Just Can't Please Anyone

Obama makes pick for energy chief, sources say

Both pundits and normal human beings have reasonably impressed with the cabinet that President-Elect Barack Obama has assembled so far. The most common complaint I've read leveled at his choices so far, from both the press, the Republican Party and, surprisingly, from Congressional Democrats is that they're all from Ivy League colleges, that they're all too intelligent and don't have enough real world experience. I imagine Timothy Geithner (former Undersecretary of the Treasury for Foreign Affairs, former director of Policy Development and Review at the IMF, current President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York), Paul Volcker (former chairman of the Federal Reserve, responsible for the end of the economic crisis of the 1970's), General James L. Jones (former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, former commander United States European Command, former Commandant of the Marine Corps), Eric Holder (first African-American US Attorney for Washington, DC, first African-American Deputy Attorney General) and General Eric Shinseki (former Chief of Staff of the United States Army, fired by the Bush Administration for predicting higher troop levels would be needed in Iraq, was later proven right) and others might disagree, but that hasn't stopped people from saying it.

And today CNN is reporting that the Obama transition team has settled on a pick for energy secretary, an incredibly important role as the nation prepares to potentially make radical changes to not only the way we use and distribute electricity, but how we produce it as well. What's most important for that office is to have someone in charge who really understands not just the spin and public opinion on the different choices out there, but the hard, real-world science of the options, and can make an objective recommendation on what the best course of action is based on science, not political spin. After all, politics won't produce the energy this nation will need moving forwards, nor will it help in cleaning up our act. What we need is someone with a hardcore science background, someone who can disregard the politic that has infected the energy and climate change debate and provide real answers.

And so it's hard to think of someone with better qualifications than Prof. Steven Chu. Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1997 for his work in laser cooling (using laser light tuned to a specific frequency to slow down atoms), he is currently the head of Lawerence Livermore National Laboratories, one of the top research labs in the country. He is also the leader of a $400 million program at Livermore to research better and cleaner methods of energy generation, and so is quite possibly the best qualified person on Earth for the job. That hasn't stopped Congressional Democrats from sniping at his qualifications, saying that he's not politically experienced enough for the job, which my Beltway Translator-O-Matic reads as "He won't kiss our asses and bend to our will enough." Now, I can't imagine who could be behind the constant complaints from Democrats, but they couldn't be more wrong on this one. Someone from outside the DC political circle-jerk is exactly what an important and scientific topic like our energy problems needs, somoene who isn't willing to compromise what they know is the right answer because some suit tells them to do so. I say this is another inspired pick by Obama and his transition team, and if they keep this up, I might have to start believing some of that silly utopia hype from the campaign.