Democrats & Liberals Archives

The Best Republican for the Job

This week the Republican stirred-up brouhaha about Nancy Pelosi being briefed and knowing about CIA torture activities threatened to engulf the Obama administration in the type of polarizing conflict the president desperately wants to avoid. After all the recriminations thrown back and forth you would expect the president to attack as well. Instead, what does he do? He appoints a prominent Republican to be Ambassador to China!

No ordinary president. This president truly believes in bipartisanship.

Barack Obama nominated the best Republican for the job that he could find: Jon Huntsman, Jr. Huntsman is the governor of red-state Utah, a Mormon, someone who was cochair of the recent McCain's Presidential Campaign and who many believe was thinking of running for president in 2012 or 2016.

Amazing! Not only is Huntsman a Republican, he speaks a fluent Mandarin Chinese!

You would think that Republicans would be unhappy aboout this. NO. Senator Kyl, a prominent conservative Republican, told Stephanopolous:

No. He's a very capable guy. He speaks Mandarin Chinese. He had a post in Singapore similar to this in the past. He is very experienced. He is knowledgeable about trade issues. And I think it's great to have a highly qualified person like that.

And to the fact that the president reached out to appoint a Republican is a good thing. I'm not at all disappointed. It's, I think, good for the United States.

Bipartisanship works. It helps bring people together so they can solve problems. It also may be used as a tool to strengthen a party for the long run. Here's how Politico puts it:

The appointment is freighted with intrigue, and looks like political genius by the White House: It's like John Edwards or John Kerry joining the Bush administration in 2001. And the GOP is left with no leading moderate voice. Huntsman was talking about immigration, the environment and gay rights in ways that would have gotten him endless elite media coverage in the run-up to 2012. Some Huntsman advisers realized that GOP primary voters might be more prepared to accept his views in 2016, after a 1964-like cataclysm in 2012. But at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, it was clear he was interested in running this time.

By choosing the right Republican for the job, President Obama calmed the waters, advanced his foreign policy goals and assured a long reign for the Democratic Party.