Proposal by NYTimes Columnist Joe Nocera on New Cabinet Appointment Shows Just How Politically Inept Some Columnists Are

How Can Someone This Out of It Be on the Editorial Pages of the NYT?

Now that the election is over the punditry class needs a new topic, and speculation about new appointments to senior cabinet positions in the Obama administration are now finding their way into various columns.  For example, here is a set of proposals by the Joe Nocera of the New York Times, a person who in other writings has seemed somewhat rationale.    For example there is this bit of idiocy.

Let’s move next to the State Department, where an exhausted Hillary Clinton is ready to step down. She has been, without question, Obama’s finest appointment. She was also his riskiest. The current favorite for the job, Susan Rice, the United Nations ambassador, is a safe choice, but she doesn’t have the breadth that the job requires. Who does? How aboutBill Clinton? Seriously.

Seriously??  What has this man been drinking?

But it gets even more bizarre, like this suggestion for Secretary of Defense.

Department of Defense? David Petraeus. After disclosing an affair with Paula Broadwell and resigning as C.I.A. chief, Petraeus is currently doing his stint in purgatory. The Defense Department in Obama’s second term is going to need someone who can cut its budget without hurting its mission — and who can reform the most entrenched bureaucracy in Washington. The military brass will run bureaucratic circles around any defense secretary who doesn’t know their tricks. Petraeus can stand up to them.

But to top it all off there is this flight from reality.

With rumors that Arne Duncan may step down as secretary of Education, we nominate Randi Weingarten to replace him. Risky? You bet. But as the president of the American Federation of Teachers, Weingarten has long claimed to support education reform, so long as it is done with the nation’s teachers instead of at their expense. Making Weingarten the next education secretary would give her the chance to put her money where her mouth is.

Yes, you are reading that correctly.  Make the President of the Teacher’s Union the Secretary of Education.  Great idea if your goal is to make Barack Obama the most unpopular second term President since George W. Bush.