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Is Panetta 'an Awful Pick' or Does His Selection Make Sense?
Tweet Share on Facebook January 7, 2009 Comment (10)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I wrote yesterday about Barack Obama's surprising choice of Leon Panetta to head the CIA. Here are two contrasting opinions on the nomination, both from writers I respect: David Ignatius is pleasantly surprised; Ralph Peters is outraged by "an awful pick." Interestingly, both see Panetta as in some sense a political choice. Ignatius thinks Panetta can advance the agency's case (or the case of its career professionals) politically. Peters says he's an appointee who can convince the left that "intelligence will be emasculated."
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Obama's Surprise Pick of Leon Panetta for CIA Director
Tweet Share on Facebook January 6, 2009 Comment (5)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
I have to admit that Leon Panetta was not my first guess for whom Barack Obama would pick to head the CIA—or my second or third or fourth guess. But I gather he wasn't anyone else's, either—or just about anyone else's. Why should he have been? He served in the House for some 16 years and chaired the Budget Committee—valuable experience in the way government works, but hardly anything specific to the CIA. He served as budget director in the Clinton administration and then as Bill Clinton's White House chief of staff. Did he learn anything valuable about the CIA or intelligence activities in those capacities? I expect he probably did, although how much I do not know. They can't have been his central preoccupations. He served on the Iraq Study Group in 2006. Fine, but it didn't exactly recommend the surge strategy that has worked so well.
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Republicans and Democrats Are Two Different Animals
Tweet Share on Facebook January 5, 2009 Comment (7)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
My Creators Syndicate year-end/year-beginning column is a look at our two parties and why, as I have come to think increasingly over the years, they are correctly portrayed by political cartoonists as two different animals.
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Senate Has No Right Not to Seat Roland Burris, Despite Blagojevich
Tweet Share on Facebook January 2, 2009 Comment (27)By Michael Barone, Thomas Jefferson Street blog
Law professor and blogger Eugene Volokh takes the same view that I do of the right of the Senate not to seat Roland Burris: Under the 1969 Supreme Court case of Powell v. McCormack, the Senate has no right at all to do that. Interestingly, Adam Clayton Powell, the successful plaintiff in the 1969 case, was African-American, as is Burris. I thought the House's refusal to seat Powell back in 1967 was wrong and an exercise in racism. Powell did indeed have ethical problems, but they could have been referred to the ethics committee and he could have been disciplined or expelled. But so great was the demand by Southern Democrats and conservative Republicans for a rejection of Powell, who was flamboyant to the point of recklessness, that the House voted not to seat him.
Michael Barone
Michael Barone is a senior writer for U.S.News & World Report and principal coauthor of The Almanac of American Politics. He has written for many publications—including the Economist and the New York Times.
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