Phil Bredesen. And, yet, he wants to be Secretary of Health & Human Services. Good luck, asshole.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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wow, what a prick. I think the short list just got a little Shorter. All we need is Dem. acting like Republican.
I certainly hope you’re right.
As Schumer wrote, Obama didn’t have a line-item veto when he signed the bill, these governors don’t have a line-item veto in accepting the money. Take it or leave it, and accept the political consequences. The rest of the states can divvy up Louisiana’s, Tennessee’s and South Carolina’s shares.
If I may speak on behalf of the people of those three states — at least the several million of us who voted for Obama — I would think it was preferable and more humane for the federal government to bypass the state governments in this case. There is no reason people should be allowed to suffer to their governors can grandstand in preparation for their doomed 2012 presidential election bids.
The stimulus money is the least of it. Bredesen “saved” TennCare, the state medical program, by kicking all of the sickest people out and leaving them to die. A reasonable person familiar with the concept of triage might come to the conclusion that this was a cold-blooded and cynical political maneuver. And they’d be right. He is basically competent and might be a decent pick for any number of national roles, but HHS Secretary is not one of them.
Bredesen is a narcissistic apparatchik who rose to the office of governor the same way he rose to the mayorship of Nashville, basically by being bland and unremarkable while his opponents were self-destructing through various ethics scandals. To be sure, he’s not a frothy wingnut like some other prominent Tennessee politicians, but he would stand somewhere near the right end of the Blue Dog/DLC wing of the national party, less from any internal convictions — a quality of which he appears to be entirely innocent — than from sheer inertia and a desire to avoid rocking the boat. Expecting him to play the role of a reformer borders on the absurd.