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Obama Considers Stars for Cabinet

Wednesday 05 November 2008

by: Mike Allen  |  The Politico

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Photo: Jason Schmidt / New York Magazine)

    President-elect Barack Obama is strongly considering Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Environmental Protection Agency, a Cabinet post, Democratic officials told Politico.

    Obama's transition planners are weighing several other celebrity-level political stars for Cabinet posts, including retired Gen. Colin L. Powell for secretary of defense or education, the officials said.

    Kennedy's cousin, Caroline Kennedy, who helped Obama lead his vice presidential search, is being considered for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, although some Obama officials doubt she would take the post. Obama is indebted to the Kennedy family for a hearty endorsement at a crucial point in the Democratic primaries.

    The selection of Kennedy would be a shrewd early move for the new presidential team. Obama advisers said the nomination would please both Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

    It also would raise the profile of the EPA, which would help endear Obama to liberals who may be disappointed on other issues important to the Democratic left because of budget restrictions.

    The EPA enforces clean air and clear water laws. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and son of the late senator and attorney general Robert F. Kennedy, has long championed a cleaner water supply for New York City.

    As an officer and attorney for the environmental watch group Riverkeeper, Kennedy has taken on governments and companies for polluting the Hudson River and Long Island Sound.

    Kennedy, a falconer and white-water rafter, also worked as an assistant district attorney in New York City.

    Kennedy gained Washington experience by fighting anti-environmental legislation in Congress in 1995 and 1996, when Newt Gingrich took over as House speaker.

    The officials were unsure when Obama will make the selection. His transition planners have focused first on top West Wing staff and his economic and national security teams, all of which are scheduled to be announced early in the 76-day transition period. President-elect Bill Clinton was widely criticized for moving too slowly to appoint key staff and Cabinet secretaries during his presidential transition.

  

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Comments

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Robert F. Kennedy would be a

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 13:53 β€” Aragorn (not verified)
Robert F. Kennedy would be a fantastic choice. He is experienced as an in-fighter for the environment and is not at all afraid to speak his mind (he famously attacked the media in the run-up to the Iraq war as "indolent") and he knows his stuff. I only wonder why he isn't president himself. Maybe in 2016.

YES Obama! Pick Kennedy

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 14:45 β€” einsteinstoe (not verified)
YES Obama! Pick Kennedy

YES YES YES,,,

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 15:13 β€” steve Bailey (not verified)
YES YES YES,,, absolutely!!!!!! what a great choice,,,

OMG. Extraordinary. If we

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 15:19 β€” Fred (not verified)
OMG. Extraordinary. If we get this caliber of a person we are so lucky. Honest, smart, knowledgeable. Politically savvy. I just hope I'm not dreaming. In fact I'm getting up now to find someone to pinch me.

Let's hope that important

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 15:51 β€” Elo (not verified)
Let's hope that important government agencies, hollowed out by the Bush administration, get re-instated in their original roles. In particular, I'm thinking about the FDA which has been 'governed' and controlled by the pharmaceutical and biotech companies (such as Monsanto).

An actual environmentalist

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 15:54 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
An actual environmentalist in charge of the EPA??? What a novel idea!!! Bush appointed former corporate hacks at big polluters (who then asked the polluters to regulate themselves).

RFK JR would be a TRUE

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 16:05 β€” Lynn (not verified)
RFK JR would be a TRUE progressive choice and would renew my hope for an Obama progressive agenda. It will take an excmplary fighter like RFK to reverse the damage done to our environment by the Bush administration and to plan for a "clean" energy future

RFK Jr. would be a HUGE

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 16:12 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
RFK Jr. would be a HUGE confirmation of "That One's" commitment to the environment/global warming. YES!

Imagine, if you can, what it

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 16:32 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Imagine, if you can, what it might be like having someone at EPA who has a history of activism in support of the environment. -- What's next? Bill Clinton as Sec. State, Ralph Nader at Commerce? -- LET'S HOPE

I am still in an emotional

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 16:43 β€” Dea Smith (not verified)
I am still in an emotional overwhelm after this unbelievable magnificent election and then to hear that 'that man' may choose Robert Kennedy for the environmental position and is considering General Powell for a possible position has reduced me once again to a quivering heap - BRILLIANT!

Kennedy is great for the

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 16:49 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Kennedy is great for the proposed appointment, but the smartest choice for the Defense Department would be to ask the Current SecDef to stay on! Morale has increased, especially because he has moved quickly to remove general officers when they have not been competent. Appoint Powell elsewhere but not as SECDef. The Generals and Admirals have traditionally been too slow to remove those who are not truly competent, and also way to slow to speak out in private briefings with the politicos. My views reflect the perspective of an army wife and mom who worked in both the Army and Navy as a civilian, from post level to Army Staff and directly for the Navy secretariat. I am also a historian married to a political scientist who was more than 30 years in the Army and highly decorated for bravery in battle and also for competence at high levels of organizations. Keep Gates!!!!

