Secretary of State: Final Tally and Prediction

It seems very unlikely, especially after the choice of the hyper-partisan Rahm Emmanuel as Chief of Staff, that Obama would pick a Republican (especially a flag-waving one) as Secretary of State. I think Senator Lugar can safely presume that he will remain a Senator.

John Kerry would definitely be the "lightning-rod" selection. He has made an entire career out of making bad decisions about foreign policy, and would likely be a disastrous choice for Secretary of State. He is, however, second only to Obama himself in his liberalism, and rewarding Kerry for a lifetime of service to Communist ideology by awarding him the highest office in the Cabinet might be too attractive for Obama to resist.

The most likely choice, in my opinion, and probably a decent one, given his qualifications, experience, and natural talents, is Bill Richardson. Richardson can at least be tolerated, and may actually turn out to do a pretty good job. Fair warning, though, Governor: follow the Constitution, or prepare to experience the wrath of MOCKBADOC.

MOCKBADOC Predicts that the Hope and Change Secretary of State will be New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson.

The Hope and Change Cabinet: Secretary of State

Contender #3: Senator Richard Lugar

Biography:

Senator Richard Lugar is a 76-year-old Republican from Indiana. He was raised on a farm and went to public school. He was an Eagle Scout. He attended Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. He then served in the U.S. Navy from 1957-1960 as an intelligence officer. His entry into politics was on his local school board. He was mayor of Indianapolis for two terms. He has been a U.S. Senator since 1977.

Career Highlights

• Working to reduce world stockpiles of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons
  
• Working to devolve federal powers back to the states
  
• Working to end farm production controls
  
• Working to reform the food stamp program

Positions

Life

• Opposes Partial-birth abortions
  
• Supports experimentation on human embryos
  
• Voted against a ban on human cloning

Liberty

• First supported hate crimes legislation for sexual orientation, then voted against it.
  
• Supported increased wire-tapping authority
  
• Property
  
• Opposes unfair punitive taxation

Bill of Rights

Amendment 1:

• Supports right to pray voluntarily in school
  
• Voted to expand government wiretapping and domestic surveillance
  
• Voted against recording phone conversations by employers
  

Amendment 2:

• Supports almost without exception

Amendment 4:

• Voted for Patriot Act

Amendment 5:

• Voted for increased wiretapping/domestic surveillance
  
• Silent on Kelo decision

Amendment 9:

• Mixed record on awarding special rights to minorities and special interest groups

Amendment 10:

• Supports devolution of powers to the States
  

Qualifications for Job

Closeness to President? NO

Has an almost opposite voting record from Obama.

Effective communication with diverse audiences? NO

Seems to be more of the quiet type – rarely ruffles feathers.

Appropriate face of American foreign policy? YES

Senator Lugar seems to be a reasonable man who supports American values.

Aggressively pursues American interests? YES

Senator Lugar has voted relatively consistently to support the Bill of Rights, and the principles of Life, Liberty, and Property.

Final Score:

Would probably make a good Secretary of State, but I find it almost unthinkable that President-elect Obama would name him. Their views on the world seem to be about as close to opposite as you can get. About the only thing alike between the two of them is that they have both been Senators.

The Hope and Change Cabinet: Secretary of State (part 2)

Contender #2: Senator John F. Kerry

Biography

John Forbes Kerry was born in Aurora Colorado in 1943. His father was a U.S. Foreign diplomat and his mother was a daughter of the very well-to-do Forbes family. John spent his early years traveling the world and summering at the Forbes family estate in France. He attended several very prestigious Massachusetts boarding and prep schools, where he rubbed shoulders with such American notables as the John F. and Teddy Kennedy, Richard Pershing (grandson of General Pershing) and future FBI director Robert Mueller.

From 1962 to 1966, Kerry attended Yale University. He graduated with a B.A. in Political Science. He was a member of Skull and Bones. Even at Yale, as the Vietnam War was beginning to heat up, he was beginning to argue against what he called “American Imperialism”, and did so eloquently enough that he won the Ten Eyck prize for oration in 1965. He continued this argument against American foreign policy when he gave his class commencement speech at graduation in 1966.

Kerry began his much-analyzed and much-criticized military service by accepting a commission in the U.S. Naval Reserve in August of 1966. He served honorably for 3 ½ years, and achieved the rank of Lieutenant (O-3). He asked for and was granted early resignation so that he could run for Congress. He spent the years from 1970 to 1972 engaged in a number of highly-publicized anti-war activities, perhaps most famously throwing his medals over the fence at the U.S. Capitol and accusing the U.S. of war crimes.

Kerry lost his first bid to become a U.S. Congressman from Massachusetts in 1972. Instead, he became an activist and advocate for a number of civic organizations. Eventually, he went to law school and graduated with a J.D. from Boston College in 1976. After passing the Massachusetts bar exam, he became a prosecutor of some success, trying a rape case and a murder case successfully. He opened his own practice in 1979 which was successful. He left law, however, in 1982 to run for Lieutenant Governor with Gubernatorial candidate Michael Dukakis. They won handily. Two years later, when Paul Tsongas announced his retirement from U.S. Senate, Kerry ran for his seat and won.

