We were always led to believe that it was a manager’s perogative to choose his team, in sports , business and certainly, the presidency of the United States.There is a lot to be said for senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, being considered for the role of Secretary of State of the United States. Senator Kerry after all has been the person who gave Barack Obama a national stage on which to shine. John Kerry made Obama the keynote speaker at his convention in 2004.
Fast forward to 2012 and the presidential campaign, John Kerry was an unwavering and staunch supporter of Obama. Senator Kerry has given of himself , standing in as Mitt Romney as Obama prepared for the debates leading up to the 2012 elections. Throughout the Obama presidency John Kerry has been a vocal and staunch supporter of the president and his administration, something that cannot be said of many democrats.
John Kerry’s presidential run was torpedoed because republican right wing smear machine was able to turn a decorated Vietnam war hero into a caricature, and at the same time it placed a man who hid out the entire war because of his family name and influence. It would please me supremely to see Obama reward Senator Kerry with the nomination to be the next secretary of state, many argue it’s a job Kerry really wants.
With that said there is something that must be said for a Kerry nomination, were the president to buck conventional wisdom and not pick Susan Rice.
Every President, as all managers do, absolutely have the right to pick the team he or she chose to serve in their administration. It says a lot about presidential authority, if Barack Obama were to allow John McCain and the right to dictate to him who he chose to fill vacancies within his administration.
The US Constitution gives the Senate oversight, (advise and consent) they have the power to do due diligence, in determining in their informed judgement, whether a nominee is qualified for the post to which he/she is nominated. They may vote no, that is the right of each of the 100 senators.
Susan Rice
What they do not have, is a Constitutional right to besmirch a person who has not even had her name entered for nomination. Susan Rice has not been nominated to the post of secretary of state, it leads us to ask then,” what is the fire-storm about”? What is the obsession and venom for?
It would seem there is a certain disdain within the republican party for African-Americans, Van Jones the (crazy communist), Susan Rice(unqualified), Eric Holder( conspirator of fast and furious), Valerie Jarrett (no experience to do anything) or Obama himself.(community organizer who never ran anything).
This new love republicans have for senator Kerry is at best cynical and insulting, it goes to the heart of presidential authority, yet deeply troubling in intent. If Senator Kerry was to vacate his senate seat, it would immediately open up the potential for recently defeated senator Scott Brown to be rewarded with another senate seat up there in Massachusetts.
The political gamesmanship being perpetuated by republicans undercuts the president’s ability to choose his own team, not only that it potentially empowers them in a senate where Mitch McConnell has made it his duty to obstruct every piece of legislation the president tries to get through there.
McConnell and republicans opposed to Obama, has abused the filibuster process in that body literally making sure very little gets done outside presidential fiat,(executive order)
On that basis I strongly believe the president should nominate Susan Rice and ram her down their damn throats„ he cannot appear to acquiesce to the extortionist strong-arm methods being employed by republicans wrapped in the John McCain packaging.
Obama just won re-election by almost a hundred electoral votes, and a wide plurality of the raw vote. The voters have spoken, the elections are over, if republicans don’t want to govern then Obama must ram the progressive agenda down their throats until they gag.
But if his past is anything to go by, Obama will cave in the name of bipartisanship, of course many on the right believe he has no right being president,why would he then allow his presidency to be dictated by them? Republicans have used every tactic to get Obama to do their bidding , even though he beat them twice at the ballot box, most of his achievements are closer to republican policies than that of a progressive president.
It is time for Obama to man up and get going on the progressive agenda, he was elected twice, he does not need to face voters again, this is the time for him to do what he was elected to do.
The first order of business is to nominate Susan Rice, ram her down their throats and get moving on his second term.
The issue of what happened in the Libyan town of Benghazi is a legitimate matter for Congressional oversight, as such, any congressional review body, duly constituted, has a duty to get to the bottom of what exactly happened, find out why it happened, who is responsible if there are failures of responsibility, and take corrective action to ensure that the likelihood of recurrence is minimized if not potentially eliminated.
The family of slain Ambassador Chris Stephens has asked republicans not to politicize the death of their loved one, this has not stopped the onslaught of attacks from the right led by sore loser John McCain and his South Carolina side-kick Lindsay Graham. Barack Obama, president of the United States is the person who sent Ambassador Stephens to Africa, not John McCain or Lindsay Graham, neither of whom have the authority to do so. It follows therefore that the president would want to know what happened, probably more-so than either of the two aforementioned antagonists.
Their line of attack has taken a tone reminiscent of the two campaigns Obama has been involved in for the presidency, they refer to the term “our embassy in Benghazi” as if it’s their own, and it need to be protected from Obama, as with most other assets of the federal bureaucracy.
Republicans are conversant with the importance of optics, they are stupid , but not totally dense, so they have solicited the help of a female, that female is Kelly Ayotte the junior senator from New Hampshire. Kelly Ayotte has no foreign affairs credentials which would make her qualified to critique Susan Rice’s stellar record, but they believe it gives them cover. McCain and Graham do not want to be seen as two old white males abusing an African-American Woman, which in fact is what it is.
They have talked about not wanting to promote anyone who may have had anything to do with Benghazi, as a lay person it boggles the mind as to how McCain et al see themselves coming out on the right side of this charade, many experts and analysts struggle to figure out the reason for this line of attack by the right.
Many argue that republicans believe Rice has been promoted far enough. The circumstances surrounding Condoleezza Rice telling America about a potential mushroom cloud was exponentially worse that this drummed up witch-hunt, yet Both McCain and Graham supported Condoleezza Rice’s nomination for secretary of state.
Susan Rice had nothing to do with Benghazi, zero, Condoleezza Rice had everything to do with pushing America into a war of choice, based on what they now argue was faulty intelligence, people with brains will tell you they manufactured intelligence to legitimize that war with Iraq.
Susan Rice used the intelligence given to her by the intelligence community, republicans are not attacking David Petraeus , they are not attacking Hillary Clinton who runs the state department, so we must ask what is the reason for the assault on Susan Rice?
Barack Obama must stop making concessions to the republican right, he gets to determine who gets on his team , Republicans who go on television to argue for the nomination of Senator Kerry are doing so out of their own self-interest and not out of love for John Kerry. These were the same people who swift-boated Kerry the war veteran.
By definition what they are doing is telling the president who they want him to name to be secretary of state, if Obama let them decide they get another United State Senator , plain and simple.
On display is today’s republican party, it is now a sinister, duplicitous, underhanded and mendacious bunch of desperate white male frightened that the world they knew is passing them by.
This is a cynical but brilliant move on the part of republicans, I must say, I cannot credit John McCain with coming up with this, he is not that bright. They are using McCain to sell this fiasco to the American people because of his faux high ground on matters of foreign affairs.
Neither McCain nor any of his band of antagonist defended war hero John Kerry when Bush’s people pilloried that patriot, now all of a sudden they are pushing for Secretary of State John Kerry.
There is just one problem with their advocacy, losers do not get to pick the cabinet.