Putting Kennedy in charge of

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 17:36 β€” Bruce (not verified)
Putting Kennedy in charge of turning around the EPA would be a clear signal that it is not going to be business as usual. And it will take someone with Kennedy's experience to be able to clean house after the Republican appointees have trashed the place and of course the country along with it.

Perfect choice! This is a

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 17:45 β€” Uppity Woman (not verified)
Perfect choice! This is a very good sign that Obama will make savvy choices for his cabinet. I hope RFKJr. is offered the job, and accepts. What a great day for America that will be!

Yes, what a novel idea to

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 18:18 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Yes, what a novel idea to appoint individuals to environmental and social positions who are not in opposition with the post they fill. To choose those who are intellectually prepared and understand the political pressure and economic speed bumps that must be hurdled on the way to success. pb

YES! For those of us who

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 18:36 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
YES! For those of us who remember the Kennedy's and still carry sharply the betrayals and losses of that generation and who can identify with Jessie Jackson's tears at Obama's election, this would signal something great, something that would continue the work of everyone who participated to help get President Obama elected. Perhaps this could be OUR DEMOCRATIC DREAM MADE REAL. Perhaps the long national nightmare of Nixon, Reagan, and the Bush catastrophe, could be ended FOR GOOD.

The EPA's promotion of

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 19:24 β€” Jade Queen (not verified)
The EPA's promotion of writing's by Ph.D.'s from the pesticide industry is supported by members of congress who want taxpayer-financed spraying. The Nature Conservancy and other organizations with interesting names given their advocacies have supported mass sprayings. Undoing this tangled mess will require more than one person. Whoever comes on will need to bring a deep and trusted team. The movie, The Eleventh Hour, gave bits of air time to people who could advise such a team. It has got to be a solid group to prevent too much pressure on one individual. We also need on-line sources of information about the harm from former policies, and a set way for those individuals harmed to bring suits for livelihoods and health destroyed. The EPA has been used as a shield to protect companies. This has to stop, and recoveries need to begin.

This would be a perfect

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 19:42 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
This would be a perfect appointment & Nader should be a considered appointment to the FDA.

President-elect Obama would

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 21:48 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
President-elect Obama would be making a great choice in RFK..a man of intelligence and integrity...and as such..far removed from the thieves and liars of the Bush/Cheney administration.

There could not be a more

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 21:50 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
There could not be a more qualified choice to run the EPA than Robert F. Kennedy. He knows his stuff ! Now we need to pick someone as qualified to manage the FDA. Who better than Ralph Nader ? That would be a dream team for the first picks by Obama. President-elect Obama is proving that he has been putting much thought on who would be best qualified to serve in His Government. His choices so far proves that he is a far-seeing man that has looked far ahead in anticipation that he would be the Chosen One. Oh yes, the real reason that McCain referred to Obama as 'that one' during that last Presidential Debate, was simply because he Forgot Obama's Name !

We were so busy trying to

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 22:10 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
We were so busy trying to defeat the abominably bad ticket of McCain/Palin that it seems to me little attention was paid as to whom Obama would have in his cabinet. When I did think of it, I would revel at the idea that Mr. Obama was going to choose the best and the brightest. So far the choices have been just that. Bye, bye hack choices by the Bush Administration. I feel that the country has been disinfected. PRESIDENT-ELECT BARACK OBAMA. (I just love saying it.)

Absolutely a GREAT idea!

 Thu, 11/06/2008 - 23:52 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
Absolutely a GREAT idea!

No, while Robert F Kennedy,

 Fri, 11/07/2008 - 00:22 β€” Mike Haubrich, FCD (not verified)
No, while Robert F Kennedy, Jr. may have gained some cred for environemntal affairs, he has also shown to be easily influenced by the pseudoscience of the anti-vaccination movement. While EPA has little to do with whether or not the science behind vaccination is respected, his position on the fallacious links between vaccines and autism cause me to question his overall judgment. No, we would be better served in EPA by someone who has a respect for science. And I mean this in light of the way that the outgoing administration has treated science.