Senate Career Highlights:

· Supported and defended Daniel Ortega, leader of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, against the strong opposition from the Reagan White House. Ortega was accused of strong communist ties, which Kerry denied. Kerry’s interference convinced Congress to vote against funding for Ortega’s enemies, the Contras. The next day, Ortega flew to Moscow to receive a $200 million donation from the USSR.
· Embarrassed by the Ortega incident, Kerry spearheaded the effort to embarrass the Reagan administration; he personally outed NSA operative and Marine Colonel Oliver North in 1988. He was assisted in this effort by Senator Christopher Dodd. North was eventually exonerated on appeal in 1991, but his career and work were ended prematurely by Kerry’s arrogance.
· Stumbled onto corruption in the London bank BCCI while investigating Panamanian president Manuel Noriega
· Spoke at 1996 Democratic National Convention
· Was on Al Gore’s short list for V.P. candidate in 2000
· Ran for President in 2004 – lost.

Positions

Life

Supports abortion on demand during any trimester for any reason

Supports experimentation on human embryos

Opposes the death penalty

Liberty

Supports radical gay agenda, and supports gay marriage

Property

Supports punitive progressive taxation

Bill of Rights
Amendment 1
1. Supports free speech, especially protest and flag-burning
2. Opposes free speech through lobbyists / special interests
Amendment 2
1. Opposes through numerous limits and restrictions (infringements)
Amendment 4
1. Supports through Patriot Act domestic surveillance opposition
Amendment 9
1. Opposes through supporting special rights and protections for alternative lifestyles and minorities
Amendment 10
1. Undermines by supporting large and powerful central government

Qualifications for job

Closeness to President? NO
i. Besides endorsing Obama early (in January 2008), the two don’t really seem to have much to do with each other. Their styles are very different.

Effective communication with diverse audiences? NO
i. Kerry’s elite upbringing and blue-blood show through, and his arrogance is likely to alienate the young and equally arrogant Obama.

Appropriate face of American foreign policy? NO
Kerry has made only a few calls in his long career in the service of America. He’s gotten 100% of them wrong.
1. Vietnam – supported Communist North Vietnam.
2. Vietnam – accused U.S. of war crimes (like Genghis Khan)
3. Nicaragua – supported Communist Sandinistas.
4. Iran-Contra – outed and discredited true hero Ollie North
5. Iraq – supported, then opposed, then supported (lost track)
6. Iraq – opposed surge, which worked.

Aggressively pursues American interests – NO
i. John Kerry, through ignorance or through design, actually seems to pursue America’s downfall. I have to believe it’s intentional, because if not, he’s the unluckiest S.O.B. of a gambler in history.

Final score?

John Kerry seems like the worst possible choice (even of these three crappy choices listed) for Secretary of State. If they had a cabinet department for clowns, he’d be a shoe-in.

The Hope and Change Cabinet: Secretary of State

The Job:
The Secretary of State is the highest ranking member of the Presidential Cabinet. He/she is the head of diplomatic efforts and official foreign affairs.

Contender #1: Governor Bill Richardson
Biography
Bill Richardson is a 60-year-old Latino and self-described Roman Catholic. He was born in Los Angeles California, but spent his youth in Massachusetts, where he attended Middlesex H.S. in Concord, then Tufts University in Medford, where he earned a B.A. in 1970. He subsequently earned a M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Medford in 1971.

After college, he immediately went to work for Massachusetts Congressman F. Bradford Morse. He then worked on congressional relations under Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State under President Richard Nixon. He moved to New Mexico for the first time in 1978 to run for Congress as a Democrat in 1980. He lost. He tried again in 1982 and won this time, in a newly-created Congressional district. He served as a U.S. Representative from 1983 to 1997. In 1997, he succeeded Madeline Albright as U.N. Ambassador under then-President Clinton. He served in this post until 1998 when he was named Energy Secretary – a post he occupied until G.W. Bush took over in 2001.

He then returned to New Mexico, and began to work in several academic and corporate positions, until he ran a successful campaign for Governor in 2002, a position in which he remains. He ran an unsuccessful campaign for Democratic nominee for President in 2008.

Positions on Life, Liberty, Property

Life

• Supports abortion on demand during any trimester for any reason
• Supports experimentation on human embryos

Liberty

• Supports the radical gay agenda and special protections for alternative lifestyles
• Supported and signed medical marijuana legislation in N.M.
  

Property

• Opposed Kelo v. City of New London, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that vastly expanded communities’ rights of imminent domain over private citizen property holders
• Supports punitive progressive and redistributionist taxation policies

Positions on Bill of Rights
Amendment 1:
o Opposes free speech & petition through lobbyists / special interests
o Supports free speech through a free and open internet
Amendment 2:
o Supports right to keep and bear arms
Amendment 4:
o Supports through resistance to Patriot Act domestic surveillance
Amendment 5:
o Supports through resistance to Kelo case
Amendment 9:
o Undermines by supporting special rights and protections for alternative lifestyles and minorities.
Amendment 10:
o Undermines by supporting large and powerful central government

Qualifications for job
1. Closeness to President? YES
Richardson ran against Obama in 2008. After suspending his campaign however, he eventually turned on his long-time friends, the Clintons, to support Obama, a decision for which he was labeled a “traitor” by long-time Clintonista James Carville. The two seem rather close, bonded more completely by this show of faith by Richardson.

2. Effective communication with diverse audiences? YES
Soft-spoken and calm, almost to a fault, Richardson gives the impression of a cool head under pressure.

3. Acceptable face of American foreign policy? YES
No stranger to the world diplomatic stage

4. Aggressively pursues American interests? NO
His two previous most high-profile diplomatic efforts in Sudan and Palestine/Israel were both complete failures.
His one notable success was in diminishing U.S. sovereignty by more completely tying us to ridiculous U.N. mandates for environmental goals.