A New Cabinet Level Office?

I know that it is every politician's desire to keep everyone happy, but there has to be a limit to this madness, and I hope that Barack Obama will kindly resist all the pandering that hyphenated-Americans are doing to make certain that they remain proportionately visible in Obama's administration.

One of the silliest ideas I've read in a long time comes from Linda Tarr-Whelan in the Kalamazoo Gazette who feels a good step toward more equal representation in the presidential cabinet would be adopting

a plan recently presented to the Obama-Biden transition by the heads of 38 prominent women's organization who represent 14 million women. They proposed the creation of a Cabinet-level Office on Women reporting directly to the president, an Inter-Agency Council on Women and an Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach.

That sure ought to put the brakes on run away bureaucracy and government debt.

Tarr-Whelan laments that another change candidate from Spain recently appointed half women to their his cabinet. That is just great for Spain. When I want a Marxist's viewpoint on all things human I'll give José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero a call, assuming of course he isn't off somewhere fighting for human rights for apes or trying to drive his currency down to Monopoly money status.

It would be cool if here in America the cabinet level positions we do have (too many by the way) would be filled with people qualified to do the least harm possible regardless of their hyphenated-eligibility. I seriously doubt too that creating a cabinet level bureaucracy with a woman's modifier right on the office door is a practical way to guarantee a higher percentage of women in the cabinet.

She continues:

As the former head of the White House Office on Women's Concerns for President Carter, I know first-hand the importance of the coordination between the president, the administration and women across the country. In the Clinton administration, as the CEO of a nonprofit, I worked closely with Betsy Myers, later head of Women for Obama, and others who headed the Office of Women's Outreach. All of us found it difficult to deliver the president's agenda for women without Cabinet status. In my role as ambassador I met women ministers from around the globe and saw how their work informed progress for women and their countries and participated in the work of the very effective Inter-Agency Council on Women.

All of these offices were cut out by the Bush administration.

And I'm supposed to feel bad about that? I'm no big fan of Bush (43), but way to go George!

Our next President will face a clean slate and a pressing need. President-elect Obama -- and all of us -- will be well-served by taking on board the full recommendation of an integrated approach on women led by a Cabinet-level Office on Women.

An Obama administration will move the whole country forward when it effectively tackles existing inequities, eliminates possible disparate impacts of supposedly "gender-neutral" policies and taps the full potential of our women.

If my memory is correct, President Clinton did set a precedent for tapping women in government, even in the Oval Office.

Women are not a special-interest group. We are the current and future talent for the economy, the anchors for most families and the change agents for a better future.

This looks like a veneered niche marketing campaign for a Women's Studies department. That degree has to be worth something to someone, right?

Please Mr. Obama, don't fall for this expensive pile of crap. Lets start worrying about the effects a too bloated and inefficient government is already having on taxpayers of all hyphens. Creating another bloated bureaucracy, even if it has "women" in its title, will do nothing to change that.