Not Just a Token Republican
If Mitch McConnell et al. make good on their threats to hold up (or, in their own formulation, need plenty of time to "review") Obama's stimulus package, the President-elect's out-of-the-blue selection of Ray Lahood as Transportation Secretary may end up looking very shrewd... as long as Lahood (proving he's not just a token Republican) can help Obama put a bipartisan spin on a massive wave of spending for transportation projects.
P.S. I have a little "token bipartisanship" story I've been meaning to share. In 2004 I was working for the Kerry campaign in Berlin, New Hampshire when a burly, tattooed trucker marched into the campaign office and announced that he didn't much like Kerry, but he would never vote for Bush because of "that bastard" Norm Mineta, who as Transportation Secretary had pissed off some truckers by lowering the limit for consecutive hours on the road (or something like that). I didn't have the heart to tell him that Mineta was, of course, the token Democrat in Bush's cabinet. Moral of the story? If Obama does anything wrong, insist that it's actually a transportation issue and therefore it's all Ray Lahood's fault, and oh yeah, he's a Republican.
P.S. I have a little "token bipartisanship" story I've been meaning to share. In 2004 I was working for the Kerry campaign in Berlin, New Hampshire when a burly, tattooed trucker marched into the campaign office and announced that he didn't much like Kerry, but he would never vote for Bush because of "that bastard" Norm Mineta, who as Transportation Secretary had pissed off some truckers by lowering the limit for consecutive hours on the road (or something like that). I didn't have the heart to tell him that Mineta was, of course, the token Democrat in Bush's cabinet. Moral of the story? If Obama does anything wrong, insist that it's actually a transportation issue and therefore it's all Ray Lahood's fault, and oh yeah, he's a Republican.
posted by hellisotherpeople at 8:53 PM
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