Take this Job and Shove It

Benjamin Kantack
UNL Political Science and Spanish Major


With cabinet appointees dropping to scandal like sheaves of corn to a harvester, President Obama attempted to name New Hampshire Republican Senator Judd Gregg the new Secretary of Commerce. Gregg would have been the third Republican nominated to a cabinet position in the Obama Administration and another symbol of bipartisanship – or at least that the President was not completely ignoring conservatives. But on February 12, according to a Fox.com article, Gregg withdrew his name from consideration for the position, making himself the second man within a month to receive a nod for Commerce Secretary and decline the offer.

What caused Gregg to pull out? As far as scandals go, the senator was clean as ivory snow: the only disgrace even near him is an allegation against one of his former staffers, according to the Associated Press, and Gregg is neither a suspect nor a target in the investigation. Nor did he have anything to fear about getting replaced in the Senate by a Democrat: New Hampshire governor John Lynch had pledged to appoint a Republican for the vacant seat, to encourage Gregg to accept the cabinet post. President Obama suggested in an article by MSNBC that Gregg had declined the position because he was too comfortable with his place in the senate – but the same article declared that Gregg does not plan to run for reelection in 2010; why, then, would he refuse the biggest federal opportunity of his lifetime and allow his political career to fade away in two years?

According to CNN.com, Senator Gregg rejected the proposition on the grounds that he disagreed with the President's policies on the stimulus package and his plans to exert greater control over the 2010 census. And while this may seem like a trivial matter to relinquish a cabinet post over, the census has, as Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times writes, "huge implications social and political."

Conducting the decennial census is one of the Department of Commerce's most important duties: the results allow lawmakers to redraw the boundaries of congressional districts and decide where government spending will be allocated. If the Obama-Pelosi-Reed trifecta could seize control of the Department of Commerce's duties, they could manipulate data and approve or disapprove redistricting plans in order to effectively disenfranchise whole regions of conservative voters and redefine the power structure in Washington.

The Boston Globe reported on February 13 that President Obama had announced his plans to make the census results subject to the White House instead of the Secretary of Commerce after interest groups expressed concern that Gregg had voted against increased census spending during the Clinton administration. Obviously the left disagrees with Gregg's fiscal conservatism, but using it as an excuse to take away his most important responsibility as Commerce Secretary does not seem very respectful – or bipartisan.

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Judd Gregg didn’t decline the post for reasons of scandal or strategy, or even for his own political convenience. He recognized that he would only be a token conservative in the new cabinet, whose alleged power had been reduced to a mere illusion – and, wisely understanding the ulterior partisan motives of the new "bipartisan" administration, effectively told President Obama to "take this job and shove it."