Shodan and jayjay, there already is a thread full of party-line sniping. If that’s what you’re into, please go there.
Sorry. I lost sight of the actual purpose of this thread.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think that Gregg was aiming to embarrass the administration. I DID think that, when it looked like there was deliberately no coordination on the withdrawal and Gregg had ambushed them with his surprise presser. But now it looks like it actually was discussed, so I’m off that theory.
I DO think it was more that Gregg was “got to” by his party, both national and state.
Some decision take time to evaluate, and changing one’s mind is not a crime against humanity. Statements like these indicate a need to find sinister motives everywhere. The guy changed his mind. That’s all that happened.
It seems to me it’s difficult to assess who’s in the wrong here. It’s possible that Obama (or his people) pulled the rug out from under Gregg. It’s also possible that Gregg made some outrageous demand. Or that he was vetted and a skeleton was discovered in his closet.
People who flame Gregg (or Obama) over this are only displaying their own partisanship, ISTM. They are projecting their own bias onto a blank screen.
Realize that I say this as an Obama supporter and a registered Democrat, but I think that’s largely what a lot of people on the more leftward side of the Democratic party have done with Obama in general. I’m guilty of a little of that, too, but at the same time I realized that he was more a pragmatic than a progressive. He may WANT to do everything the way the folks at Daily Kos want him to do it, but he realizes that he can’t. Period. If he tried, he’d have not only the Republicans, but a good half of the Democratic caucus in both houses forming a living wall between him and his goals.
I’ve actually been more shocked and saddened by a lot of the criticism from the left against him than I have from the right.
Fair 'nuff. Thanks for the info about the possible leak, furt and Jophiel; I hadn’t seen or thought of that possibility.
With that, as far as I can tell, it pretty much breaks down like this:
[ul]
[li]Gregg thought he wanted the job[/li][li]Decided he didn’t want it after all[/li][li]Announced it when he did so he’d have some control over the message[/li][li]Isn’t doing it to be self-serving since he doesn’t intend to run for re-election[/li][/ul]
Right? I do think it’s sad that he didn’t realize he couldn’t accept the job earlier. I don’t really think he has malicious reasons – it’s a huge job during very difficult times, and is for an administration that isn’t his party.
I’d really like to see a truly bipartisan cabinet, and I think Obama has made good-faith efforts toward that end. I guess I just don’t see this as making either party look particularly bad.
I’m guessing something has happened to change his mind about his prospects for re-election, since he was on record as saying, previously, that he intended to run. A good guess would be that said unknown reason prompted his decision to bail on Obama’s cabinet, but it would only be a guess.
So, there’s something pretty substantial that we simply don’t know, and he is not eager to have us know. My guess? Something along the lines of a dead hooker/live boy sort of thing.
:rolleyes: Oh, please.
Could be just the bluing of NH. He’d be in trouble in 2010 anyway.
So add Gregg to the list of Bond, Martinez, Brownback, Voinovich, Hutchison, and probably Bunning among the “permanent majority” Senators who won’t be around in 2011.
Or unpaid taxes. 
Well, I can accept that your perspective differs from mine.
Well, I’m looking at it from a common sense point-of-view. If I were a Democrat asked to serve in the Bush WH, it would give me considerable pause. I’m not sure I’d feel all that comfortable in that situation, either, whether I respected Bush or not. But it wouldn’t come as a surprise to me once I’d accepted his nomination. I probably would have given it considerable enough thought to have declined, knowing it would likely be problematic. I’m not sure why that wasn’t readily apparent to Gregg. It doesn’t look good for someone that seems to have some political savvy, though. I suppose I could be wrong. Maybe I’m injecting common sense and political savvy that isn’t there.
I will grant you this. But he seems to have looked at it as a tremendous opportunity, or so he tells us in his press conference. Just not one that he could personally feel effective in taking. After the fact. Was something said behind closed doors? I don’t know. He doesn’t say either, nor does the Administration, so it’s safe to conclude that all he wants us to is know that he wasn’t thinking too critically when he initially said yes.
That’s a pretty huge mistake, I must say, if it is to believed, which is somewhat difficult given his seeming intelligence and reputation as a three-term senator. A mistake like that would be amateurish. It sort of seems as if he’s planned out his political career without such indecisive bumps in the road…up until now. The biggest career move of his life and he missteps because he didn’t give it enough thought, as he says? Sorry. Skeptical.
You were offered a position and then you declined or were you offered a position, accepted it, and then as you were introduced to shareholders to be vetted and confirmed, you declined in not one, but two, announcements to the public? Were you aware or might it have occurred to you that stepping down in this manner at that time might cause the company some grief and unnecessary delays as they had to shop for another candidate? Just how similar was your experience to Gregg’s?
Ok, fair enough. I just assumed from what you posted that you’d given up in the other thread because there was no discussion of value. I must have been mistaken. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to respond to my comments.
Heh. whistles nonchalantly
Upon preview, I see I have some catching up to do.
Honestly, for once I think a politicians reason for withdrawing from a post are more or less what he said they were. He seemed pretty honestly apologetic and embarrassed, I think he just realized at the last minute that the job wasn’t what he wanted to spend the next four years doing, for reasons he should have forseen earlier but for whatever reason thought he could deal with until recently, and so decided to bail. I’m sure many dopers have had last minute cold feet in similar situations, and none of the other explanations make a lot of sense.
I feel bad for the woman who was going to get his senate seat, kinda sucks to start making plans to move to DC for two years and then have the rug pulled out from under you. I hope she got a pretty good personal apology.
It wouldn’t be the first time. In the absence of negative optics, some can always be manufactured.
OH MY GOD HE ATE JELLY BEANS, IT’S A SCANDAL, if repeated sufficiently often with sufficient reinforcement from the usual gang, can actually cause jelly beans to turn into a scandal.
Well, conservatives are not the only ones saying Obama screwed up.
Regards,
Shodan
Let me just say a thank you to furt for attempting to keep the partisan sniping and stupidity out of this thread. Too bad there are posters dead set on engaging in both of those.
As to the OP, I don’t think Gregg’s resignation was some kind of “nefarious plot” to make Obama look bad. I do think there are some facts we don’t know (and, to be honest, his new decision not to run for re-election raises red flags for me), but I think Gregg’s phrasing was fine. Seems like a bad situation handled as best as it could.
Obama wanted to hire a Republican for the job of Commerce Secretary and then says he’s going to cut his nuts off in a politcal power grab of the census. That’s not reaching across the aisle, that’s Chicago politics at it’s worst. Senator Gregg would have been Republican window dressing for a corrupt Democratic census.
Cite?
Interestingly, that article has nothing to do with my comment seeing as how it pre-dates the Gregg affair, which is specifically what I was referring to. Go check the other thread for conservatives gloating over Gregg’s departure.
i was boggled by why sen. gregg wanted the job, he is on record for thinking that there shouldn’t be a commerce department.
You need a cite that Senator Gregg didn’t want to be a stooge?
No, I want a cite that the Census was going to be corrupt.