Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack gets the nod as Obama’s Agriculture Secretary while Colorado Senator Ken Salazar gets Interior Secretary.
Congressman Sanford Bishop of Georgia at Ag would have been good for our state and region because the Obama picks have skipped the South completely. With all of the good appointments selected, should the South and the Congressional Black Caucus feel slighted…snubbed…dissed.
Selecting Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano as the head of Homeland Security is the only nod to a person from a state that McCain won. What happen to that “we are not the red states of America or the blue states of America, we are the United States of America” stuff because this cabinet seems like the opening volley in a new Civil War. Is the President-elect planning to replace Defense Secrtary Gates with former Senator Sam Nunn after a year? The South is being treated like a red-headed stepchild.
UPDATED:
What a messed-up day: Bishop won’t be ag sec and 1300 jobs are gone as the Copper Tire Plant closes in Albany, Georgia. Readers of this blog know that I was begging south Georgia Blacks to acknowledge that Saxby would be and should be the senator and that time and energy spent supporting Jim Martin for senate should have been used campaigning to keep our tire plant.
It just occurred to me that the hardcore Democrats on the Obama Transition Team shot down Bishop for Ag Sec because Georgia went for McCain/Palin in the general election and the Chambliss-Martin runoff results are a black eye. During the nomination press conference, an Iowa reporter asked Obama why Vilsack was cabinet material all of a sudden. I am having a hard time remember the last Georgian in a White House cabinet…Attorney General Griffin Bell, 1979 in think….Colin Powell when to Ranger School in Fort Benning……this is messed-up.
Vilsack Joins Obama Team as Secretary of Agriculture
http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20081217/pl_cq_politics/politics2998682_1
Project Logic Ga 
I’ve been saying it on my radio program, ‘People and Issues with Helen’ http://www.peopleandissues.com for weeks now. Where’s the southern pick for one of the top cabinet picks? I was watching and waiting…After seeing the pick for Secretary of Agriculture, my mind started to think that we (people who live in the South) are NOT going to be represented. Well an article in today’s Augusta Chronicle confirmed that. The headline reads ‘Southerners missing from Cabinet choices.’ I’m not happy about that folks. I like to have bragging rights. The idea that a southerner (not a nearby southerner) to serve in the top cabinet of the historic first African-American president of the United States was enticing indeed. But not just because of that. I don’t care who the president is, I think we should have representation. It’s human nature that people take care of ‘their own’ first. It’s too bad some of our elected officials didn’t play a louder role in making sure we had some representation. Even though President -Elect Obama lost in most of the southern states, he had millions of voters and many elected officials who were on board with him from day one. It’s a shame!