Oh, please. Not Romney.
Sandy Levinson, legal scholar and political analyst, has this prediction for who Mitt Romney will appoint to his cabinet and beyond. It ranges from discouraging to appalling.
...With Obama, for better and worse, we have an excellent idea who will staff his second term, save for Secretary of State, where it will apparently boil down to a choice between John Kerry and Susan Rice. Presumably, there will be some other resignations, and, I must say, I'd love to know who will replace Tim Geithner, at best a debatable, if not egregious, choice as Secretary of the Treasury in the first term. But with Ethc-a-sketch Mitt, we have no idea whether the Secretary of State will be mad-dog John Bolton (unlikely, perhaps, but who knows) or someone more sensible. Will Richard Murdock (assuming he's a lawyer) emulate John Ashcroft and, after ignominious defeat in a Senate election, suddenly find himself Attorney General? And so on.
A sensible political system might allow voters some insight on such issues before they vote, but, of course, that's not the American way of doing things. Instead, we vote for pigs in a poke, full of illusions (and delusions) about what kind of people they'd actually appoint to important positions. The Brits at least have "shadow cabinets"; we don't even have shadows of shadows. It realy is as if we're still in the 18th century, voting for our elective monarch, constrained in some ways to be sure (again, see previous post), but with remarkable freedom concerning administrative appointments (save, of course, for Senate confirmation, which blows hot and cold as a genuine way of checking egregious appointments). ...Sandy Levinson
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