A great deal of the next President’s policies will be determined by the nominees confirmed for the various cabinet posts.
Recently, I was “treated” to a “Dream Team” list as created by a tea partier. The highlight may have been Ann Coulter as Secretary of Agriculture. Why? Who knows.
You can stop laughing now. But it’s not to early for us to start thinking about what people our next President can tap, to be our own Great Mentioner as it were.
So here are the offices to fill, and the current officeholders:
| John Kerry | 2013 | Senate (D-MA) |
| Jack Lew | 2013 | White House Chief of Staff, director OMB |
| Ashton Carter | 2015 | Deputy Secretary of Defense, physicist |
| Loretta Lynch | 2015 | US Attorney, NY |
| Sally Jewell | 2013 | CEO, REI; engineer |
| Tom Vilsack | 2009 | Governor, Iowa |
| Penny Pritzker | 2013 | Founder PSP Capital Partners, Pritzker Realty Group, Artemis Real Estate Partners |
| Thomas Perez | 2013 | US Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Maryland Secretary of Labor |
| Silvia Mathews Burwell | 2014 | Director, White House Office of Management & Budget; President Walmart Foundation; served the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation |
| Julián Castro | 2014 | Mayor, San Antonio, Texas |
| Anthony Foxx | 2013 | Mayor, Charlotte, North Carolina |
| Ernest Moniz | 2013 | MIT professor of physics |
Arne Duncan/John King | 2009 2016 | Duncan: Superintendent of Chicago Public Schools King: Deputy Secretary of Education |
| Robert McDonald | 2014 | CEO Procter & Gamble; Army Captain; graduate West Point, engineering |
| Jeh Johnson | 2013 | General counsel, Department of Defense; private practice attorney |
| Denis McDonough | 2013 | Deputy National Security Advisor |
| Gina McCarthy | 2013 | Assistant Administrator, EPA |
| Shaun Donovan | 2014 | Secretary, Housing and Urban Development |
| Michael Froman | 2013 | Deputy National Security Advisor for International Economic Affairs; various positions at Treasury |
| Samantha Power | 2013 | National Security Council; journalist |
| Jason Furman | 2013 | Deputy Director, National Economic Council |
| Maria Contreras-Sweet | 2014 | Founder/chairwoman, ProAmérica Bank |
My favorite pick: Sally Jewell, an out of the box choice with a breadth of experience and a strategic listener.
“I’VE BEEN TOLD that coming up to speed in this job is like drinking from a fire hose,” Jewell told a gathering of Interior Department employees in Portland, Oregon, in June. “Actually, I’ve found that it’s more like a water main.”
My least favorite pick: Arne Duncan and his deputy currently acting as Secretary, someone I so wish had wanted to spend more time with his family in 2012 if not sooner.
Pick an office per comment, give us your choice, and why (and how) that person would rock the progressive agenda in that position. Bonus points for mentioning issues of confirmability and also the consequences of them vacating their current job. (IE, vacating a Senate seat requires a new Senator; could it flip the seat or would it get us a fresh young Democratic senator?)