Judd Gregg withdrew his name from consideration as Secretary of the US Department of Commerce yesterday. Early in his career, when CATO was pushing the idea and it was trendy, Gregg suggested that the department should be eliminated. This fact got some progressives apoplectic when Obama nominated him, although Gregg had been very supportive of certain parts of Commerce, like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
Gregg's NOAA sponsorship paid off for New Hampshire, but many Republicans, would abolish NOAA, along with the parts of Commerce that oversee trade, the census, and programs to benefit minority businesses. 1
The Financial Times noted today:
"The New Hampshire Republicans would have spared himself and Barack Obama...had the measure succeeded. Instead, the commerce department survived and, with it, the job of commerce secretary"1
Paradoxically, if Commerce had been eliminated, Barack Obama would have been spared Gregg's waffling, but CATO, would-be killer of the Department of Commerce, would be in a pickle. Where would it turn to the get evidence it uses in arguments before Congress for unregulated free trade?
Even considering that Obama has said he is open to doing away with ineffective parts of government, and some arguments that the Department of Commerce is mostly heavy on http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0209/18836.html">partisan perks, it's clear that the appointment was never a good fit. Really, if you need to take the centennial census away from the guy you nominated to the department that oversees the census? Not exactly ISO 9000 level of trust.
But does Gregg's sudden realization that he doesn't want what he asked for, that he's not willing to endure a spot on the team of rivals, bode ill for Obama's "bipartisanship"? Well, the team of rivals is perhaps overrated, apparently "Chase and Seward and Cameron and Stanton were in fact a crew of venomous enemies, all of whom underestimated their leader." Who needs "rivals" when you have bloggers, anyway?
Gregg was apparently pressured by his party. Obama will not cease working across the aisle, said his administration. But Congress? Republicans? GOP strategists eat bipartisanship rhetoric up like the monsters on Rampage World Tour.
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1 The photo was taken by NOAA. It shows Judd Gregg's wife signing the keel of a newly built NOAA ship in 2004. The ship was named by high school students as part of a program to engage students with scientific studies. The ship was named after Henry Bryant Bigelow, an oceanographer who worked as a researcher, instructor and professor of zoology at Harvard from 1906 to 1962, and who founded Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1931. The former Senator Trent Lott (R-MS), Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), and Senator Thad Cochran (R-MS) were thanked at the "traditional keel laying ceremony".
