09:13 am
Daschle, Napolitano, and Foreign Policy
Two brief foreign policy-related observations about word that Obama has asked former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to serve as Secretary of Health and Human Services and current Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano to serve as Secretary of Homeland Security.
1. Daschle and Hillary Clinton. The appointment of a prominent figure like Tom Daschle to what heretofore was a relatively minor (or at best mid-level) Cabinet post points to Obama’s commitment to healthcare as a major issue.
One of the main arguments in favor of Clinton taking the SecState job is that she is years away from a committee chairmanship in the Senate. In addition, she’s unlikely to play a leading role on her signature issue, healthcare. Both Ted Kennedy and Max Baucus have made it clear that they intend to lead the effort to get some form of universal coverage through the Senate, and Kennedy rebuffed her efforts to establish (and lead) a special subcommittee on healthcare reform.
Late in the primary season, when it appeared increasingly likely that Hillary was going to lose, some pundits speculated that Obama would offer her the HHS job, both to reconcile the two factions and to demonstrate the prominence of healthcare issues in his Administration. As it turns out, he has tried to do both these things, but not together: he offered Hillary State and HHs to Daschle and equally prominent figure.
What nobody else seems to have noticed is that this puts Hillary in a bind: she either becomes Secretary of State or returns to the Senate. There no longer is any other option for her.
2. Napolitano. I’ve already written about the challenges posed by the Bush Administration’s nearly wholesale exclusion of the State Department from national security decision-making, but Homeland Security had it even worse: neither Ridge or Chertoff participated in principals’ meetings.
That needs to change under Obama; if he chooses Napolitano, as reported, DHS will get a strong advocate and effective administrator. What it will not have, however, is someone with national security experience. To addess that, Obama should choose someone who knows those issues — for example, Rand Beers or Dick Clarke — to serve as Deputy Secretary.
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