The news that President-elect Barack Obama may pick his national finance chair, Penny Pritzker, for secretary of commerce raises a couple of questions.
Pritzker, a Chicago billionaire and hotel heiress, was a major contributor to Obama's presidential campaign and ran his record-breaking fund-raising juggernaut. This alone would seem to be problematic for a president-elect who ran on a platform of change. From The Washington Post:
Commerce is not a high priority slot at the moment, but ever since the election, Obama advisers have worried about the "business as usual" appearances of giving Pritzker a job tinged by cronyism. Most Commerce secretaries in recent decades were major donors for the presidents they served, the type of old-style practice that Obama has pledged to purge.
But Pritzker allies also were confident that Pritzker herself would quickly depart from tradition by applying to Commerce the same exacting standards and bristling energy that made her the most successful finance chair in campaign history."
No comments:
Post a Comment