Rahm Emanuel, Commerce Secretary?

Republican Senator Judd Gregg withdrew as the nominee for Secretary of Commerce on Thursday. He cited irreconcilable policy differences with the Obama administration.

One of those differences was the Obama team's plan to move the census out of the Commerce Department and into the White House, where chief of staff Rahm Emanuel could make all the decisions about what to ask and how to count.

If that's what President Obama wanted, he should have named Rahm Emanuel to be Secretary of Commerce in the first place.

It's too late now.

If he did it now, it would look like he was turning the Commerce Department into an auxiliary of the Democratic National Committee. Rahm Emanuel is the kind of partisan head-knocker who could easily use the department's power to shake campaign contributions out of companies seeking favors, or seeking to avoid headaches.

But the power to use the Commerce Department to massage donors pales in comparison to the power to manipulate the census by authorizing sampling (read, "guessing") instead of counting. Not to mention the power to write slanted questions that create data useful to Democratic interest groups.

President Obama missed his chance. He could have named Rahm Emanuel Commerce Secretary and run the whole scam under the radar. Instead, he named him White House chief of staff and announced that the census will be moved from the Commerce Department to Rahm's office.

That just looks like ham-handed, boneheaded, obvious partisan politics.

Hope and change, huh?

Bet you fell for that Sham Wow commercial, too.


Copyright 2009

Editor's note: You might be interested in the July 2008 post, "Analyzing Senator Obama's handwriting."

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