No Room For A Sinner At The Table?

It appears that some sort of deal has been worked out allowing Hillary Clinton to be nominated as Secretary of State in the incoming Obama Administration based on this Canadian Press story, contingent on husband and former president Bill Clinton “vetting” a wide array of activities related to his presidential foundation (which probably would be standard procedure for a spouse accepting a cabinet position were we not talking about the Clintons; the very mention of their name seems to send our corporate media into hysterics). And based on the LA Times blog post, it seems that Obama will also “roll out” the rest of his national security team early next week also.

To learn more about the individuals composing the Obama transition team, click here to read their names from change.gov (a figurative army of people, which is about what it will take at the very least to undo the damage wrought by Bushco).

But as I look down the list of individuals on the Obama team who could possibly end up holding cabinet positions, there is one name that is missing for reasons we all know about, and it would be this guy (I thought of him after reading a Daily Kos diarist a couple of days ago whose name escapes me at the moment)…

Yes, he’s never going to live down the Rielle Hunter thing, and yes, I turned on him also over the lies about the affair (for president, but I didn’t mean to rule out everything else). And yes, announcing him as a nominee would suddenly turn up the “klieg lights,” as it were, for a process that, except for the business with Hillary Clinton, has largely played out behind the scenes.

But does the Edwards flameout last summer mean that he’s disqualified from doing anything?

I’ve seen the names of product safety lawyer Pamela Gilbert and Dem U.S. House Rep. Jan Schakowsky floated around as possible nominees for the Consumer Product Safety Commission here; both are worthy choices, but Edwards definitely has experience with product liability issues from the cases he handled before he served in the U.S. Senate. Also, though it appears that James Lee Witt may return to FEMA for a brief period to ease the transition to his business partner Mark Merrick (I read that Friday but I can’t find the link at the moment – sorry), Edwards has worked with Ninth Ward residents to rebuild their homes and their way of life (and considering that Mike Brown’s “experience” prior to FEMA was selling Arabian horses, I can hardly see how Edwards would be worse).

Also, this tells us that Dem U.S. House Rep George Miller was approached by the Obama team to head the Department of Labor replacing “Dragon Lady” Elaine Chao; Miller would be an enormous improvement, but he chose to stay in the House. I believe Edwards would be a good fit overseeing this agency also.

And while I know what the likelihood is of John Edwards resurfacing once more in the Obama Administration (if all else fails, perhaps he could head up a poverty task force; I can think of no one else better suited for the job), I would ask that you watch this “New Rules” segment by Bill Maher, particularly at the end, to get an idea of how silly it is to exclude Edwards outright from doing anything at all (sorry the volume isn’t what it should be – may have to crank the speakers a bit).