THE LESSON of the 60's is

 Fri, 11/07/2008 - 05:40 β€” Anonymous (not verified)
THE LESSON of the 60's is not "Who killed Kennedy?" The lesson is in asking, "Who continues to kill him?" Citizens need to ask themselves about the engine that through Bush has perpetrated killing 1,000,000 maiming ten times that number and displacing even ten times more than that. The war crimes of Invasion, the violation of the Nuremberg Principals, the Geneva Conventions, the Bill of Rights, the US Constitution and the Balance of Powers, the convention against Torture have all been the hallmarks of a consistently and horrifyingly criminal administration of the George W. Bush Presidency of the United States. Citizens can still stand for honesty, decency, and human rights, fully knowing that there is an army arrayed against this in fearful resistance to the exposure of their crimes to the light of day.

Robert f. Kennedy, Jr. is

 Fri, 11/07/2008 - 06:38 β€” Julie Tyers (not verified)
Robert f. Kennedy, Jr. is one of the most articulate writers of our time: A Passionate, Informed, Truthful communicator..the hallmarks we can expect of Barack Obams's appointments and advisors. Brilliant man, brilliant choice, of course. (I do remember wondering, early in the current administration, how it was POSSIBLY in the country's best interest to select a national security advisor for whom Chevron had named an oil tanker.) Sorry, ENOUGH of that. Obama heralds a new day!

YES, YES, YES. What

 Fri, 11/07/2008 - 06:45 β€” Haleh (not verified)
YES, YES, YES. What wonderful, cleaver and sincere choice. And to Mike Haubrich who calls questioning the safety of injecting 36 vaccine in babies before they are 18 months old, pseudoscience, please do some homework in real science. I mean science that is speculated and researched by the real thinkers who dare to think outside the small box that the big pharma trapped the mainstream doctors in. And please just rationally speculate what burdening the body of babies with toxins and live viruses, (especially before the immune system is mature enough to distinguish self from non-self) can do to them. And finally please look to read the multitudes of respected scientist who have published in peer reviewed scientific journals about the harm caused by the early vaccination and the toxic load they expose our children to. And while you are at it, please know that government has conceded in all of the first 3 Autism/vaccine hearings and just changed the wording of the diagnosis to keep face. The cat has been out of the bag for a while now and I do command R. Kennedy Jr for having the brains to question it before many.

RFK would be a disastrous

 Sat, 11/08/2008 - 18:29 β€” alyric (not verified)
RFK would be a disastrous choice. Look at the article "Deadly Immunity" he wrote for Rolling Stone. That mish mash of lies and distortion divorced from any evidence is pretty indicative of a man without any use for science and you want that in charge of the EPA?

Let me just add to the

 Sun, 11/09/2008 - 22:20 β€” Casey S (not verified)
Let me just add to the chorus of voices who think RFK Jr is wholly unacceptable as head of the EPA. He lost my vote when he loudly proclaimed the pseudoscience of the "vaccinations cause autism" crowd and claimed there was some big conspiracy of heartless pharmaceutical companies who don't mind giving kids autism as long as they make money. Of course the dozens of studies were all fudged and the fact that the the offending ingredient has been removed and autism rates continue to climb.

Brilliant!!! I was thrilled

 Tue, 11/11/2008 - 19:30 β€” Cold Spring, New York (not verified)
Brilliant!!! I was thrilled to hear that RFK Jr. was on Obama's shortlist for EPA chief. It's about time we turned the tide! By the way, it's unbelievable to me that some people STILL have the audacity to claim that there is NO LINK between vaccines and autism! As if it's an open and shut case. Autism is a complex disorder. There is still much to learn. It's clearly irresponsible, in light of the dangers to human health that we do know about thimerosol, the mounting scientific evidence of a connection, and overwhelming anecdotal evidence to simply dismiss the theory outright! Thimerosol is 50% Mercury. Mercury is a dangerous neurotoxin. This is well established. This fact alone should cause great concern to anyone involved. Why in the world would we want to inject ourselves, our children, OUR BABIES... with a known neurotoxin? The fact that our national vaccine shedule increased from about 10 vaccines to 25 vaccines in the late 80s - early 90s, (doubling or tripling the mercury content) and that autism rates skyrocketed during that same period - presents serious grounds for a thorough investigation. Yet the national organizations which we entrust to safeguard our health are denying the connection, are not interested in supporting studies into this, and rather are trying to suppress investigative efforts in this direction. Our generation has at our doorstep a serious, serious threat to human health - MERCURY. We've been unwittingly injecting ourselves with it. We've been installing toxic mercury fillings into our mouths for decades, and the incidence of neurological disorders continues to rise. Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Autism, etc.. We've been spewing mercury into the air from coal fired power plants, and now a large percentage of our fish are - labels by the authorities - unfit to eat. WAKE UP WORLD!!! AND - don't - SMELL THE MERCURY!!! Help us Obama-won-Kennedy, you're our only hope!!!