National Journal this week looks at what lies ahead for President-elect Obama in filling out deputy and assistant secretary positions. All links are available to subscribers only.
The expected nomination of Tom Daschle to be Health and Human Services secretary raises more questions than it answers about who will run one of the federal government's biggest departments.... Daschle is expected to focus intensely on health care reform next year, meaning an emphasis on staffing the policy shop and a greater-than-usual management role for second-tier appointees.
Neither Obama nor his top advisers have indicated whom he will pick to lead the Education Department. It is difficult, therefore, to say how much room the next Education secretary will have to choose a sub-Cabinet team or to set policy, particularly when it comes to the department's No. 1 task of rewriting the No Child Left Behind act for elementary and secondary school reform. More important, until Obama taps someone to head the department, there is no way to know on which side of the intraparty divide over the nearly seven-year-old law he will land or which education experts will want to join his administration.
Despite Obama's intention to make infrastructure investment a centerpiece of his economic stimulus plan, he has not yet chosen a Transportation secretary, much less sub-Cabinet nominees or chiefs for such key agencies as the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Highway Administration. But a few names are floating around town. The most prominent belong to two leaders of the transportation transition team: former Deputy Transportation Secretary Mortimer Downey and former FAA Administrator Jane Garvey.
George W. Bush turned to talented and strong-willed experts, only to see his Cabinet fracture in titanic clashes of ideology. Judging by his choices so far, Obama may steer clear of those fights. Those who have been named to top national security and foreign-affairs jobs, as well as those in the running for second-tier jobs, generally come from the ranks of centrist internationalists, with a heavy emphasis on pragmatism.
INTELLIGENCE & HOMELAND SECURITY
Gov. Janet Napolitano, Obama's Homeland Security secretary nominee, will have her hands full naming deputies at the vast and often unwieldy department. Homeland Security has never undergone a change in administrations.... Historically, Cabinet secretaries and their deputies have worked together to pick their lieutenants, said Michael Jackson, the former No. 2 at the department. Napolitano could ask the current deputy Homeland secretary, Paul Schneider, to remain in his post for a time, maybe only a few weeks, Jackson said.
Those tapped as DNI and as CIA director will have to work closely with Eric Holder, the attorney-general designate, and a Justice Department that has been racked by a poisonous political atmosphere and is facing an undisclosed cache of classified legal opinions that authorized many of the Bush administration's most controversial counter-terrorism policies.... The odds-on favorite to be Holder's deputy attorney general... is David W. Ogden, a partner at WilmerHale in Washington who is overseeing the DOJ transition team.
Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., is the odds-on favorite to be Obama's trade representative. He was never a major player on trade issues in his 16 years on Capitol Hill, but his stance on a range of matters has closely tracked that of both organized labor and Obama.
The president-elect has made some specific promises, such as ending a means-test restriction on applicants for veterans health care, cutting a backlog in processing claims for disability benefits, and stabilizing annual funding for the Veterans Affairs Department.... The leading candidate for VA secretary is Tammy Duckworth, an officer in the Illinois National Guard who lost both legs in Iraq and who now heads the state's Veterans Affairs Department.
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The president-elect has made some specific promises, such as ending a means-test restriction on applicants for veterans health care, cutting a backlog in processing
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