prefer to plan — and for which they continue to order up costly weapons. (But continuity would also keep Pentagon spending, already at World War II levels, climbing into the stratosphere on autopilot.)

Keeping Gates would allow Obama to demonstrate bipartisanship in national security, an area particularly dear to Republicans. (But it might also be taken as a sign that the Democratic bench on military matters is so weak the party has to rely on a holdover from a GOP administration.)

Keeping Gates in place would demonstrate Obama’s self-confidence in the presidency, entrusting a key post in his cabinet post to a GOP holdover. (But if Obama slows his planned pullout of U.S. troops from Iraq, as some in the military want him to do, he could be seen as deferring to President Bush’s Defense Secretary.)”

For the record, I think Gates should stay. Gates has been a welcome breath of fresh air in the wake of Donald Rumsfeld. & I’ve seen evidence that he gets that ’soft power’ is just as important in U.S. foreign policy.

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Obama wants former SD Sen. Tom Daschle for Health & Human Services Secretary & current AZ Gov. Janet Napolitano for Homeland Security Director.

The American Prospect’s Ezra Klein likes the Daschle choice.

So does the New Republic’s Jonathan Cohn.

John McCain says he’s happy with the Napolitano pick.

So does Nate Silver.

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image by Matt Brunson

Bill Clinton now says he’s on board with making the vetting process easier.. but others (including me) still aren’t so sure this is a great idea.

Broder:

“The last thing Obama needs is a secretary of state carving out an independently based foreign policy. He needs an agent, not an author.

Even if Hillary Clinton were ready to play such a subordinate role, which she might be, in return for a promise that her voice would be heard in the most serious policy debates, the presence of Bioll Clinton makes that a doubly difficult assignment. The former president has, through the Clinton Global Initiative and his own extensive foreign travels and worldwide contacts, made himself a force in international affairs. It would be unfair, and unlikely, for him to shut down his own private foreign policy actions because they might conflict with his wife’s responsibilities. But foreign leaders would inevitably see Bill Clinton as an alternative route toward influencing American policy. And he would be unlikely to remain silent.”

Friedman:

“Foreign leaders can spot daylight between a president and a secretary of state from 1,000 miles away. They know when they’re talking to the secretary of state alone and when they are talking through the secretary of state to the president. And when they think they are talking to the president, they sit up straight; and when they think they are talking only to the secretary of state, they slouch in their chairs. When they think they are talking to the president’s “special envoy,” they doze off in midconversation.

“It takes America’s friends and adversaries about five minutes to figure out who really speaks for the White House and who doesn’t,” wrote Aaron D. Miller, a former State Department Middle East adviser and the author of “The Much Too Promised Land.” “If a secretary of state falls into the latter category, he or she will have little chance of doing effective diplomacy on a big issue. More likely, they’ll be played like a finely tuned violin or simply taken for granted.””

Dowd:

“At least Bill has the satisfaction of seeing that he has roiled the previously serene and joyous Obamaland. It may be Obama’s very willingness to take the albatross of Bill from around Hillary’s neck and sling it around his own that impresses Bill. Obama is overlooking all his cherished dictums against drama and leaking and his lofty vetting standards to try and create a situation where the country can benefit from the talent of the Clintons while curbing their cheesy excesses, like their endless cash flow from foreigners.”

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