Senator Judd Gregg withdraws from consideration for the post of Commerce Secretary. From the release:
"I want to thank the President for nominating me to serve in his Cabinet as Secretary of Commerce. This was a great honor, and I had felt that I could bring some views and ideas that would assist him in governing during this difficult time. I especially admire his willingness to reach across the aisle. "However, it has become apparent during this process that this will not work for me as I have found that on issues such as the stimulus package and the Census there are irresolvable conflicts for me. Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.
The inclusion of the census among the "irresolvable conflicts" Gregg had with the administration is odd. The stimulus has already gone through, and the shape it would take was fairly clear when Gregg first put his hat in the ring. The Obama administration's attempts to hijack the census, however, only became apparent in the last week. Republicans were determined to make an issue out of this at the confirmation hearings, and Gregg would have been essentially neutered if he'd allowed the White House to take the census away from the Commerce Department. Neither does the failure of another nominee help restore the image of competence to an Obama team that just a few weeks ago was considered a well-oiled machine and now sees almost daily unforced errors. It's possible to blame Gregg for this -- that he should have seen these kind of issues coming -- but again, the census issue was not foreseeable, and was perhaps both irresolvable and unacceptable to Gregg. The inclusion of the census in the statement ought to bring increased scrutiny to the Obama administration's attempts to what seems to the untrained eye like a clear attempt to subvert the law governing its administration. (If any lawyers can explain how the statue might be read differently, please drop us an email.) As far as who will ultimately fill the post of Commerce Secretary...third time's the charm. Exit quote, via Politico: "I couldn't be Judd Gregg and serve in the Cabinet. I should have faced up to the reality of that earlier."